Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
If you live in the U.S., “social payments” is relegated to Venmo and its emoji-powered money transfers.
But compare that relatively thin offering to China’s WeChat, the do-everything messaging app that is the cornerstone of Chinese digital life. WeChat lets users execute peer-to-peer payments, top up their mobile phones, pay utility bills and book plane, train and movie tickets or book a karaoke session – to name just a few things. If China is any indication, social networks and messaging services could be killer apps for money transfer; WeChat is already leading that movement.
“WeChat is kind of a de facto operating system and has massive, massive usage,” said Sean Neville, cofounder and president of bitcoin wallet turned social payments app Circle. “There isn’t anything quite like that in the West.”
Just yet. But when WeChat, or a WeChat-like clone, finally hits the U.S., it’s going to look different. There’s more competition in the U.S., so there will probably be a few players as opposed to one “winner.” And although the U.S. payments system desperately needs an upgrade – sending payments is excruciatingly slow and expensive – it works well enough; how much U.S. customers benefit from paying in new ways with new technologies doesn’t yet outweigh trained behaviors that don’t want to change.
More in Marketing
Yahoo pauses IAB membership amid a series of quiet cost-saving measures
Yahoo pulls IAB board memberships, following job cuts as PE-owner reportedly reconsiders ad tech investments.
Target looks to e-commerce, advertising investments to help grow the business
Technology is one of the most important areas in which Target will invest with the hopes of returning to profit growth.
‘The conversation has shifted’: The CFO moved upstream. Now agencies have to as well
One interesting side effect of marketing coming under greater scrutiny in the boardroom: CFOs are working more closely with agencies than ever before.