Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a
White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Publication Date: 04 Dec 2014
Gilles Ubaghs
|
Product code: IT0003-000633
Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Summary
Catalyst
Market expectations of mobile payments remain sky high, with an ever-growing number of
consumer-facing platforms and services available. The mechanics of how mobile payments operate
and what functions they offer are also broad-ranging, including peer-to-peer (P2P), remote, and
proximity payments, and they continue to diversify. For issuing banks this poses a particular
challenge: they must engage with these emerging technologies if they are to avoid being
disintermediated and losing their positioning with consumers, and, more critically, becoming a
back-of-wallet proposition. As a result, all issuing banks are now being forced to develop their own
mobile payments roadmap in some form.
Central to mobile payments is the mobile wallet, the consumer-facing platform that acts as the front
end for wider mobile payment services and functionality. Deploying a wallet platform capable of
integrating future changes and remaining flexible to market developments is key to the long-term
positioning of banks in the mobile payments space. Few banks will have the resources or desire to
create a mobile wallet platform from scratch, and white-label mobile wallet providers are poised to
help meet this demand by integrating into bank payment infrastructure more effectively.
Payment providers must choose the white-label mobile wallet platform that best supports their specific
needs and strategic goals. This report provides a reference guide for payment providers by profiling
the leading platforms and vendors servicing the emerging global white-label mobile wallet space.
Ovum view
The mobile wallet has for several years now been among the most hotly contested areas of payments
innovation, and is expected by many to be the long-term future of payments, with major commercial
battles forming over who will control it. The concept of the wallet continues to evolve while the market
learns from the many initial successes and failures within the mobile wallet space. As such, the mobile
wallet is now a complex service delivery mechanism combining a range of functionality far beyond
simply placing a credit card into a phone.
This has led to the emergence of the white-label mobile wallet platform, offered by an increasing
number of vendors to banks, telcos, and retailers alike. As mobile wallets are software-driven
platforms, any organization with the time and resources to spare could effectively build their own from
scratch. However, not all organizations will have these resources, and even if they do it may take
them considerable effort to gain the same functionality as existing off-the-shelf white-label platforms.
The white-label mobile wallet is aimed at providing a range of flexible and, critically, configurable
functionality to potential wallet operators tying together front- and back-end systems, or providing
outright payments infrastructure. Despite the huge interest in mobile wallets, the vendor space here is
nascent: in many instances, small-scale start-ups have more deployments than major tier-1
international technology vendors.
Ovum believes that the mobile wallet space is now entering a new phase of development, particularly
given the launch of Apple Pay but regardless of the long-term international success of this platform.
Banks and other potential wallet operators must now solidify their long-term payments roadmaps, and
© 2014 Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
the mobile wallet remains the central component in any mobile payments strategy. Mobile wallet
platforms are critical to wider payment innovation strategies, and the selection of a particular vendor’s
platform will have an impact on payment capabilities and market positioning. As the mobile payments
market hits a critical period of growth, success or failure now will have repercussions in the longer
term.
Key findings

There is still everything to play for in the wallet space. Even small-scale wallet vendors are, in
many instances, having a bigger impact on the market than global tier-1 technology providers.

The mobile wallet market has been hindered by conflicting business models and lack of
buy-in from many payment providers. However, the market is now poised for major growth,
due to Apple Pay and tokenization and host-card emulation (HCE) technologies.

The mobile wallet platform space is still at an early stage of development, and as of yet there
is no clear market leader in terms of market impact, technology, or execution capability.

All of the key mobile wallet platforms on the market place a strong focus on flexible, modular
service-oriented architecture (SOA) with an emphasis on future-proofing functionality and
remaining agnostic in relation to authentication methods.

Implementation methods do not yet have a clear best-practice model for the banking space,
and the market is seeing the development of on-site, hosted, and payments-as-a-service
delivery models.
Defining a white-label mobile wallet platform
The mobile wallets acts as a focal point for transaction services
The concept of the mobile wallet is surprisingly difficult to define, with many payment providers using
the term with slightly different meanings. This is compounded by the often interchangeable use of the
terms “digital wallet” and “mobile wallet.” Defining these terms clearly at the outset is critical to gaining
a better understanding of these technologies.
The digital wallet is defined by Ovum as “an integrated service that allows users to complete
electronic transactions using one or more stored authentication identifiers held securely by a wallet
platform.”
The mobile wallet is a subset of the digital wallet category, and it refers to a digital wallet service that
has been optimized for a mobile device, typically through the use of dedicated software such as an
app. Aside from this, mobile and digital wallets remain broadly similar, with most of the same core
capabilities. The mobile wallet, however, benefits from its ability to make use of the location-based
services on mobile devices, so it is typically capable of offering a significant array of value-added
services alongside the central payment functionality.
The concept of the digital wallet has been evolving over several years, and wallet offerings have
progressed greatly from their earliest online iterations. Since then, however, the concept of the digital
and now mobile wallet has changed in line with broader technological capabilities, with many
stakeholders defining wallets in different ways as the functionalities and types of provider on offer
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
expand. The lack of agreement in the market on what exactly is a digital wallet underlines the
market’s nascent nature.
For consumers, wallets store credentials for multiple uses
On a consumer level, a digital wallet serves as a container for a variety of credentials and identifiers,
providing a variety of functions and services. This is increasingly being done on a cloud-driven basis.
This can include web-based services, where payment credentials are stored and then managed for
transactions using usernames and passwords, as typified by PayPal. A mobile wallet in particular also
includes the use of dedicated applications and, increasingly, hardware, to provide a broader range of
services and ensure that transactions are secure, for example through the use of a secure element
(SE).
A wallet platform includes capabilities to manage account details and receive messages from wallet
providers, merchants, and advertisers. The earliest iterations of the mobile wallet were focused on
simply imitating a payment card stored within a device, but mobile wallets are increasingly emerging
as full mobile-commerce platforms in their own right, with payments just one function among many.
Furthermore, the market is now seeing the emergence of wallet platforms that enable payment
functionalities in other applications through the use of APIs.
For enterprises, wallets combine back-end services into one consumer-facing
platform
From a wallet-provider perspective, a wallet serves a similar function, in that it acts as a focal point for
a variety of back-end services and transaction processes in a single consumer-facing interface. This
increasingly includes the ability of stakeholders to collect various data types from the wallet, such as
transaction histories, social media, and location data, and use that to feed offers and services back
into the wallet platform. For large vendors with a wide portfolio of services, a wallet platform can act
as a wraparound for a broad array of their existing technologies and services.
For smaller vendors, meanwhile, through a heavy focus on using modular architecture and separate
integration layers within the platform architecture, the focus is on enabling the integration of any
back-end service into the wallet platform. For some wallet platforms, this also includes direct
connections to back-office payment processing infrastructure such as payment switches, meaning
that wallets can operate using payments-as-a-service delivery models.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 1: Mobile wallet platforms provide a focal point for front- and back-end services
Source: Ovum
Mobile banking remains a distinct platform category, for now
There is a significant overlap between mobile banking and mobile wallets, but although there is a
close relationship between the two, Ovum believes that there is a clear distinction. Critically, a mobile
wallet will typically plug into a financial institution’s payments engine platform, while mobile banking
will include all other aspects of consumer banking services on a mobile channel and plug into the
broader banking infrastructure. The distinction between mobile banking and mobile wallets is likely to
become increasingly blurred as banks increasingly offer payments and P2P services through mobile
banking channels, and through the inclusion of payment capabilities in other applications through the
use of APIs.
Furthermore, while mobile banking can realistically only be offered by banks and, to a lesser degree,
personal financial management (PFM) providers, mobile wallets are available from a variety of
non-deposit-holding banking institutions such as online players, telecoms firms, merchants, and
third-party providers. Nonetheless, regardless of who provides the wallet, these platforms will need to
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
connect to a payments engine, potentially through a partner payment processor or a financial
institution.
Most banks do not have a unified mobile banking and payments strategy
Most financial institutions continue to operate in siloed, product-led divisions, with payments
constituting one aspect of the business and online banking and current accounts operating as their
own unique products and areas of the business. As a result, many banking institutions do not yet have
a unified mobile banking and mobile wallet strategy, and treat the two as wholly separate categories.
However as mobile engagement increases and consumers increasingly seek a unified, omnichannel
service, the dichotomy between mobile banking and mobile payments will likely fade amid a broader
bank-led mobile initiative. Most banks today pay lip service to enabling an omnichannel view of their
customers; if this environment ever emerges, a more unified mobile experience will be a critical
component of their customer engagement strategies.
White-label platforms are gaining ground
A mobile wallet platform is more than purely a front-layer user-interface experience: it must be able to
incorporate a range of services and functionality. Although some large-scale providers have been able
to develop their own mobile wallets on a purely bespoke basis, the last few years have seen the
emergence of white-label mobile wallet platform providers.
These providers typically offer a suite of their own in-house services tied together within a wallet
software application layer, or they provide a flexible interface in which wallet providers are able to tie
together their own infrastructure and back-end processes. However, the complexities of payments
mean that no two issuers’ infrastructure is the same, and, as such, most providers will offer a
combination of some level of back-end service and a flexible approach to integration with third-party
services.
White-label wallet platform vendors remain distinct from customer-facing services such as PayPal or
Visa Checkout. They do not provide the full wallet service direct to consumers, but instead offer a
range of software and associated services to wallet operators. As such, they are not consumer
brands, they are purely B2B service providers. As these emerging wallet platform providers develop
their platforms and learn from their growing numbers of implementations, they are increasingly able to
“templatize” their approaches.
For a provider seeking to launch its own wallet, be it on its own, as part of a consortium, or as a
widget on another wallet platform, these white-label wallet developers will become increasingly
critical: they provide a more cost-effective approach than building a platform from scratch, and they
will set the broader parameters of any wallet ecosystem.
There is ample space for start-ups
As it is such a new market, the white-label mobile wallet platform space is far from mature, and it is
characterized by both the large number of start-ups entering the space and the variety of services
being offered by larger, more established financial service players. Tellingly, even major financial
services technology vendors remain at an early stage of development, with a limited number of live
deployments compared to their usual market offerings.
There are, as yet, no dominant market players, and there is scope for smaller-scale start-ups to gain
traction. This window of opportunity is rapidly narrowing, however. Consolidation is inevitable, as
© 2014 Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
major payment incumbents seek to increase their capabilities and starts-up continue to develop new
and innovative ways of developing the mobile wallet space.
Interestingly, even seemingly competitive wallet platform vendors often have close links and work in
tandem via partnership networks or even through the use of one other’s technology. Notably, FIS has
a close relationship with startup Paydiant, employing Paydiant APIs for its consumer-facing front end.
There is no clear best practice on wallet platform delivery models
Potential wallet providers selecting a platform vendor must ensure that their chosen platform provides
a wide range of implementation options and technology support. Unlike with many other app-based
services, the sensitivities and, in many instances, regulations surrounding payment transactions flows
mean implementation options for wallet providers may be complex. As yet, there is no agreed-upon
best practice for banks and other wallet operators, regardless of the scale of their programs.
For both platform vendors and wallet operators, implementation can follow an on-premise model,
whereby the platform is owned and managed by the wallet operator; a hosted model, whereby
services are provided via cloud-based technologies; or a combination of these, including through fully
managed payments-as-a-service delivery models. Cloud-based models will often provide advantages
in terms of cost and flexibility, but there may be security and regulatory barriers to their wider use.
New technologies such as HCE and tokenization services are unlikely to settle best practice in wallet
delivery models in the near term; the environment is further muddled by additional technologies and
methods of implementation, all of which will have a direct impact on the revenue models and
profitability of any wallet program. Unsurprisingly, most wallet platforms are now reacting accordingly,
and either already offer these technologies or include them in their payments roadmaps.
Potential wallet operators are now forming their strategies
The decision about whether or not a potential provider should enter the mobile wallet market is not a
simple one, and depends wholly on the context, capabilities, and long-term strategic goals of the
institution in question. However, the long-awaited announcement of Apple Pay in 2014 has impelled
the market to act, driving decision-making on if, when, and how to enter the wallet space.
Although not all banks and financial institutions need to work with a third-party provider, it is critical
that they gain an understanding of the market and their strategic options now, to help develop their
roadmap strategy in the longer term. For a bank or payment provider, this decision-making includes
whether they launch their own branded platform or partner with another provider.
A mobile wallet is not necessarily a financial-institution-led service, and indeed most services in the
market today have been launched by other types of players. The primary potential providers of a
mobile wallet today include:

financial institutions including payment schemes and issuing banks

telecoms companies, both at operators and device manufacturers

merchant-led wallets, typically on a closed-loop basis

third-party providers including major consumer technology providers such as Apple and
Google, start-ups, and specialists such as loyalty providers.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Potential providers are faced with three distinct operating models
Potential providers of a mobile wallet are faced with three key strategies in operating a mobile wallet
service: they can go it alone, join a coalition, or partake in another provider’s wallet. For all three of
these operational models, providers can either build their own proprietary wallet software platforms or
use a white-label wallet platform provider.
In a “go it alone” operating model, a provider will create and manage its own branded wallet service
and act as the major consumer-facing brand on the service. This is only an option for midsize to large
players that have the resources to do so on an economically viable scale.
Coalition or consortium models consist of a number of players coming together to operate a wallet
service, and can include multiple players within a specific provider segment, such as telecoms or
merchants, or all varieties of providers. These coalitions can vary from simple bilateral partnerships to
larger joint ventures and industry-wide coalitions involving a variety of players. The most well-known
coalitions include the Softcard (formerly ISIS) consortium between three of the four major US
telecoms operators and the upcoming merchant-led coalition CurrentC (formerly MCX).
The third operating model is to enable active participation in another provider’s wallet. This can
involve the development of a specific widget or app for use in another wallet, or a partnership that
allows for the easier enablement and addition of payment account details or customer membership of
another provider’s wallet. This participation operating model is particularly suited to financial
institutions, which will enable their existing card accounts to be used in a variety of wallets.
Ovum notes that participation in another wallet does not negate the possibility of a wallet provider
developing its own wallet in a “go it alone” strategy. One example of active participation is Citigroup,
which partnered with Google Wallet when it first launched, allowing for easier enrollment and direct
connection to the cardholding account, while also developing its own branded wallet and participating
in Apple Pay.
Participation in other wallets is likely to grow substantially in the near term, as wallet platform
providers increasingly enable payment functionality in non-wallet apps. This means that an underlying
mobile wallet infrastructure can be deployed on a more widespread basis, allowing merchants, banks,
and so on to provide an unintermediated interface to their clients.
For several years, the biggest challenge facing mobile wallets has been the competitive race to avoid
disintermediation. However, allowing their own payment functionality to be used more widely can
cement a payment provider’s positioning within a broader commercial ecosystem while allowing
relevant stakeholders, including merchants and telcos, to maintain their customer-facing relationships.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 2: Providers’ operating strategies and wallet designs are now taking shape
Source: Ovum
Horizontal or vertical wallet design has major repercussions on functionality
Once the operating strategy has been formulated, the next step is to decide on a wallet design, and
whether the platform will be a horizontal or vertical wallet. The concepts of horizontal and vertical
mobile wallets were initially conceived by industry body Mobey Forum in a series of influential white
papers. They essentially refers to whether the wallet is an open- or closed-garden ecosystem.
A horizontal or open wallet refers to a wallet that is open to third parties and allows them to develop
additional services that are made available to consumers via the wallet. The wallet provider in a
horizontal wallet will hold an ownership position in relation to the central transaction functionality and
the parameters of the wider wallet, but will leave much of its wallet ecosystem open to other parties. In
essence, the horizontal wallet operates like an app store, allowing for a broad range of services to be
developed and customized by the end user and developers of value-added services. Wallet platforms,
through their control over the wallet security keys and credentials, are then able to manage
secure-data transactions for functions such as near-field communications (NFC). The range of
services potentially on offer via a mobile wallet platform means that a horizontal wallet is better able to
adapt to market innovation.
In a vertical or closed wallet, by contrast, the wallet provider has strict control over all functionality in
the wallet and acts as the provider of all value-added services. Although third parties could, in theory,
take part in a vertical wallet, this will be through a more formalized partnership process that would be
seen in a more open-ecosystem horizontal wallet. The provider in a vertical wallet benefits from
having total control over the ecosystem and can therefore push its own value-added services.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 3: A vertical wallet provides greater control but less flexibility than a horizontal wallet
Source: Ovum
The increasing rate of payments diversification and the widening potential use cases for a mobile
wallet means that vertical wallets will likely struggle to keep pace with wider market innovations.
Indeed, evidence from the major wallet initiatives launched to date suggests that neither consumers
nor merchants have taken well to vertical-wallet approaches as they have proved lacking in
functionality and difficult to extend. Payments on their own are not enough of a draw to drive mobile
wallet usage; creating a broad ecosystem of functionality, services, and compatibility increasingly
looks like the surer path to success.
The mobile wallet market has been hindered by business
model issues
Although it has long been gestating, the mobile wallet market has so far struggled to gain mass
acceptance outside key platforms such as PayPal’s mobile-app-based solutions and
merchant-specific offerings such as the Starbucks wallet. Much of the challenge in expanding the
wallet market has been in forming a coherent business model for the mobile wallet and indeed for
broader mobile payments, in light of the various stakeholders and competitors vying to gain a foothold
in the market.
These business model challenges have been exacerbated by unclear technology specifications
adding to the confusion in the market, particularly for proximity payments using NFC. NFC for
payment usage requires an SE component to be stored, somehow, within the mobile device. The SE
could be stored either directly in the device, on the universal integrated circuit card (UICC) SIM, or on
a removable storage device such as a micro SD.
In any model, maintaining the SE as a separate element meant that the payment credentials were
held outside the handset’s operating system, greatly increasing security. This meant that NFC-based
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
transactions could be processed as a card present (CP) transaction. However, the positioning of the
SE in the device was a major point of contention, because the owner of the SE held sway over the
rest of the wallet model, as it essentially acted as the gatekeeper of NFC-based services on the
wallet.
Inevitably, this led to much rapid development by potential key players eager to develop a dominant
position in the mobile wallet space. In particular, the telecoms operators pushed for SIM-based SE, as
renting out space on the SE to third parties would generate revenue for them.
Notably, and in a move watched by payment providers globally, the US market saw a standoff
between emerging wallet providers in the form of Google Wallet and the major telecoms operators
under the Isis consortium. Although first launched as an NFC-based mobile wallet in 2011, Google
Wallet was blocked from all NFC-capable handsets on the networks of Isis members while they
developed their own wallet platform.
These struggles over NFC and wider mobile wallet models have caused most banks to take a
wait-and-see approach to the mobile wallet space before launching their own or taking part in any
broader mobile wallet initiatives. However, with the development of both HCE and tokenization
technologies, banks are now being forced to take a position and form their wallet roadmaps for the
longer term.
HCE and tokenization are galvanizing the payments market
In 2013, Google announced that it was officially supporting HCE in the latest version of its Android
operating system. HCE technology allows mobile wallet platforms to bypass the device-specific SE
and store credentials in the cloud instead. A standard SE model replicates a smart card through
hardware installed on the device. HCE, by contrast, is able to emulate a smart card through
cloud-based software protocols. This meant that for the first time, mobile wallet providers were
capable of launching full NFC services without the need for telco involvement. Since the official
support from Google, HCE has been fully endorsed by Visa and MasterCard, and interest in the
technology has soared.
The launch of Apple Pay in 2014 marked a major milestone for the mobile wallet market and has
galvanized much of the payments industry to quickly reassess its long-term payments roadmaps.
Apple Pay notably makes heavy use of tokenization technology, meaning that the wallet platform itself
never gains access to secure payment credentials. This also means that Apple Pay allows for lower
transaction processing rates than many other mobile proximity payment services, as the payment is
processed as a CP transaction rather than a card not present (CNP) transaction.
Although Apple Pay’s long-term positioning will take several years to become fully clear, its use of
tokenization has piqued the interest of many in the market and, unsurprisingly, many wallet platforms
already support tokenization or plan to support it in the near term.
Further developments in wallet technologies are inevitable, making flexibility key
Alongside HCE and tokenization, other technologies, such as QR codes and hands-free payments,
have developed a strong foothold in the wallet space, while other technologies such as Bluetooth
low-energy (BLE) are expected to make a major impact in the future. QR codes are already a major
authentication method for wallets at the point of sale (POS), and are central to the Starbucks wallet,
arguably the world’s most successful wallet to date. A single winner-takes-all outcome for competing
wallet technologies looks increasingly unlikely, and the need to achieve merchant acceptance means
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
that it is more likely that a variety of technologies within the wallet space will continue to develop and
evolve concurrently.
Unsurprisingly, vendors in the mobile wallet platform space have adapted to these variations in
technology by developing their platforms as modular software-based frameworks that are flexible to
further development and changes. Rather than a proprietary system wholly reliant on a single
authentication or back-office technology, modern white-label wallet platforms place a strong emphasis
on future-proofing and compatibility with emerging technology trends.
As such, these platforms will help to drive growth in the overall market: as they provide flexible
frameworks on which wallet operators can develop future iterations and technologies, banks and other
potential providers will be less tied into heavy investment in any particular technology. Mobile wallet
platforms extend far beyond NFC and are increasingly agnostic in terms of the technologies they
employ. With broader payments diversification, this trend is unlikely to change.
The appetite for payments investment is big, and this will drive wallet growth
With the hype of the launch of Apple Pay, the further development of HCE technology, and the
growing ubiquity of smartphone technology in many regions, the mobile wallet market is set to see a
period of renewed growth and investment in the near term. Many providers have observed the
lessons from this first wave of development and will now be more focused on building the customer
experience in a well-designed and flexible wallet.
As highlighted in Ovum’s 2014 ICT Enterprise Insights survey of IT decision-makers in the retail
banking space, mobile channel plays are the top-priority investment areas in payments products over
the next 18 months (see Figure 4). The mobile/digital wallet space was ranked the top investment
priority by 23% respondents, the most by a fairly strong margin. Mobile proximity payments,
incorporating NFC and QR codes, were second top overall (ranked top by 17.6% of respondents).
Despite the many high-profile failures in the mobile wallet and proximity payments space, from the
likes of Google, Softcard (formerly ISIS) in the US, and numerous telco-led ventures, in most markets
banks and issuers have largely not yet made mobile wallet plays, and they remain an unknown
quantity. Apple Pay was announced after the ICT Enterprise Insights survey was conducted, but
Ovum believes that the priority levels of mobile wallets and mobile proximity payments would probably
have risen further.
The development of HCE technology and tokenization is expected to lead to a significant increase in
mobile wallet development, as the use of NFC at the POS is perceived by many as the ultimate
endpoint of mobile wallet interface development. The route to market has been notably simplified for
non-telco providers, and the global mobile wallet market is beginning to see the first launches of
HCE-enabled, NFC bank-led mobile wallets, with more expected to follow soon. As the route to
implementation for mobile wallets becomes easier, growth will increase and competition will intensify.
The lack of contactless infrastructure and, to a lesser degree, NFC-enabled handsets remains an
issue in many markets, but the simplification of the upfront costs and complex partnerships previously
required will drive rapid development of the mobile wallet space.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 4: Mobile wallets were the top payments IT investment priority for banks in 2014
Source: Ovum ICT Enterprise Insights
Vendor platform selection
The report gives a quantitative and qualitative representation of Ovum's view of the competitive
market environment in the white-label mobile wallet platform sector.
Inclusion criteria
Although the list of vendors here is not intended to include all possible providers, Ovum believes it is
representative of the market, and this Decision Matrix offers an in-depth analysis of the leading
vendors of white-label mobile wallet platforms for use in the global payments sector.
The early stage of development of the white-label mobile wallet platform market means that significant
numbers of players continue to enter and exit the market through a broader trend of industry
consolidation. At this early phase of market development, Ovum presents a selection of key players
with major deployments either live or in development, representing significant approaches to the
mobile wallet space.
The seven vendors and their platforms are considered in this report are listed in Table 1.
Table 1: Vendors and products included in the Ovum Decision Matrix
Vendor
White-label mobile wallet platform
Accenture
Accenture Mobile Wallet
FIS
FIS Mobile Wallet
Mahindra Comviva
mobiquity Wallet
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Paydiant
Paydiant mobile wallet platform
SAP
SAP Mobile Platform
Sequent
Open Wallet Platform
Toro
Akami Wallet
Source: Ovum
Although there are a number of smaller regional players and other midsize to large players, the
vendors shown here include some of the largest platforms by market presence, alongside high-growth
players with regional coverage and a particularly strong platform offering. The decision to include a
vendor and its platform for evaluation in this report was based on the following criteria:

The platform must be judged, in an initial assessment by Ovum analysts, as having mid- to
long-term potential.

The platform must be applicable to financial service players and/or existing payments
providers.

The platform must currently be available in multiple geographies, or hold a significant position
in its home geography with potential for future expansion.

The platform must provide Ovum with sufficient information to allow an accurate assessment,
including a complete response to Ovum's request for information (RFI) document and an
in-depth briefing.
Overall assessment
Assessment scope
In this Decision Matrix, Ovum provides a summary of each vendor's white-label mobile wallet platform
capabilities based on a quantitative assessment of its influence on the global wallet market and the
quality and breadth of the functionality provided by its platform and underlying technology. Alongside
this, Ovum provides an assessment of each vendor’s execution capabilities in providing support and
resources to aid implementation.
Enterprises seeking a mobile wallet platform are advised to consider their own strategic goals as the
top priority in selecting a mobile wallet vendor, and the profiles shown here represent among the best,
but not all, of the players on the market today.
Achieving the full value of a white-label mobile wallet platform is critically dependent upon the
platform’s ability to execute a payment provider’s overall strategy. A decision to purchase a particular
platform should therefore be based on a broad array of factors, including the degree of alignment
between the platform’s functionality and underlying technology on the one hand, and an institution's
own particular business and payment functionality requirements, project scope, organization size, and
regional location on the other. As a result, Ovum's assessment should only be considered within the
context of a payment provider’s specific requirements.
Methodology
The assessment is based on the following methodology:
© 2014 Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform

Based on Ovum's initial assessment of the retail mobile wallet market globally, a number of
vendors were invited to respond to a detailed RFI that required them to provide data and
supporting documentation around three primary criteria: technology, execution, and market
impact.

In addition to the RFI response, Ovum invited vendors to provide solution briefings. Analysis
for the three primary criteria was based on a scoring assessment exercise undertaken for a
number of sub-criteria. For each response within the RFI that aligned to the respective
sub-criteria, Ovum rated vendors on a scale of 1–10 based on a consistent set of
best-practice criteria or benchmarks defined by Ovum. We then aggregated the sub-criteria
scores to provide a score for each primary criterion.

Weightings are used in the analysis to calculate scores for both sub-criteria and primary
criteria. The weightings are based on analysis of the typical importance of each criterion in the
selection process for mobile wallet platforms.
Ovum ratings
In this Decision Matrix, Ovum provides a summary of each vendor's mobile wallet platform capabilities
based on a quantitative assessment of its influence on the global white-label mobile wallet platform
market and the quality and breadth of the functionality provided by its platform and underlying
technology. Ovum also provides guidance for institutions looking to deploy mobile wallet platforms,
and advises whether they should shortlist, consider, or explore platforms from the vendors assessed
in this report. Ovum defines each of these recommendations based on the vendors' positions in the
market:

Market leader: This category represents the leading platforms that we believe are worthy of a
place on most technology selection shortlists. The vendor has established a commanding
market position with a product that is widely accepted as best-of-breed.

Market challenger: The platforms in this category have a good market positioning and the
vendors are selling and marketing the product well. The products offer competitive
functionality and good price-performance proposition, and should be considered as part of the
technology selection.

Market follower: Platforms in this category are typically aimed at meeting the requirements
of a particular kind of customer. As a tier-1 offering, they should be explored as part of the
technology selection.
The wallet platforms presented here are not a complete compendium of all available platforms on the
market, and the selection is intended to serve as an introduction to some of the key players now
emerging. The immaturity of the wallet market, highlighted by the limited number of clients even of
global technology providers, highlights the significant scope for further expansion in the space, and all
of the players discussed in this report provide a potentially strong platform to meet most wallet needs.
Acccenture, FIS, and SAP are market leaders, for now
Looking at the market from the perspective of financial service providers or existing banking and
payment players, there are a handful of early front-runners, including Accenture, FIS, and SAP. This is
largely due to their strong abilities to execute wallet deployments in a complex financial services
environment, and their international support capabilities. Although wallet services can be operated by
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
a variety of potential providers, financial services institutions undoubtedly maintain the most complex
infrastructure, and as such may require greater levels of implementation support.
Ovum notes, however, that due to the immaturity of the market, the majority of players are
challengers, and competition remains fierce. Large vendors may have an initial edge with banks and
payment providers, but there is nothing to stop the numerous challengers on the market from gaining
a stronger presence in the near term. As such, Ovum recommends that all players discussed in this
report are worthy of consideration and should not be dismissed out of hand by any enterprise players.
Figure 5 shows Ovum’s assessment of the vendors analyzed.
Figure 5: The Ovum Decision Matrix for white-label mobile wallet platform vendors
Source: Ovum. NB: The chart shows a zoomed-in view of the vendors’ relative positioning
Execution capabilities are critical to the market leadership of Accenture, FIS,
and SAP
Overall, the various platforms now available within the white-label mobile wallet platform market are
positioned in close alignment. The immaturity of the market is highlighted by the fact that the overall
market impact of all the vendors surveyed is fairly evenly spread, with even small-scale startups, in
some instances, having a larger market impact than global tier-1 technology vendors.
In particular, the technology assessment score shows that these are all reliable and robust systems
offering a high degree of flexibility, predominantly based on modular SOA. The future-proofing of the
solutions for further developments is a key feature that all vendors are pursuing, understandably so
considering the relative immaturity of the broader market. Newer platforms, such as Accenture’s, in
particular, place particular emphasis on the use of APIs to allow the integration and development of
value-added services as part of a wallet program, and this flexibility will be increasingly critical over
time. However, all of the platforms surveyed here are capable of providing a robust mobile wallet
service with a full range of consumer-facing features.
One of the key distinctions between platforms is the ability to connect to a vendor’s own systems and
services, with providers such as FIS able to offer a full end-to-end range of services that tie in directly
with its wallet. Alongside this is the ease of integration with third-party systems, for both payments and
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
value-added services. The complexities of existing payments infrastructure vary widely by financial
institution, and closer inspection of vendors by enterprises on a case-by-case basis will help to
pinpoint a suitable vendor.
Execution abilities are higher among larger organizations such as SAP, Accenture, and FIS, which
have significantly greater resources than smaller start-ups. These capabilities are particularly crucial
for existing payment providers and financial institutions because of legacy infrastructure complexities.
This marks out these vendors as market leaders, at least for the time being.
However, even here, smaller players have in numerous instances successfully deployed platforms for
major tier-1 wallet providers, including, on occasion, the financial services space, so they should not
be dismissed out of hand by organizations of any scale. Even smaller players such as Toro have
successfully launched major national platforms for tier-1 enterprises. As market growth accelerates in
the wallet space, it remains to be seen if smaller players find their resources stretched or if they can
maintain their velocity and support market growth.
For the time being, Ovum believes it is more accurate to rate all active mobile wallet players as
market leaders or challengers. The market is so new that no vendor can be said to be a follower, and
this makes the selection of a platform particularly challenging for enterprises. In time, and as the
market matures, a clearer pattern of leaders and laggards will develop, particularly when more
deployments go live.
Primary assessment criteria
Evaluation categories
As the competitive landscape may vary significantly across the evaluation categories in this Decision
Matrix – technology, execution, and market impact – it is important to consider these categories
separately in order to develop a more complete understanding of each vendor's particular strengths
and challenges. The following section presents a vendor comparison in each category and discusses
how they vary across the sub-criteria.
Ovum notes that the scores given here reflect a vendor’s positioning against other vendors. Hence,
where averages are discussed, this reflects an average of the vendors shown here and not of the
overall market.
Market impact assessment

Mobile wallet global market presence: An assessment of a vendor's mobile wallet installed
base within the global payments sector. The total number of deployments by region is
included in this measure, with a greater weighting for deployments in mature markets.

Platform market growth: An assessment of new mobile wallet platform clients acquired by
the vendor in the preceding 12 months. Consideration is also given to major client
deployments that have achieved substantial growth.

Vendor scale: An assessment of a vendor's direct presence, scale, and resources within
various geographic regions, including the level of staff that the vendor has dedicated to
mobile wallet products.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform

Scale of wallet deployments: An assessment of the scale of the wallet programs being
deployed by the vendor, including the number of wallets in use and the typical monthly
transaction rates by value and volume.

Vendor’s mobile wallet focus: An assessment of a vendor's history and activity in the mobile
wallet platform market, the relative importance of the mobile wallet sector to the vendor's
revenue stream, recent mobile wallet-related acquisitions, and the organizational structure
supporting the vendor's activities in the mobile wallet sector.
Figure 6: Vendors’ market impact assessment by sub-criteria
Source: Ovum
Although the largest organizations active in the mobile wallet space have the highest level of overall
market impact, the relative strength of even small players here, such as Toro and Sequent, highlights
the fact the wallet vendor space is still up for grabs in terms of gaining major market presence.
Overall, SAP had the highest mobile wallet presence due to its length of time in the market and
deployments in numerous emerging markets. Many of the platforms reviewed here are extremely new,
notably those of Mahindra Comviva and Accenture, and with further deployments their market
presence will expand dramatically.
Platform growth is positive for all players surveyed here. SAP has the most momentum, again largely
due to its longevity in the market and proven track record. The financial services sector is by nature a
conservative industry, and it is unsurprising that vendors with more deployments under their belt will
continue to see the most growth. However, there is scope for newer platforms to expand rapidly,
particularly where they have established a strong presence on a regional basis or with any high-profile
clients.
The scale of wallet deployments here again bears no direct relationship to the size of the vendor in
question. Once more, SAP has the highest ratings, followed by much smaller vendor Paydiant, which
has undergone several high-profile platform launches in the US. This again highlights the continued
potential for smaller specialists to gain traction in the wallet space.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Technology assessment

Platform architecture: An assessment of a vendor's platform architecture through
examination of the platform design approach, use of SOA principles, operating
system/database dependencies, integration approach, and adoption of standards.

Platform roadmap: An assessment of the range, innovation, and granularity of a vendor's
platform roadmap by assessing both the functional and technology developments planned for
the next 24 months.

Core functionality: An assessment of the breadth and depth of functionality to support
mobile wallet requirements, the ability to deploy functions on a standalone basis, and
compliance with standard transaction methods such as NFC and QR codes.

Multi-region support: An assessment of the international capabilities of a vendor's mobile
wallet platform, including the number of languages currently supported in live deployments,
support for non-Latin characters in the mobile wallet interface, and how multi-language
support is provided in the platform itself.

Platform configuration and integration: An assessment of the flexibility,
comprehensiveness, and ease with which product, process workflows, and system features
can be defined within a platform and how easily the platform can be integrated with other
services. Achieved by examining configuration toolsets, product group capability, the degree
to which configuration is performed by business users, modeling functionality, training needs,
and typical product implementation options and timescales.

Security and fraud: An assessment of a vendor’s approach to security and fraud detection
and prevention, incorporating both the security of the platform itself and compliance with
international standards, and any capabilities for fraud detection and prevention.
Figure 7: Vendors’ technology assessment by sub-criteria
Source: Ovum
From a technology perspective, all of the white-label mobile wallet platforms surveyed provide a solid
level of functionality. They are all focused on using future-proofed, modular SOA that is intended to
allow easy integration with third-party and back-office systems and a high degree of configuration
through the use of APIs, SDKs, and dedicated integration layers. The gap between these different
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
technology platforms is minimal. For potential wallet operators, this poses a particular challenge, as
there are no clear front-runners in the market yet, particularly as so many of these platforms are
relatively untested without further deployments.
Key to selecting a wallet platform, therefore, is a close inspection of delivery models and wallet
providers’ own plans for integration into their back-end systems. Some platforms, such as those of
FIS and Paydiant, remain primarily focused on the US market, due to their heavy integration directly
with regional payment switches and infrastructure through the platform itself. Other platforms, such as
those of Sequent and Toro, provide a more flexible payments-as-a-service model, providing the
mobile wallet as an infrastructure solution capable of enabling payments across functions and even
apps.
The technological gaps between these vendors will become more apparent when more platforms
have been deployed and are live in the market. However, for the time being, potential wallet operators
will need to assess their preferred deployment options early on as part of any vendor selection
process.
Execution assessment

Vendor support capability: An assessment of a vendor's capability to directly support clients
by examining the number of support staff, level of support, and location.

Partner network: An assessment of a vendor's partner network used to implement and
support payments clients. Assessment criteria include size and maturity of network, regional
coverage, formal partner certification and training, and the vendor's capabilities (including
breadth of service offering, geographic coverage, and presence in the mobile wallet platform
sector).

Large-scale deployment: An assessment of a platform's proven scalability by examining the
largest current deployments and the results of benchmark testing.

Multi-entity deployment: An assessment of a vendor's capability to support multi-entity
and/or multi-regional operation within a single platform instance, by examining current
deployments that operate in this way.

Deployment options: An assessment of a vendor’s ability to support a range of deployment
options, including, on-site, hosted, and software-as-a-service options, rated by the variety of
options on offer and in live deployments.

Training resources: An assessment of a vendor's capability to provide training to clients by
examining the number of dedicated training staff, their location, the range of training media
and formats used, and the range of courses offered.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 8: Vendors’ execution assessment by sub-criteria
Source: Ovum
The execution capabilities of the vendors surveyed here correlate with their overall size. Large-scale
vendors such as SAP, Accenture, and FIS have the highest levels of execution capability, largely due
to their extensive in-house resources, often via separate consulting and implementation arms, and
established partner networks. However, highlighting the potential for growth in the market, high-profile
startups in the wallet space such as Paydiant and Sequent have been able to develop their own, often
impressive partner networks in a short time span.
The scale of deployments is more mixed, with even larger players significantly ahead of smaller
start-ups. Smaller players such as Toro have quickly expanded to include tier-1 players in selected
markets, suggesting that even small-scale players have the capacity for large-scale deployments, but
the sustainability of this amid wider market growth remains to be seen.
The deployment options available for potential wallet operators are more mixed, with a combination of
on-site and hosted delivery models available from most vendors. However, given the early stage of
development of many of these platforms, a number of these deployment options remain untested in
the field. Ovum notes that although nearly all vendors reported the capability to support multi-entity
deployments on a pan-regional basis, only one, SAP, had actually seen its platform used in this way.
Vendor analysis
Accenture
Background
Accenture is one of the world’s largest professional services consulting firms active in management
consulting, technology services, and outsourcing, and it was formed as an offshoot of accounting firm
Anderson Consulting in 2001. The publicly listed company reported total revenues of $30bn in the
2014 financial year, and it employed over 300,000 staff across 120 offices worldwide. With a strong
marketing presence globally, Accenture is perhaps the only household name active in the mobile
wallet platform space.
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Alongside a range of activities within the financial services space, Accenture operates a dedicated
business group, Accenture Payment Services. This business unit is focused on business strategy,
technology, and operational efficiency in core payments, card payments, and digital payments, and it
includes a focus on transaction banking, compliance, risk, and operations.
Company structure
Accenture recently underwent a repositioning of its activities in the digital space. It formed its Digital
division in early 2014, which sits alongside its core Strategy, Technology, and Operations business
units. Accenture Digital was formed to integrate the firm’s digital marketing, mobility, and analytics
capabilities and offerings under one banner. Accenture Digital currently employs 28,000 staff, and the
company claims that this makes it the world’s largest provider of digital services.
Accenture’s Mobile Wallet Platform is part of the wider Accenture Mobility business unit, and it was
first launched in 2011. The capabilities of the platform have been built upon substantially since then,
both organically and through strategic investments and global alliances, particularly its alliance with
Apigee in 2014.
In 2014 Accenture also acquired part of Evopro group, which increased its industrial and
embedded-software capabilities. Other acquisitions include Acquity Group and Fjord in 2013.
Market impact assessment
Although initially launched in 2011, the Accenture Mobile Wallet platform is only of average size,
judged by the number of deployments that are live and in development today. However, its clients are
primarily tier-1 firms, which is unsurprising considering the reputation and considerable clout that
Accenture maintains globally. This represents a considerable base for further market growth as major
players move to solidify their broader wallet platform strategies.
The Accenture Mobile Wallet platform is a relatively small portion of Accenture’s services overall, so
the vendor scores lower than the market average for its overall wallet focus. However, given the sheer
scale of the organization, a small unit within Accenture remains substantially larger than many
competing platforms on the market today. Accenture’s renewed focus on the digital space and
formation of a digital unit highlights its broader focus on digital and mobile services, and suggests that
the Mobile Wallet platform will see continued support and development in the near term.
The Accenture Mobile Wallet platform remains predominantly aimed at tier-1 clients, and through
Accenture’s overall market stature it has rapidly developed a global presence. Although the number of
current live deployments is relatively low for a company of this scale, it is likely to increase in the near
term, and the Accenture Mobile Wallet platform will likely emerge as a major platform. It already has a
presence among major players in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and as more providers launch
wallet services, it is likely to see further growth.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 9: Accenture: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
Technology assessment
The Accenture Mobile Wallet platform is designed on a modular basis with a heavy focus on using
APIs to allow the easy integration of different functionalities between critical commerce, offers,
analytics, payment transaction systems, and so on, by employing the wallet as a service platform
using JSON, XML, WS SOAP, and RMI. Accenture’s alliance with Apigee, in particular, provides the
platform with strong application management capabilities. This heavy focus on API integration and
management means that the platform remains highly configurable by business users using open
source methodologies.
Critically, the wallet platform’s functions are grouped into independent and service-oriented modules.
This means that these functions can be easily plugged into the platform as required. This provides
scope for considerable configurability, while also allowing providers to adopt flexible deployment
strategies, which may initially focus on launching core functions before expanding capabilities through
additional value-added services.
The technology roadmap for the mobile wallet platform is strong, with further integration with
Accenture’s analytics capabilities planned via close integration with the Accenture Recommendation
Engine. This sits alongside detailed plans for further developments in the social media and targeted
offers space. Accenture is explicit in its design and marketing of the platform: it is intended to go
beyond purely payment transactions and serve as a broader mobile commerce platform.
The wallet has a high level of functionality and supports all of the standard wallet features, such as
NFC, QR codes, card vaulting, and couponing. From a business-user perspective, the wallet also
provides a potentially very high level of functionality through its integration with other Accenture
services and offerings, including the Accenture Customer Insight business intelligence solution.
Through its modular design, the wallet platform can also be integrated with other third-party and
in-house systems and services.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Although no multi-region deployments have yet gone live, the platform supports non-Latin character
sets, and it currently operates in a number of international markets. It also has multi-currency and
regulation configuration capabilities that can be enabled on a deployment-by-deployment basis.
The platform’s security and fraud detection and prevention capabilities are robust, and they include
integration with hardware security modules and the use of encryption protocols. However, the platform
scores slightly lower than competing offerings due to the fact that it is undergoing Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS) certification, meaning that in existing deployments, card
data has been hosted by another party. Once certified, the platform will be in line with the majority of
the market in this area.
Figure 10: Accenture: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
Unsurprisingly, given Accenture’s overall size and available resources, the company has a high level
of execution capabilities, and it offers a level of support that is among the highest in the market.
Although Accenture offers relatively little dedicated wallet support, it is able to draw upon its extensive
resources within the organization, and it operates second-line support centers in Italy and the
Philippines. Training for the platform is provided as part of the organization’s deployment and
transition services.
Accenture’s partner network is extensive, and it includes a variety of mobility partners including SAP,
Oracle, Cisco, Salesforce, Apple, and Samsung. In particular, its strategic partnerships with
mobility-specific software providers Crittercism and Kony and its alliance with Apigee have provided
additional capabilities in API and platform management.
Deployment options for the platform are also flexible: the platform is available both on-site and on a
hosted basis, with various configuration options available depending on local circumstances and
regulations. There are currently no live multi-entity deployments on the market covering multiple
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
regions and entities simultaneously, but the platform has the most extensive design and resource
capabilities to support these sorts of deployments.
Figure 11: Accenture: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: Accenture is a market leader
The capabilities of the Accenture Mobile Wallet platform are among the most extensive in the market
today, from both a technology and execution perspective, and its market impact is likely to expand
considerably in the near term. Despite being a relatively new platform, its capabilities and likely future
market impact highlight it as a market leader.
Critical to this is its focus on highly modular architecture, allowing for plug-and-play functionality
across a range of expanding capabilities. Its focus on API integration and management, via Apigee,
highlights a forward-thinking approach that will enable easy integration and configuration with wallet
providers’ broader infrastructure.
The Accenture Mobile Wallet platform is particularly strong when used in conjunction with other
Accenture services and platforms, notably its recommendation engine, and as part of a broader suite
of Accenture technologies and services. All of these functionalities come at a price, however, and the
Accenture Mobile Wallet platform is not particularly suited to smaller-scale wallet providers where
requirements may be more limited and budgets may be smaller. The strong technology and execution
capabilities underpinning the Accenture Mobile Wallet platform mean it should definitely be considered
by tier-1 wallet providers capable of launching a broader wallet ecosystem.
FIS
Background
US-based, publicly listed FIS is one of the world's largest providers of banking and payment
technology services, with revenues in excess of $6.1bn in 2013. It is a Fortune 500 company that
currently employs 39,000 full-time staff, and it is active globally.
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Founded in 1968 as banking technology provider Systematics, the company has changed
dramatically over the years through major mergers and acquisitions, including its acquisition by Alltell
Information Services. In 2003, insurance provider Fidelity National Financial acquired the financial
services arm of Alltell and renamed it Fidelity Information Services (FIS).
In development since 2010, the FIS Mobile Wallet platform was formally announced in 2012 and has
since been expanded to include Cardless Cash ATM functionality. Cardless Cash was subsequently
integrated into FIS Mobile Banking in 2014, and the company claims that this makes it the first wallet
to be tightly integrated with mobile banking.
Company structure
Overall, FIS offers over 350 products and services to the financial services sector, including
management of US payment networks New York Currency Exchange (NYCE) and PayNet alongside
a wide range of activities including card processing, government payment services, core processing,
and outsourced services.
The FIS Mobile Wallet platform is managed by the Financial Solutions Group (FSG) within FIS. This
unit is also responsible for mobile banking, retail core systems products, channel solutions, treasury,
cash management, and wealth management solutions.
FIS is a highly acquisitive organization. In 2013 it acquired mFoundry, a significant player in the
mobile banking and mobile payments space that worked on the launch of the Starbucks wallet (since
taken in house by Starbucks), and Clear2Pay. FIS also has a close partnership with Paydiant and
uses that platform’s APIs for its front-end layer.
Market impact assessment
FIS is one of the world’s largest financial technology providers, and this has helped it gain a solid
foothold in the mobile wallet space in the US market. It has deployed mobile wallet services for a
range of financial service providers and retailers in all tiers, not just tier 1. Its experience with the
Starbucks wallet via mFoundry in particular, which is arguably the world’s most successful proximity
payment wallet to date, is a strong calling card of its capabilities. It has some sizable existing
deployments, and they include both regional and national deployments in the US.
However, FIS’ presence is confined to the North American market for the time being, and it will need
to expand its international presence rapidly to help ensure its long-term positioning.
FIS’ focus on financial services and wide range of activities in the payments space mean that its
Mobile Wallet platform is an important product for the company, acting as a focal point for a number of
other products and services. This makes FIS one of the few providers analyzed here capable of
offering a full end-to-end mobile wallet and integrated payment service capability.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 12: FIS: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
Technology assessment
The FIS Mobile Wallet platform consists of a mobile app and a SDK, which interface with back-end
application and transaction services. The application services layer directly interfaces with existing
systems of record to display account data and services. Transaction services are in turn integrated
with various payment networks, loyalty networks, and ATM switches to enable payment processing
and cardless ATM withdrawals and other services. As the wallet platform connects directly with
payment switches, multi-region support may be harder to develop outside of the US, but once the
initial connections with regional switches are made, FIS will have a strong grounding for future
expansion and multi-region support.
The use of cloud-based payment vaulting is key to the wallet’s design, enabling the use of multiple
payment methods via the wallet and helping to improve security by not storing sensitive information
directly on the device. Communication between the handset applications and wallet server
applications is done via a set of RESTful APIs.
Ovum notes that the front-end layer of the mobile wallet is built using APIs from Paydiant, highlighting
the strong degree of synergy that currently exists in the mobile wallet platform space. Overall
functionality is of a high level, encompassing all key wallet functions including integration with loyalty
and analytics, and the platform is intended to serve as an ecosystem of services between merchants
and financial services providers. The roadmap for the FIS Mobile Wallet platform is detailed, with
planned additions including further development of HCE capabilities in line with MasterCard’s and
Visa’s specifications of the technology.
Configuration and integration is achieved using a framework based on FIS Mobile, whereby the
mobile wallet server integration layer supports the development of an adaptor to the issuer host
system. Previous integrations with issuers have included a variety of formats including SOAP, XML,
and ISO-8583.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
The security and fraud detection and prevention capabilities of the FIS Mobile Wallet platform are
particularly robust, through the use of cloud and tokenization technologies. They also use mobile
banking technologies, including both upper- and lower-level security approaches, and they comply
fully with PCI-DSS.
Figure 13: FIS: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
The level of vendor support for the FIS Mobile Wallet platform is very high, which is unsurprising given
the company’s high level of available resources. With a significant presence globally, the vendor’s
partner network is also strong: the company has relationships with numerous tier-1 system integrators
and other technology and industry partners.
Training is undertaken by a team of 10 full-time employees, and FIS offers its mobile clients an
eLearning training site, webinars, training courses, and client portals. This is alongside second-line
support centers based in San Francisco and Milwaukee in the US.
Multi-entity and multi-country deployments are possible on the wallet platform, and the direct
connection to payment switches via the wallet means it can serve as an enabling ecosystem platform
across a range of entities. The FIS Mobile Wallet platform is currently confined to the US market, but
given FIS’ global presence, further expansion is inevitable.
The wallet platform can be deployed both on-site and on a hosted basis. Most existing deployments
are hosted, given the platform’s reliance on cloud-vaulting of payment credentials.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 14: FIS: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: FIS is a market leader
The FIS Mobile Wallet platform provides a full-service end-to-end payment capability that is well
suited to a wide range of potential client institutions in both the financial services and retail spaces.
FIS’ broader focus on financial services and wealth of experience in complex banking and payments
infrastructure mean it is particularly well suited to banking and payment providers, and its execution
capabilities are of an extremely high level.
By providing integration with back-end services and direct connections to payment processing
infrastructure, the FIS Mobile Wallet provides a flexible means for potential providers to launch wallet
services relatively easily, with much of the complexity and additional functionality handled directly by
FIS on a hosted basis. Ovum believes that this hosting capability, coming from an experienced
provider, will be particularly critical for many financial institutions.
The FIS Mobile Wallet is available for all markets, but it is currently deployed only in the US. FIS’
global presence means it has ample capabilities to expand its wallet presence relatively quickly, and
once it does so it will be a potentially major player for wallet providers globally. As such, it should be
strongly considered as part of any white-label mobile wallet sourcing exercise.
Mahindra Comviva
Background
Mahindra Comviva is a subsidiary of Indian IT services provider Tech Mahindra, and specializes in
providing mobility solutions to telcos, financial service providers, and retailers. Parent company Tech
Mahindra is one of the largest IT services providers in India, with 92,729 employees in 51 markets,
and it reported revenues of $3.1bn in 2013. Tech Mahindra offers a wide range of IT, networking, and
business process outsourcing (BPO) services to a range of industries, including telecoms,
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
manufacturing, aerospace, defense, engineering, banking, media, governance, healthcare, travel,
logistics, retail, energy, and pharmaceuticals.
Founded in 1999, Mahindra Comviva specializes in mobile financial solutions. It currently employs
1,350 staff, and it reported revenues of $97m in the 2013 fiscal year. In addition to its Indian
headquarters in Gurgaon, it operates 16 regional offices globally. To date, Mahindra Comviva has
primarily grown organically rather than via acquisitions, but given the scale of Tech Mahindra, future
acquisitions are a strong possibility.
Company structure
Mahindra Comviva manages its mobiquity Wallet directly. Key products in Mahindra Comviva’s
portfolio include: mobiquity, its mobile transaction platform, which includes the mobiquityWallet for
mature payment markets and mobiquityMoney, a mobile money solution for emerging markets;
payPLUS, a mobile POS (mPOS) platform; and PreTUPS, its prepaid recharge solution.
Market impact assessment
The mobiquityWallet was launched in 1Q2014, so it is a new entrant in the mobile wallet space.
However, it builds on the more established presence of the broader mobiquityplatform and Mahindra
Comviva’s presence in the mobile financial services space. In light of its very recent entry, its impact is
fairly limited and its deployments are relatively small, but this is likely to change rapidly in the near
term as further deployments occur, particularly in regions with high mobile payment potential including
Asia-Pacific. The company has a strong focus on global expansion and is actively pursuing prospects
in mature markets with its mobile wallet and mobile POS offering.
The mobiquityWallet is one aspect of the broader suite of products available from Mahindra Comviva,
and it is aimed primarily at mature markets, while mobiquityMoney is aimed at emerging regions. The
company does, however, retain a focus on mobile financial services, and mobiquity, in both its Wallet
and Money forms, remains its flagship product, so overall support for its wider growth will remain high.
Mahindra already has a proven track record in the mobile financial services space, and this is likely to
have a strong impact on the mobiquityWallet and help it to increase its market impact in the near term.
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Figure 15: Mahindra Comviva: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
Technology assessment
Mahindra Comviva’s mobiquity Wallet is architected with a modular open services design, with a focus
on providing the ability to interface with third-party systems and back-office infrastructure via an
integration abstraction layer, to allow for greater flexibility and easy integration of the platform. This is
largely based on a service creation framework, which allows for the rapid creation of customized
service flows by using predefined service actions. This means that the platform is highly scalable and
can be rapidly adapted to meet the individual requirements of wallet operators. The roadmap for the
mobiquityWallet is robust, with additional support for new features and services including support for
wearables such as Google Glass and BLE technologies.
The mobiquityWallet has a very high level of functionality, with support for all the core transaction
methods such as NFC – SE and HCE, BLE, biometrics, and QR codes. It can be used for
non-payment use cases such as loyalty and identity management, either in app or as a wraparound
for third-party services. Unlike many of its competitors, the platform is currently HCE-ready and has a
strong focus on security, including support for hardware security modules (HSM) and tokenization. It
offers multi-region support, supports double-byte-encoded character sets and multi-tenancy, and it
can share deployed infrastructure across multiple financial service providers.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 16: Mahindra Comviva: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
Although a subsidiary of a much larger organization, Mahindra Comviva is a large player in the mobile
financial services space in its own right, and unsurprisingly has sufficiently good resources to give it a
strong execution capability. Although the mobiquityWallet itself is a new platform with relatively few
deployments, the company has nearly 15 years’ experience in the broader mobile financial services
space, with 65 deployments undertaken to date. Deployments of the wallet have so far been limited to
a single region, but the company has the resources in place to extend this capability quickly.
Mahindra Comviva’s direct partnership network is relatively limited compared to some of its larger
competitors, as most deployments are undertaken in-house, on either an on-site build-out basis or a
hosted basis. However, it does have partnerships with key players such as MasterCard and other
major payment bodies.
Mahindra Comviva currently has a 15-person training team for both technical and functional
personnel, which provides training for technical and functional staff both on client premises and in the
classroom, including “train the trainer” programs. The company also has an India-based support
center operated by 50 staff, providing third- to first-level support in English, French, Spanish, and
Portuguese.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 17: Mahindra Comviva: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: Mahindra Comviva is a market challenger
The Mahindra Comviva mobiquityWallet is a strong platform with a high level of flexibility that would
be well suited for most markets. The company’s activity in the mobile wallet space in mature markets
is fairly limited, but this should not detract from its longer-term potential. Historically, it has been
largely focused on emerging payment markets, and it has developed a high number of users across
many of its other products, particularly for prepaid reload and mobile money. In many instances, these
product platforms are operating across complex infrastructures with large numbers of users. This
suggests that Mahindra’s experience will prove beneficial in helping it develop its service-oriented
platform further in mature payment markets, and it should therefore be seriously considered by
potential wallet operators. With further live deployments, Mahindra Comviva has strong potential to
emerge as a market leader.
Paydiant
Background
Paydiant is a Massachusetts-based start-up that was launched in 2010 and focuses exclusively on its
mobile wallet platform. Since its launch, the company has gone through three rounds of Series A to C
venture capital funding, raising approximately $42m. Major investors include North Bridge Venture
Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Stage 1 Ventures. The company is currently active
exclusively in the US market.
Company structure
As a start-up venture, Paydiant is exclusively focused on its core wallet platform.
Market impact assessment
Despite Paydiant being a relatively small company of about 75 employees, its mobile wallet platform
is in fact one of the more established products in the market, having quickly gained a strong position
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through product launches with major retailers and institutions. This includes partnerships with
Subway, Barclaycard, Capital One, Pulse, and the MCX wallet, which was recently renamed
CurrentC. Paydiant’s platform is also resold through major partners, including FIS (where it provides
the front end API for FIS’ own wallet service), Diebold, Discover, and Vantiv. However, Paydiant is
currently active exclusively in the US market, limiting its overall global presence, although its influence
is widespread. The company attributes much of its growth to the fact that it was among the first purely
white-label mobile wallet providers on the market that was not focused on disintermediating other
players.
With its mobile wallet platform being its sole product, the company’s wallet focus is very high
compared to some of its larger competitors. Platform growth is also strong, with major launches from
CurrentC and others due in 2015. Its deployments are broad in scale, with major branded retailer
programs reaching several million consumers, in some instances.
Figure 18: Paydiant: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
Technology assessment
Paydiant’s mobile wallet is a cloud-based white-label platform built using modular architecture. Most
of the platform’s functionality is exposed through a set of APIs and SDKs, allowing wallet operators to
have a high degree of control over the platform. This means that clients are able to integrate wallet
functionality such as payment, offer management, and loyalty functions with existing mobile
applications.
This architecture is built around three front-end components – a POS gateway, a mobile gateway, and
a customer portal – and six back-end components including a security manager, an entity manager, a
mobile checkout manager, a payment account manager, a secure keystore manager, and payment
processor components. Alongside these are two additional back-end components – payment
processor connectors and loyalty platform connectors – both of which provide many preconfigured
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interfaces or “connectors” to enable direct connections with back-end systems such as payment
processors, gift card platforms, and private-label card platforms.
Although connections to payment processors and loyalty providers that are already integrated with
Paydiant are relatively easy, connecting to non-certified service providers will require the creation of
connectors between these third-party providers and Paydiant. This can be achieved via published
APIs and SDKS. Product configuration can be done by business users, by defining a variety of
different policies to suit their needs without the need to custom-code the platform. The platform
roadmap for Paydiant’s mobile wallet is strong, with plans to shift support for NFC/HCE and BLE from
pilot phase into full production.
Multi-region support is untested with Paydiant, as the platform is exclusive to the US market.
However, the platform’s connector-based modular design for integration with third-party platforms
means that it should be relatively easy to implement for multi-region capabilities.
As Paydiant’s platform leverages issuers’ existing payment processing services, existing fraud
detection and “Know Your Customer” (KYC) mechanisms are used. The company also undertakes
robust security testing of the platform both internally and externally through third-party security
providers.
Figure 19: Paydiant: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
As Paydiant is a relatively small company, its direct vendor support capability is limited compared to
many of its larger competitors. However, the company provides a mixture of on-site implementation,
installation, and training services alongside training documentation, and preparation and delivery
training for staff, managers, and acceptance-point staff. This training is divided into three core
components: end user, acceptance location, and developer.
Paydiant’s partner network consists of major key players within the US payments space (e.g. FIS and
Vantiv), which, in many instances, operate as resellers able to provide additional support and
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
implementation capabilities. Paydiant’s platform is only delivered on a platform-as-a-service basis,
which may limit its suitability for some potential wallet operators that may be sensitive about storing
their data in a cloud-based infrastructure.
Figure 20: Paydiant: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: Paydiant is a market challenger
Despite being a relatively small start-up, Paydiant is one of the most widely deployed white-label
mobile wallet platforms available on the US market today, across both the banking and retail sectors.
Its focus on cloud-based modular architecture and use of connectors to connect to third-party
infrastructure means that it is capable of meeting most wallet needs, and it is experienced at
introducing wallet-like capabilities to existing mobile applications. However, the company remains
exclusively US-focused, and its focus on platform-as-a-service delivery models means that it is likely
to remain a US-centric platform in the near term and will therefore not be relevant for the global
market for some time yet. Despite this, Paydiant is a relevant case study of mobile wallet development
that can provide useful lessons to other regions.
Paydiant is a strong market challenger, and should be strongly considered by enterprises where
possible. If Paydiant can successfully scale up its market positioning to a global level, it has very
strong potential to emerge as a global market leader.
SAP
Background
Germany-based SAP is one of the world’s largest providers of enterprise software. It has a heavy
focus on enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business warehouse systems, alongside customer
relationship management (CRM), supplier relationship management (SRM), human capital
management (HCM) and other enterprise-targeted solutions across all vertical market segments. The
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publicly listed company reported turnover of €16.8bn in 2013, and it employs 68,835 staff globally with
a direct presence in 130 countries.
Recent major developments at SAP include the development of SAP HANA, an in-memory computing
platform that is deployable as an on-premise appliance or via the cloud, and the acquisition of Sybase
in 2010 for $5.8bn, which greatly expanded SAP’s capabilities in the mobile technology space in
particular.
Company structure
The SAP Mobile Consumer Payments solution is managed as part of the company’s broader financial
services and omnichannel banking portfolio. This offering was first launched in 2001 as part of the
Sybase 365 Mobiliser platform, and has since evolved to include full wallet capabilities via the SAP
Mobile Platform, consumer edition. Other solutions in this portfolio include SAP Mobile and Online
Banking, SAP Mobile Inclusive Banking, SAP Mobile TopUp, SAP Mobile Remittance, SAP Customer
Loyalty, and SAP Shopper Experience.
Market impact assessment
SAP Mobile Platform, consumer edition is the most widely deployed wallet platform of any of the
products reviewed in this report. It currently has over 40 deployments globally, mostly in the banking
space but also with third-party payment providers, telecoms operators, and retailers. It has
deployments in all major geographic regions and several very large deployments in emerging
payment markets such as Pakistan and Indonesia. SAP’s wallet client base, however, remains largely
focused on tier-1 and tier-2 players. Given SAP’s broader portfolio, the mobile wallet platform is a
relatively small product for the company, but as with many of the larger wallet platform providers on
the market, even as a small unit, SAP Mobile Platform commands considerable resources.
Figure 21: SAP: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Technology assessment
SAP’s mobile wallet solution is designed using SOAP and SOA principles, and it has been built using
SAP Mobile Platform, consumer edition. The SAP Mobile Platform, consumer edition architecture is
based on Model View Controller design patterns, with facades providing standard interfaces with the
business services for client-side applications. This allows for the separation of the presentation and
business logic layer, allowing for a modular approach in terms of increasing device compatibility and
front-end channels as well as back-end processing functionality. The platform is 100% Java-based.
Functionality on the platform is of a high standard, much like the competing platforms on the market,
and includes the standard technologies such as QR codes, NFC, and BLE. Some features, however,
such as loyalty, are not included as standard in the platform, and can be added as extra modules.
Unlike many competing wallets, nearly all of SAP’s mobile wallet functions have already been
deployed in live wallet programs.
The configuration and integration capabilities of SAP’s mobile wallet platform are capable of meeting
most wallet operators’ needs, with business users, in many instances, capable of enacting changes
directly, without the need for IT or vendor support. The platform has a high level of multi-country
support, and it supports both multi-currency and multi-tenant configurations. SAP’s wallet platform is
the only one surveyed by Ovum to have a live instance of a multi-country deployment.
Figure 22: SAP: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
The execution capabilities of SAP’s mobile wallet platform are of an extremely high level compared to
the broader market, with a large resource pool of dedicated wallet staff focused on implementations
alongside the broader SAP resource base. This includes support-center staff globally, who can
provide first-, second-, and third-level support in many languages, including German, English, and
Chinese. SAP’s partner network includes some of the largest IT services providers in the world,
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
including Accenture, IBM, and Wipro, all of which are capable of offering support on any wallet
implementation globally.
In terms of training resources, SAP operates a global network of trainers across the organization,
including a team dedicated solely to the mobile wallet platform. This includes regular scheduled
training globally and the presence of certified trainers during on-site implementation. This training
includes operating the platform, configuration, and development training.
The wallet platform can be deployed on both on-site or on a hosted basis; 95% of implementations
today are done on-site.
Figure 23: SAP: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: SAP is a market leader
SAP’s mobile wallet platform is the most tried and tested product available in the white-label mobile
wallet space, so it is a clear market leader. SAP’s track record of successful large-scale deployments
globally, including for large financial institutions, positions it well for existing financial service
providers, and it should be strongly considered as part of any white-label mobile wallet vendor
sourcing exercise.
With large-scale deployments in regions with complex payments infrastructure, SAP is primarily suited
to larger tier-1 and tier-2 wallet operators, particularly in the financial services space, where on-site
deployments may be more beneficial. The platform is capable of being deployed on a hosted basis,
but this may lack the ease of implementation seen with broader platform-as-a-service delivery models,
particularly for smaller organizations. Nonetheless, SAP remains a major mobile wallet platform
provider and should be considered by tier-1 and tier-2 institutions.
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Sequent
Background
Founded in 2010, Sequent is a California-based start-up focused on its Open Wallet Platform, Digital
Issuance, and Trust Authority services. The company has undergone two funding rounds, and its key
investors include SK Telecom, Opus Capital, Jado, and SBT Venture Capital (which is backed by
Sberbank).
Sequent’s products are aimed at a variety of markets, including banks, retailers, telecoms providers,
and transport and access control providers. Its Digital Issuance service allows for HCE cloud-based or
SE-based provisioning of payment credentials to mobile devices, while its Trust Authority is focused
on SE and application management services for managing security credentials on devices.
In 2013, Sequent acquired the software operation of US-based Vivotech, a specialist provider of
contactless and NFC readers and software, after it went into administration. This provided Sequent
with enhanced trusted service manager (TSM) capabilities.
Company structure
As a start-up player, Sequent handles all of its products directly.
Market impact assessment
Although it is not a large company compared to some of its competitors in the wallet space, Sequent
has made considerable progress globally in terms of the number and regional scope of its
deployments. It has launched its wallet platform in Europe, North America, and Asia, including for
some high-profile players in the banking and telecoms sectors including CIBC, Sprint, Sberbank, and
Rogers Telecoms, with several large-scale national deployments.
As a start-up mobile payments specialist, Sequent remains focused on the mobile wallet space, and
although it does offer additional services alongside its Open Wallet Platform, these are
complementary. The platform shows positive growth, with several deployments currently in
development, and Sequent’s high-profile client base is likely to lead to further growth. In particular, its
capabilities in and focus on enabling payments in other applications, including mobile banking, gives it
a forward-thinking approach that is likely to drive significant interest and growth in the near term, as
providers move away from a one-size-fits-all wallet approach.
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Figure 24: Sequent: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
Technology assessment
Unlike most other white-label mobile wallet platforms on the market today, Sequent operates with a
purely platform-as-a-service delivery model. This is focused not only on providing wallet functionalities
in a dedicated wallet application on a mobile device, but also on adding wallet functions to existing
mobile applications, aggregator wallets, mobile network operator (MNO) wallets, mobile banking
wallets, and merchant wallets.
This is achieved through the use of APIs and on-device middleware, Core Card Services (CCS), and
a wallet platform abstraction layer. Apps can therefore share access to secure payment credentials via
the SE or using HCE tokens. CCS subsequently abstracts all communication to back-end systems,
securing payment credentials while also allowing for the inclusion of additional value-added services.
The use of on-device middleware, abstracting payments from the app itself, means that the platform is
flexible for future developments in mobile payments; it provides a high degree of future-proofing and
functionality. The use of cloud-based wallet management servers means that Sequent’s Open Wallet
Platform provides a flexible mechanism to deploy wallet functionality as a service to a host of potential
app providers, enabling a high degree of innovation in the payment space.
With such a focus on APIs and cloud enablement, the platform’s level of functionality is
understandably high, with all core wallet functions supported, while use of the SE via the SE chip or
HCE gives it a high level of security. Sequent holds several key patents, including one for multi-card
single tap transactions, which is aimed at improving the customer experience at the POS, and one for
the ability to add wallet functionality to other applications securely.
Sequent has a strong roadmap for its Open Wallet Platform. Given the vendor’s focus on being an
open platform for developers and with its growing numbers of partnerships, the capabilities of the
platform will grow in the near term.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 25: Sequent: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
With 65 staff and a direct office presence in the US, Canada, the UK, and Spain, Sequent offers
global support. However, it offers less support than some of its larger competitors, and its partner
networks remain understandably less developed for an organization that has been on the market for
less than five years. That said, the company has formed key partnerships in recent years, including
with US-based CPI Card Group and Swiss group Trub. The partnership with CPI in particular is likely
to have a wide reach through the CPIMobile platform, which enables the issuance of secure
credentials to SE- or HCE-based NFC services. This includes the ability to incorporate this
functionality in other apps, such as mobile banking services.
These partnerships have helped Sequent to expand its execution capabilities. Sequent has already
successfully deployed large-scale wallets for major providers, and although it is not a global
tier-1-sized organization, it has already demonstrated its ability with successful product launches in
major markets.
With a purely platform-as-a-service delivery model, Sequent’s Open Wallet Platform may be less
suitable for organizations that require on-site deployment due to regulatory or data concerns,
particularly within the financial services space, where many may not be ready for this approach.
However, its model presents a unique opportunity to deploy mobile wallet functionality efficiently, and
Ovum believes that much of the financial services market will soon catch up.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Figure 26: Sequent: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: Sequent is a market challenger
Sequent’s Open Wallet Platform represents a more nuanced approach to the mobile wallet market – a
more progressive approach than the “one wallet to rule them all” model that has been the stated aim
of many potential wallet providers in the past. Although not a tier-1 technology vendor, Sequent is
arguably one of the most advanced and successful start-ups in the mobile wallet space, and it
maintains a forward-looking strategy that is likely to have a significant impact in the near term.
Sequent can provide banks, in particular, with an opportunity to place themselves at the center of a
broader mobile payment ecosystem, avoiding disintermediation while helping to spread the use of
their cards on app-based channels. Sequent’s platform-as-a-service model may cause challenges for
some banks that may prefer on-site deployment, however it also provides a high level of flexibility.
Sequent represents the next wave of development in the mobile wallet space, so its platform should
be seriously considered by any potential wallet operator globally.
Toro
Background
Founded in 2007 in Taiwan, Toro is purely focused on its mobile wallet infrastructure platform. It is
primarily focused on the European and Asia-Pacific regions, with a direct presence in France, Spain,
and Taiwan. The company’s core product is Akami Wallet, a mobile wallet, and associated services
include the Akami app store, Akami business intelligence, and Akami marketing platforms. The
company has not made any acquisitions, but grown organically.
Unlike many other white-label mobile wallet platforms on the market today, the Akami mobile wallet
platform is positioned as an infrastructure solution for telcos, banks, and retailers, which enables
wallet functionality via apps and widgets, creating an open ecosystem rather than a walled garden.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Company structure
Toro is focused exclusively on its mobile wallet platform Akami.
Market impact assessment
Toro is a relatively niche, small-scale player that has developed into an established player in the
white-label mobile wallet space, with some of its deployments having been live for several years.
These include a combination of wallet trials and full live deployments, with a particular emphasis on
telecoms providers and the European market. Toro has also deployed systems directly for banks, and
the open-ecosystem design of its wallet means that it is intended to work across potential provider
types.
Most deployments to date have been moderately sized, albeit with large tier-1 players in line with their
broader wallet rollout strategies, and they include projects with T-Mobile Poland and Credit Mutuel in
France. In late 2014 Toro launched the Valyou wallet in Norway, which was joined by 65% of retail
banks, with Finland, Denmark, and Sweden set to follow in 2015 and 2016. As a cross-provider open
wallet, Valyou is expected to increase its functionality and active participants significantly in the near
term.
Toro has a very high level of wallet focus, as it is solely focused on its core Akami wallet platform and
associated services. The brand’s growth has been steady, but being a smaller company that is
predominantly active in the European and Asian markets, it has not been able to benefit from its
broader brand reputation or the high levels of growth experienced by the North American market. With
greater visibility, however, Toro is poised for further expansion.
Figure 27: Toro: market impact assessment
Source: Ovum
Technology assessment
Toro’s Akami wallet platform is designed to operate as wallet infrastructure rather than a dedicated
app, and it is therefore architected around virtual machine and transaction terminal layers. It can then
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
connect to a widget lifecycle management platform and a communication interface via the cloud. This
means that the wallet, operating a virtual machine, is able to solve mobile fragmentation issues,
greatly enhancing scalability while providing added flexibility for providers to customize the user
experience, including on the fly. Through widgets in Akami, third parties including merchants can then
access secure applications on the SE via the wallet itself. This creates the mechanism to enable a
broader ecosystem and provide a full mobile payment ecosystem.
The overall functionality of the Akami platform is of a high standard, but much of it is achievable
primarily through third-party widgets rather than directly via the platform itself. Integration and
configuration capabilities are also of a high level, through a combination of a separate integration
layer within Akami and the use of APIs, SDKs, and so on, with third-party widgets managed by Toro’s
wallet manager server. To date, all deployments have been single-region domestic deployments.
Toro’s security and fraud detection and prevention functionality is robust, but primarily handled by its
TSM providers rather than directly in the platform. Akami is fully Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV)
certified.
Figure 28: Toro: technology assessment
Source: Ovum
Execution assessment
As a small player compared to several of its competitors, Toro has a lower level of vendor support
capabilities than some others in the market. Despite this, the company already has working
relationships and live deployments with major providers, including Telenor Group and DNB Bank in
Norway and T-Mobile in Poland, suggesting that it is able to focus its resources to meet large players’
requirements.
Toro has also formed partnerships with major providers for TSM services including Gemalto and
Morpho, and it provides dedicated training including certified developer and certified trainer programs.
Although the Akami wallet is designed to serve as wallet infrastructure rather than an app, the
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
platform provides a range of deployment options including on-site and hosted by Toro or third parties.
With one full-time trainer, its training resources are fairly limited,
Figure 29: Toro: execution assessment
Source: Ovum
Recommendation: Toro is a market challenger
Although it is a less well-known player in the white-label mobile wallet space, Toro’s Akami platform
offers a unique proposition that is worth serious consideration in any wallet platform selection process.
Its virtual machine and widget-based architectural approach offers wallet operators a means to
provide an open wallet ecosystem and an extensive range of potential functions and services while
maintaining a position at the center of the broader ecosystem. Such a model is particularly
advantageous in markets where the wallet ecosystem remains relatively underdeveloped; Akami
could provide a considerable first-mover advantage.
However, the platform may struggle more in regions where the ecosystem is more crowded, as
operators will need a sizable market presence to garner the attention of third-party widget developers
to help extend wallet functionality. Despite this, Toro is a tried-and-tested product in numerous
markets. It has the potential for further expansion in the near term and, as such, is a rising market
challenger.
Appendix 1
Vendor scores
Table 2: Market impact scores
Sub-criteria
Accenture
Mobile wallet
market
presence
Platform market
growth
Vendor scale
Scale of wallet
deployments
Wallet focus
Overall market
impact score
4.4
6.0
8.0
5.6
4.4
5.2
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
FIS
4.5
5.3
7.2
5.9
4.1
5.4
Mahindra
Comviva
3.6
4.7
6.2
3.8
4.8
4.6
Paydiant
5.2
5.6
5.2
6.4
7.6
6.0
SAP
6.9
7.1
7.6
8.9
4.3
6.9
Sequent
4.5
6.1
5.4
5.5
7.5
5.8
Toro
4.1
4.4
4.9
4.4
7.0
4.5
Source: Ovum
Table 3: Technology scores
Sub-criteria
Platform
architecture
Platform
roadmap
Functionality
Multi-region
Platform
Security and
support
configuration
fraud
and
integration
Overall
technology
assessment
score
Accenture
8.4
8.0
5.1
6.5
6.0
6.6
6.4
FIS
7.7
6.0
4.6
4.3
6.1
8.0
5.6
Mahindra
Comviva
7.4
6.0
4.4
5.1
5.5
8.3
5.5
Paydiant
8.1
7.5
4.5
4.2
5.7
7.7
5.3
SAP
6.6
6.0
4.6
8.2
5.6
6.6
4.9
Sequent
8.1
7.0
5.0
4.3
6.0
7.1
6.0
Toro
8.2
6.5
4.1
4.7
6.7
6.7
5.9
Vendor
support
capability
Partner
network
Large-scale
deployment
Multi-entity
deployment
Deployment
options
Training
resources
Overall
execution
assessment
score
Accenture
8.3
7.6
5.5
5.1
7.6
9.5
6.7
FIS
7.1
7.8
5.5
5.6
7.1
8.2
6.6
Mahindra
Comviva
5.8
6.0
6.0
4.5
6.4
7.8
5.6
Paydiant
4.8
8.4
6.0
3.8
6.1
7.2
5.9
SAP
8.5
8.8
8.8
8.3
6.4
8.3
8.3
Sequent
6.4
7.5
5.0
3.6
6.4
6.7
5.7
Toro
4.0
6.4
4.0
3.1
7.0
5.4
4.9
Source: Ovum
Table 4: Execution scores
Sub-criteria
Source: Ovum
Appendix 2
Further reading
Loyalty and Location Based Payment Services, IT0003-000614 (July 2014)
© 2014 Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a White-label Mobile Wallet Platform
Assessing the Long-Term impact of mPOS on the Payments Market, IT003-000604 (February 2014)
Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting and Electronic Retail Payment Switch Platform, IT003-000602
(January 2014)
The Strategic Implications of Mobile on the Payments Market, IT003-000574 (September 2013)
On the Radar: Vocalink, IT003-000606 (February 2014)
On the Radar: Braintree, IT0003-000622 (September 2014)
Author
Gilles Ubaghs, Senior Analyst, Financial Services Technology
gilles.ubaghs@ovum.com
Ovum Consulting
We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you
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about Ovum’s consulting capabilities, please contact us directly at consulting@ovum.com.
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