Visa announced today that RBS will be the first UK financial institution to launch the V.me by Visa digital wallet for RBS and NatWest consumers.
A V.me trial is already underway in the UK for Visa’s PayPal competitor, with a full roll out scheduled for Spring 2013. The V.me by Visa payment experience enables consumers to complete online transactions without having to enter their personal details or card number every time they make a purchase. They simply enter their email address and password and confirm the payment.
When paying with V.me you can select which of the cards you’ve pre-registered with V.me that you’d like to use for that particular payment. You can even register non-Visa cards with the service.
Will you offer V.me on your website?
The big question however isn’t whether consumers will sign up to V.me, it’s whether you will add V.me to your website as an available payment method. Currently the V.me website simply states “We will have straightforward pricing, so you’ll know exactly how much you are paying.” More importantly though, how many payment methods do you want on your website?
You probably already have a standard checkout flow. You may accept PayPal or still have the Google Wallet badge or offer Nochex in the forlorn hope that one day consumers will start using them. Would you remove an existing payment method or simply add another but how many payment options is too many payment options?
V.me does have the potential to start stealing some of PayPal’s business, and PayPal really need to get the PayPal Here launched and fully up and running in the UK as fast as possible. The longer they delay the more likely that consumers will sign up to competitors and I don’t know about you, but personally I only want one digital wallet and if it’s not PayPal it’ll be someone else.
