DES MOINES, Iowa—The Members Group announced it has begun the process of enrolling clients in Android Pay and Samsung Pay.
TMG said it is beginning to work with interested clients and anticipates having pilots live by late 2015 or early 2016.
“Today, only the largest issuers are participating in these wallets,” said Brandon Kuehl, TMG manager of product development. “TMG is prepared to change that beginning this week. Our market-leader positioning with digital-wallet enablement has paved a quick and easy path to Android Pay and Samsung Pay access for TMG’s card-issuing clients.”
In a recent client webinar, TMG’s digital and product teams asked nearly 75 attendees if they plan to implement each solution. “For both Samsung Pay and Android Pay, 86% of respondents said they plan to make the solution available to their cardholders,” TMG stated.
TMG will enroll clients in both Android Pay and Samsung Pay via a proprietary implementation package that makes digital-wallet enrollment simple and quick for community financial institutions, the company said. It’s the same approach TMG executed during Apple Pay enrollment.
Today, more than 75% of TMG’s financial institution clients are live or have a project underway with Apple Pay. From January to October of this year, the number of Apple Pay transactions processed by TMG increased by a factor greater than 10. Per-transaction totals have also experienced a significant lift. Whereas the average Apple Pay transaction amount was $14.43 in January of this year, it was $36.25 in October. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walgreens and vending machines are the four most popular places from which TMG’s Apple Pay transactions are originating, TMG said.
When asked for their perspectives on cardholder preference for Android Pay versus Samsung Pay, 54% of TMG clients surveyed expected Samsung Pay to be more attractive to their cardholders; 40% answered Android Pay. “This may be due to Samsung Pay’s promise to be available nearly anywhere credit and debit cards are accepted today,” TMG said. Samsung Pay uses magnetic secure transmission (MST), which mimics the technology used by credit and debit cards. Android Pay and Apple Pay, on the other hand, only work in point-of-sale environments where NFC is enabled.
“For credit unions and community banks, enabling mobile payments today is about readiness for heightened consumer demand tomorrow,” said Kuehl. “People love their plastic, but media attention to data breaches, cybersecurity attacks and the online fraud fallout from EMV chip cards in the U.S. rightly has them concerned about security. The added security offered by many of these mobile solutions is anticipated to strike a chord with consumers, giving them a real reason to demand their financial institutions allow them access to digital wallets.”