Mobey Forum, the global industry association empowering banks to shape the future of digital financial services, has launched a Digital Wallet Expert Group to help financial institutions explore emerging wallet use-cases and assess their strategic options for commercial participation as the ecosystem evolves beyond payment-oriented use cases.

The Digital Wallet Expert Group brings together expert practitioners from Mobey Forum member organisations to analyse how banks can establish optimal strategic positions in the diversifying market for digital wallet applications. By assessing consumer trends, market and technological developments, and key points of influence and control within the ecosystem, the Expert Group will help banks expand their role in the digital economy to offer trust-based services that move beyond payments.  

The launch of the new group marks the latest initiative by Mobey Forum to equip financial institutions with the requisite knowledge of how best to leverage digital technologies as they evolve their portfolio of products and services.

In 2012 and 2013, Mobey Forum’s Mobile Wallet Working Group published a series of milestone whitepapers identifying competitive ‘control points’ in the mobile wallet ecosystem, dominance over which would commercially entrench specific stakeholder groups, including banks, in the creation and delivery of the technology and its supporting infrastructure to end users. A decade on, the digital wallet is not only pervasive but is again evolving to serve a variety of new use cases, including as a vehicle for digital identity. 

“As more consumers rely on digital wallets to store everything from plane tickets to identity credentials, it’s clear that banks have an important role to play in the growth and evolution of the ecosystem,” comments Elina Mattila, Executive Director, Mobey Forum. “Our Expert Group aims to help banks build on their strong positions of trust to establish prominent roles in the development of the infrastructure that supports digital assets, identification and trust services, open banking, and embedded finance.”

The work of the Digital Wallet Expert Group will also build on a recent report from Mobey Forum’s Digital Identity Expert Group which evaluated how financial institutions can stake out their role in the burgeoning digital identity ecosystem.

Kristian Sorensen from Norfico, Marina Repo from Nordea, and Cedric Sieber from PostFinance will chair the new group. Marina Repo comments: “Market developments have brought digital wallets back to the very centre of all financial players’ strategies. The new Expert Group will help all banks, together with those stakeholders engaged with them, to determine the best course forward, with the collaborative goal of ensuring that new digital wallet offerings evolve to deliver maximum value for the customers they collectively serve.”

Mobey Forum welcomes engagement from banks and related stakeholders interested in advancing the evolution of the digital wallet ecosystem through commercially neutral collaboration.