Visa will be launching a “digital wallet” service called V.me in direct competition to PayPal early in 2012, according to industry sources.
A beta was launched this week and the full service will roll out in the new year. The service is extremely similar to PayPal at first glance and Visa will be targeting ecommerce at launch. With V.me, users have an account accessed by a username and password. The account can be topped up by various sources such as credit or debit card or bank account and there will be no need to type in a card details each time of use.
To accelerate adoption of V.me, Visa has also launched a developer programme that includes the company’s other properties Authorize.Net, CyberSource, Fundamo and PlaySpan. It is hope this will encourage retailers and developers to develop services, especially to power mobile commerce.
This is certainly an interesting development and one that could be start of a serious challenge to PayPal’s long held dominance in the online payments market. It’s slightly surprising that Visa have sought to brand it as V.me, not least because that’s not a very engaging brand and also because Visa itself is a very clear and trusted brand in itself already.
There is no word on what V.me will cost to retailers and ecommerce SMEs. There is also no detail as to whether it will be accepted on eBay or Amazon although it seems unlikely.
13 Responses
This is good news as if their is a security issue with one company, you can have an alternative payment method to ease customer worries.
Also nearly every credit or debit card has the visa logo on it so if I was Paypal I would be very worried. As soon as EKM offer this service on there platform I’ll be offering the service on my website.
eBay and Paypal offer an intertwined buyer protection scheme and neither can loose.
Can you imagine ebay offering the same buyer protection if online payments are made through a non affiliate?
What Visa need to do for V.me to really take off BIG time is to launch a marketplace auction site competitor to ebay and make it a condition of listing in the marketplace that sellers must offer V.me as the only online payment method.
If fees are 50% of those charged by ebay then the V.me marketplace could quickly take off.
And there is the worldwide marketing power of Visa to back it up.
get real Visa are doing this for Visa not out of concern for others
we rig and abuse and manipulate our business why should ebay be different
their headquarters is in San Jose CA not the VATICAN
if I were as obessed with ebay as much as this chris guy is with me ,I would be seeking therapy
competition is always welcome to merchants and users like us as it leads to better service, rates and easier conditions and hassles for us !!!!
hope it comes soon and is successful
regds gizmobhai