The three largest banks serving the Triad and North Carolina are among seven financial-services companies supporting the creation of a digital wallet format to compete with PayPal and Apple Pay.
The digital wallet would offer consumers the ability to link their MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards for use with retailers’ online checkouts.
The service would be managed by Early Warning Services LLC, which operates person-to-person money transfer service Zelle.
Early Warning, which was created in 2017, is owned by Bank of America Corp., Capital One, JPMorgan Chase & Co., PNC Financial Services Group, Truist Financial Corp., US Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
Officials with Truist and Wells Fargo deferred comment on the digital wallet platform to Early Warning.
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“Our new wallet for consumers, merchants and financial institutions will launch this year,” Early Warning said in a statement. “More updates will be available on our blog, including who is leading our wallet initiative and where to meet us in 2023.”
The digital wallet would work on a separate platform from Zelle, which is the most widely used U.S. money transfer services, but has had occasional issues with online scams or service disruptions.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the banks’ main focus with the digital wallet is to provide an alternative to PayPal and Apple Pay and as a retention tool for customers.
The banks also want the digital wallet to serve as a way to limit fraudulent charges since their card numbers will already be included.
The Wall Street Journal said the banks expect to enable 150 million debit and credit cards for use within the wallet when it rolls out.
U.S. consumers who are up-to-date on payments, have used their card online in recent years, and have provided an email address and phone number will be eligible.
One way the digital wallet may work is customers providing their email on a merchant’s checkout page.
The merchant would ping Early Warning, which would use its back-end connections to banks to identify which of the consumer’s cards can be loaded onto the wallet.
Consumers would then choose which card to use or could opt out.
