Finland-based Mobey Forum has launched a Digital Wallet Expert Group to help FIs explore emerging wallet use-cases and assess strategic options for commercial applications. 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. Identifying benefits for using digital wallets 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. Company officials stated that 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. Their 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. What does Mobey Forum do? Mobey Forum is the global industry association empowering banks and other financial institutions to shape the future of digital financial services. It connects industry thought leaders to identify commercial drivers for the development of better digital commerce.

Mobey Forum’s members collaborate to analyse business strategies and technologies to create innovative, interoperable, and competitive digital financial services. .