JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other 4 US banks will team up to launch a digital wallet that will allow shoppers to pay at merchants’ online checkout with a wallet that will be linked to their debit and credit cards.

VC.ru reports that The Wall Street Journal writes about it citing its sources.

The digital wallet will be managed by Early Warning Services LLC, co-owned by Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, that operates money-transfer service Zelle.

The banks plan to launch the new service in the second half of 2023. According to people familiar to the matter, the new wallet will compete with Apple Pay and PayPal. The banks expect to enable 150 million debit and credit cards for use within the wallet when it rolls out. U.S. consumers who are up-to-date on payments, have used their card online in recent years and have provided an email address and phone number will be eligible.  The banks will work with Visa and Mastercard.

The separate app is needed as Apple Pay and PayPal are third-party wallet operators, WSJ reports. Banks are worried about losing control of their customer relationships and are trying to cut down on fraud: customers using their wallet will not have to type in their card numbers.

The banks are still ironing out the details of the customer experience. WSJ writes that it likely will involve consumers’ typing their email on a merchant’s checkout page. The merchant would ping EWS, which would use its back-end connections to banks to identify which of the consumer’s cards can be loaded onto the wallet. Should a sizable number of merchants enable the wallet and consumers adopt it, EWS banks could explore adding other payment options that could include enabling payments directly from bank accounts.  

JPMorgan also had a digital wallet - Chase Pay - which was to rival Apple Pay. The bank launched it in 2015 and closed in 2020.

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