McGinnis said that it will soon offer a similar wallet to customers of its other prepaid brand — Virgin Mobile — and it is considering bringing it to the main Sprint brand as well. Sprint also plans to build on Wallet’s initial batch of services, to create what McGinnis calls “a virtual bank” for its customers.

Today, Boost’s Mobile Wallet can transfer funds between accounts, pay e-bills, wire money to physical locations and, with the help of prepaid Visa card, you can make purchases and withdraw money from ATMs anywhere Visa is accepted. Soon Boost’s wallet will let you scan physical checks, depositing funds directly into your wallet account.

But McGinnis said there are other services in the works. He didn’t provide specific deals, but it’s not hard to imagine features like virtual checking accounts or peer-to-peer payments such as those offered by PayPal, Venmo and now Google and Square.

Sprint doesn’t want to become bank itself — that would put it under the regulatory scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Treasury, which Sprint wants to avoid, McGinnis said. Instead, Sprint is working with Wipit, a mobile payments provider focusing on people without bank accounts and credit cards, to provide the financial services infrastructure.

“From the customer’s point of view, it’s kind of a bank in the sky that is Boost backed,” McGinnis said.

Sprint’s wallet is unique because it focuses on what the financial industry calls the unbanked – households that deal almost entirely in cash. Most other wallet and financial services apps are linked to bank accounts, credit and debit cards. This approach to financial services has had a huge impact in other parts of the world and has made Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom the biggest bank in East Africa.

The U.S. isn’t Kenya, of course, but according to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation study (pdf), 8.2 percent of U.S. households have no bank account whatsoever, while an additional 20.1 percent of U.S. households have a bank account but also make use of alternative financial services such as check cashing and payday loan companies.

Of the major providers, Sprint is in an ideal position to serve those customers. People who rely primarily on cash naturally gravitate towards prepaid mobile phones, and Sprint is one of the most aggressive carriers when it comes to prepaid. It runs three prepaid brands (Boost, Virgin and Assurance Wireless) and offers pay-as-you-go options on its primary Sprint brand as well. At the end of the first quarter it had 16 million customers on prepaid plans.

While Mobile Wallet’s initial focus will be on those unbanked customers, McGinnis said there is a lot of potential for the app for customers who have traditional bank accounts, especially as Sprint and Wipit add new features to the app. That’s one of the reasons McGinnis thinks Mobile Wallet will be a good fit for Sprint’s contract customers.

Sprint already is working with Google on mobile payments, but McGinnis pointed out that Google Wallet is really a point-of-sale transaction technology linking to credit cards or bank accounts. Meanwhile, Sprint’s Wallet is intended to be a replacement for or a supplement to those accounts and payments cards — just without the actual bank.

“There’s nothing broken with plastic in retail today,” McGinnis said. Sprint, he added, just wants to make that plastic available to more people.

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Samsung explained the new wallet feature along with a list of other launch partners during the developer session:

One of the most popular sessions this year featured the introduction of the open API for the Samsung Wallet service, which allows users to collect coupons, membership cards, tickets, and boarding passes from partners’ applications and store them in one place. The service’s launching partners like Walgreens, Belly, Major League Baseball Advanced Media , Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Lufthansa were announced during the session.

I’m conflicted by the news. It’s actually good for consumers to have similar functionality on both iOS and Android, provided the partner list is generally the same. I don’t want to have choose a platform, for example, because its wallet app is the only one that works with vendors I use. But I have to wonder: Why is Samsung doing this and not Google itself for Android?

This question gets back to the concern I just noted about platform choice. Because this app will only work with Samsung devices, it now becomes a choice of what brand of Android phone to use in support of wallet features. This shouldn’t be an initiative with an original equipment manufacturer; this should be a project for Android as a whole. I don’t blame Samsung; it accounts for more of the Android device market than any of its peers so why shouldn’t it keep pushing ahead?

Regardless, I love the idea of a digital wallet. Although I haven’t used it lately, I’m a big fan of paying for goods or services through my NFC-enabled phone with Google Wallet. But the point of a digital wallet is to eliminate our big, bulky physical wallets that are filled with currency, cards and whatever else we need to carry. Do we really want to start carrying multiple digital wallet solutions on our devices or choose a phone based on what wallet features it supports? I certainly don’t.

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V.me is Visa’s attempt at creating a digital wallet that makes transactions easier. It allows users to pay online with a Visa or other credit card using a user name and password instead of entering a 16-digit card number and their address. V.me is available online and on mobile and will roll out to in-store point of sale next year.

Visa is relying on banking partners to help sell V.me to their 50 million customers. It has signed up deals with PNC and U.S. Bank along with about 50 other smaller banks, who will offer V.me directly to their customers. Some like PNC will offer a preloaded V.me wallet while other banks will send users to sign-up through the V.me site. Many banks will market the service through their own banking site.

V.me also has about two dozen merchants partners, including 1-800-Flowers and Shoebuy.com, Cooking.com, Rakuten Buy.com, Blue Nile and others. It’s looking to eventually target the top 250 online retailers. That would pit it against PayPal as well as other credit card rivals like American Express and MasterCard, which are also creating or building out digital wallets to make it easier to pay online.

The bigger challenge and opportunity will be in 2013, when V.me goes in store. Jennifer Schulz, global head of eCommerce for Visa, said the company is looking at employing near field communication (NFC) in certain geographies though it’s also looking at other technologies to facilitate payments. She said V.me could easily plug in other tools at the point of sale like QR codes.

V.me represents a way for Visa to go multi-channel, selling online and offline. That’s especially helpful in mobile commerce, where completing transactions can be hard. But if Visa can expand its share of in-store sales, that’s an even bigger opportunity though it will have to go up against a lot of competitors including Google Wallet, Isis, Square and many others. Visa hasn’t shared any numbers from V.me’s beta so it’s unclear how well consumers are taking to the wallet so far.

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PassSource uses an API that lets developers build their own passes for Passbook or make sure the ones they have created are compatible with Passbook. The service has a number of templates, which you can see at left, including generic boarding passes, event tickets and coupons that can be customized, but there are also dozens of pre-made passes from recognizable brands available.

PassSource is for developers only right now, since Passbook is still only available to iOS certified developers until the public release, which will likely be sometime next month. But once it goes live, PassSource will help anyone create passes for Passbook for $25. Kudit says eventually it will introduce an analytics dashboard too that will let pass creators see how they are being used by customers.

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The Zynga Serve Reward program will also eventually involve turning Zynga titles into offers platforms, allowing brands to insert deals into games that can be saved to a Serve account and redeemed using Serve cards. The purchases of specific offers will unlock more virtual currency in Zynga games, potentially creating a virtuous cycle for both American Express and Zynga.

The timing of the branded offers is still yet to be determined. But for now, users can start to earn Farm Cash money in Farmville by registering for the Zynga Serve Rewards program and getting a co-branded prepaid card in the mail. Users can also earn in-game money by connecting a funding source to their card and activating it. Only the first five purchases of $25 or more on the rewards card will earn virtual currency.

Other Zynga titles including CastleVille and CityVille will also soon be integrated into the Zynga Serve Reward program. Users will be able to track their rewards through an in-game dashboard and also through their Serve mobile app.

Dan Schulman, President of Enterprise Growth for American Express, told me in an interview that this is the first rewards partnership for Serve and the deepest Zynga has allowed a partner into one of its games.  He said the partnership allows Zynga and American Express to give social gamers a richer experience and it allows Zynga to become a starting point for offers, with American Express Serve helping close the loop on redemptions.

“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of customers in our target market spending time on these (social gaming) platforms. If we can integrate and make their lives easier and customize things like offers and deals and move money back and forth in a social way, that’s tremendously powerful,” Schulman said.

This is another example of how American Express is trying to be aggressive using social media to keep its business relevant to users. It’s been working with Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook to distribute offers that can be saved to their American Express card. And it’s growing its presence on Facebook, including a Serve Facebook app that allows friends to pay each other.

I think the partnership makes a lot of sense, and could give American Express another way to reach younger users. And for Zynga, it’s another way to drive more usage and it builds on other recent offline rewards promotions. In March, for example, Zynga partnered with Frito Lay to put codes in specially marked bags of chips that would unlock certain virtual goods inside games. If it can expand on this relationship with American Express, it can show how it can make more money off its more than 65 million users.

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Buy.com’s 18 million customers will now see the option to enroll in V.me on check-out and login pages. They will be able to create a V.me account that’s funded from Visa, American Express, MasterCard and Discover cards. Instead of entering in their credit card information to complete a transaction, V.me users can enter in a user name and password. V.me users can also receive alerts and near-real-time notification of transactions on their Visa accounts and will eventually get personalized offers through the wallet.

This is still an early step for V.me, which got going with the launch of a developer center in November. The plan is to start in the U.S. with online commerce, with many more retailers set to support V.me in the coming weeks and months.  Eventually V.me will expand to mobile and in-store payments using near field communication. Visa Europe also announced last month that V.me would debut this fall in the UK, France and Spain.

V.me seems to be getting off to a bit of a slower start than expected. In November, Visa announced that V.me would launch in the U.S. in early 2012 after the holidays with in-store NFC payments coming later in the the year. It’s unclear when V.me will be ready for a public launch for all online retailers. The NFC roll-out will be even more complicated and will pit Visa directly against Google Wallet and Isis, the wireless carrier-led wallet initiative set to begin trials this summer in Austin and Salt Lake City. It’s also facing competition from MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet Services and American Express’ Serve platform, which will eventually both offer online, mobile and in-store payments.

This battle is starting to heat up but don’t expect this year to be decisive. There is still so much education and development that needs to happen and most consumers and merchants don’t have a clue as to which wallet they will want to use. Visa has the advantage of being the biggest credit card network and that trust will surely give it a boost in the new digital wallet wars. But there’s so much more game to be played, it’s still too early to say who will prevail.

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CardSpring, an Accel Partners and Greylock Partners-backed start-up, went live last month with its application platform, which allows developers to create applications that can work with credit cards. Now, the nascent system is getting a huge boost with the help of payment processor First Data. First Data is using CardSpring’s API as the basis for its OfferWise solution, a program that allows publishers to attach offers, coupons and loyalty accounts to a consumers payment cards or mobile wallet. First Data, which serves more than 6 million merchant locations including 4 million in the U.S., is piloting OfferWise with dozens of merchants and will roll out the service to its retail customers starting in May.

The partnership addresses the growing shift toward what First Data calls “universal commerce” as consumers look for a shopping experience that bridges online and offline channels and incorporates personalized deals and product information at all times. Increasingly, consumers are looking for deals online and through mobile channels as they look to save money. But many retailers who conduct outreach and marketing online often run into problems trying to close the redemption loop on offers. With OfferWise, retailers will be to send out a deal through an an offer provider and they can now see which deals are actually redeemed at the store through a debit, credit or pre-paid card. It doesn’t have to be a card transaction either. OfferWise can also connect to NFC-contactless payments and digital wallets like PayPal.

American Express and Visa have also tried similar efforts to connect offers and actions to their cards. AmericanExpress allows deals offered through Facebook, Foursquare and LevelUp to be connected to a card transaction, so a coupon can be processed at check-out. Visa did a test with the Gap , allowing Gap shoppers who sign up, they can get offers pushed out to them when they make a purchase on their Visa card. With OfferWise and CardSpring, all cards are accepted, making it more flexible for consumers. And merchants can also tap into First Data’s analytics engine to improve consumer targeting and get performance analysis of their campaigns.

“This launch illustrates how First Data is delivering an innovative universal commerce experience to consumers—one that is fully integrated wherever, at anytime and through any device,” said Dom Morea, SVP and division manager, Advanced Solutions and Innovation at First Data in a statement.

Eckart Walther, CardSpring’s CEO told me the First Data deals has been nine months in the making and will be a huge lift for the fledgling company. He said it should be a powerful tool in the hands of many merchants and retailers. OfferWise doesn’t require a merchant to upgrade to new hardware since it’s connected at the payment network level to CardSpring’s API. And for retailers who haven’t set up their own loyalty programs, they can also easily reward users for their transactions by connecting to OfferWise. Walther said the approach makes sense in a world in which cards won’t be retired for many, many years.

“The problem is you always have to carry a card. Until there’s 100 percent adoption of (mobile wallets), you will have to carry a card,” he said. “Our goal is to make that card very smart.”

Walther said coupons and loyalty are just some of the actions you can tie to a card swipe. He said developers could offer check-ins, spending and tracking of receipts, fraud alerts and other services as well.

I think CardSpring, which just raised $10 million, is a pretty smart idea that makes a lot of sense in this age of the smart buyer. Consumers are very savvy now, getting the best deals online and on the mobile phones. They’re increasingly expecting merchants to come to them with the best offers. Now, merchants can do just that and still know they can track those deals through the cards consumer are most likely to use. And with First Data now able to offers this to its retail customers, there’s a good chance many will take a look.

Consumers will still need to give their OK to have their credit card attached to an offer. Entering credit card information is already a barrier that slows down actions and is especially tough on mobile. It’s unclear how quickly consumers will offer up their card numbers for one-off discounts. But for offer providers and merchants with a good track record and relationship, it shouldn’t be too hard to get consumers to connect their cards to offers.

Ultimately, it shows that there’s a lot of ways to tackle commerce as it evolves. While there are big efforts to make the phone a wallet, including Google Wallet, which First Data is a partner in, there’s still plenty of opportunity in tapping the cards in most people’s wallets today.

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We see hundreds of great ideas, but only a few have the right combination to get traction and scale right now. With that in mind, here are a few predictions for the payments industry in 2012.

Mobile payments continue to skyrocket

We got a taste of mobile payments growth in 2011, and this growth will continue. The mobile industry is shifting into “third gear,” with smartphone penetration reaching global scale and well on the way to becoming the dominant connected device for 2 billion+ people over the next few years. Add mobile innovations like the iPad, which has already become the fastest adopted electronic device in history, and mobile is really hitting its stride.  The future of computing is happening now, and quickly reaching a level of scale to enable global innovation.

Although scale is impressive, the true power of the connected mobile device lies in how dramatically it is changing consumer behavior and disrupting existing franchises. Use an app like Uber to get a town car, and you never do it the old way again. The new Nordstrom iPad App replaces a salesperson with a whole new in-store experience. Living Social can fill a restaurant in hours with a mobile offer, allowing local restaurants to skip the process of building a website. Payment helps accelerate these models through convenience and accessibility and, in turn, is forced to innovate itself to keep up.

Don’t think that mobile devices will be your future identity? Try spending an hour walking around without your phone, wallet, or keys. I barely made it to the end of the block before the panic set in. That was not the case just two years ago.

 A fuller integration of the online and offline commerce worlds

When we talk about the blend of online/offline in terms of commerce, we tend to focus on the ability to find local inventory or scanning a product in store. In truth there is much more happening here than that. In 2012 we will see a rise in virtual currencies and the ability to use them to pay for “real” goods. Imagine paying for groceries at Safeway with Facebook Credits or using extra frequent flyer miles for that cup of coffee at Starbucks. If you are 15 years old with no credit card or bank account, this future needs to be here yesterday, and retailers looking to attract the young digerati, who already switch seamlessly between their online and offline lives, will welcome virtual currencies with open arms.

Social commerce has seen some exciting developments recently that show more ways that the online and offline worlds are becoming more closely integrated. We just watched Louis C.K. disrupt the media industry by profitably producing and selling a comedy special directly to his audience through his website, clearing more than $1 million in 12 days. Zynga just went public at a multi-billion dollar valuation, thanks to its ability to sell digital tractors and barns to its ever-expanding user base. It’s not hard to imagine more social commerce innovation, such as person-to-person payments of non-cash currencies (“Help me fly to visit my mom by lending me your miles”) or creating massive fundraising movements (“Take a photo of my charity road race number so you can donate directly to my cause”). The possibilities seem endless — and are incredibly powerful if you think about it.

As our online and offline worlds continue to merge, the war of commerce will land right on the doorstep of small merchants. In early December, Amazon offered to give consumers a store credit of up to $5 if they used the Amazon Price Check app to scan in the price of a product in a physical store. And that’s only the beginning. Small merchants will need to adapt, while at the same time making sure the online world doesn’t drown them in fraud. Louis C.K. isn’t crazy to go direct to his fans — those who don’t know their customers and communicate with them regularly will take a beating from competing on margins in this connected economy.

Birth of alternate commerce devices

I’m a big believer that a key driver of payment innovation is going to be the enabling of alternate commerce devices. We’re seeing requests for payment capabilities on everything from gas pumps to Laundromats. As all devices become “smart and connected,” it provides more consumer choice and enables the digital wallet in the cloud to show its true value.  I know we all can’t wait for the day that we don’t have to clip coupons and remember loyalty card numbers, and our wallet intelligently figures out how you should pay for things. 2012 will see this come to life in many forms, and the “a-ha” moment around digital wallets will make sense to many. As payments move to the cloud, essentially anything with an “on” switch and an IP address can become a payment device. Think about Samsung’s Wi-Fi enabled refrigerator or cars from manufacturers like Cadillac and Audi. It’s a small jump to turn them from Internet enabled to Internet-payment enabled.  And, this experience is already making its way into our living rooms with t-commerce (commerce from your television).

I think 2012 is also going to be the year where t-commerce will happen. Yes, it’s been talked about a lot, but the pieces and players are beginning to fall into place more so than ever before. eBay’s recently updated mobile app for the iPad includes the ability to “Watch with eBay,” so I can watch my favorite sports team on TV and buy the latest jersey, all from my couch. (Note that PayPal, my company, is part of eBay.) By this time next year, you should be able to buy from your TV as easily as changing the channel. Scary to imagine, but you would do it, wouldn’t you? If a signed Jimi Hendrix guitar popped up for auction while I was watching his biography, I’m not sure if I could control myself.

These are exciting times for consumers, and it’s bringing a ferocious level of change to a payment industry that quite frankly could use it. 2012 will provide enough innovation clusters to give this industry a good shake. It’s exciting to have a front row seat!

Scott Dunlap serves as the VP of Emerging Opportunities at PayPal, exploring new technology and user experiences for payment, mobile commerce, virtual goods, virtual currencies, deals and couponing, multi-channel commerce, point of sale integration, analytics and risk management. 

Image courtesy of Flickr user vintagedept.

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Now, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Pageonce is adding the feature, helping the app fulfill its aspirations to become more of a digital wallet for users. But that comes at a price: $4.99 a month for the bill pay service on Pageonce’s iPhone and Android apps.

With Pageonce, users will now be able to view credit card, utility, cell phone, rent and other bills and easily pay them from the app using various funding sources. Users can pay from bank accounts or credit cards, decide how much they want to pay and then get a confirmation for the transaction.

Pageonce is betting that people will be willing to pay for the convenience of settling all their bills from one app. Currently, almost half of consumers pay their bills in person or by mail and a quarter of payments are made at the individual sites of billers, said Steve Schultz, Pageonce COO. He said providing a one-stop resource should prove appealing to consumers, especially the ability to pay not just from one bank account, which many banking apps allow, but also from multiple banking accounts and credit cards. Schultz said Pageonce is also unique in that it provides a much fuller look at bills through a mobile app so users can get more information on their charges before deciding to pay.

“We think it’s time to take the app to the next level and really enable people to do their finances, not just view them from a phone,” Schultz said. “Most people think of bill pay as a chore. Here you can pay it on the fly on public transit or on your down time. The goal is to make bill pay less stressful so people can move on with rest of their lives.”

Pageonce has done a lot of work on the back end to enable mobile bill payments and has also worked on security to ensure payments are safe and meet bank requirements. Users can lock their app with a PIN, designate access from only one mobile device and block mobile access from the web if a device is stolen or lost.

I’m not sure how popular the $4.99 fee will be with users, who are already getting hit up for more fees from banks. But Schultz said Pageonce will tinker with the pricing to see what’s popular. He said 1,000 users participated in a beta and 96 percent of users surveyed said they wanted mobile bill pay. And, 34 percent said they were willing to pay $2 to $8 monthly for the service.

If Pageonce can get mobile bill pay right, it will be another sign of momentum for the service, which competes against Mint and newer competitor Manilla. The company has raised $25 million including $15 million in May led by Morgenthaler Ventures. And it will show that more mobile-centric services can thrive by providing valuable tools to mobile users.

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Dwolla launched its product in December and differentiated itself not only with its midwest roots but also its cash-based network approach that allows users to pay directly from their bank accounts. By combining this with location-based technology and social networking tools, Dwolla has been able to build a next-generation payment system that bypasses the current credit and debit networks and offers some attractive benefits.

Square, which does utilize existing credit networks, took 10 months to hit $1 million in daily transactions and is now up to $4 million in transactions a day. Dwolla was able to reach the $1 million mark in about seven months. It has about 30,000 users on its network.

CEO and co-founder Ben Milne said Dwolla’s growth validates the power of tapping cash networks and applying new technology and APIs to help build a modern payment network.

“When you talk about cash, it’s not represented in the marketplace electronically. If you’re paying with a phone or on a website, what is the cash equivalent? There is more money moving through system through cash than credit. It’s an underserved market and it’s massive,” Milne said.

Dwolla transactions fees are capped at 25 cents per transaction, which is lower than PayPal. And users are able to send money to their social networking contacts on Twitter and Facebook. Merchants are able to accept payments without adding extra hardware and using Dwolla’s system, they don’t have to store credit information, which limits fraud. And with Dwolla’s Spots mobile payment service, users can pay for offline goods without using credit or physical cash. Dwolla also enables banks to offer users instant access to their bank accounts from mobile devices using its FiSync service. So far, 15 banks are signed on to use FiSync.

Dwolla still faces challenges in replicating Square’s success, however. It has less name recognition and it seems to have less traction with merchants by comparison. But Milne believes that as more financial institutions sign-up and give their consumers access to mobile payments from their bank accounts, usage will rise. Users are also learning about the service through word of mouth, he said.

Dwolla is showing that this cash-based approach is viable and it’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked in the mobile payments race. EWise, another payment provider, uses what it calls secure vault payments, a form of online banking epayments, to help users pay for things online and through their mobile phone. Users can log-in to their SVP at the time of check-out and quickly fund a purchase from their bank account at cheaper rates than credit card transactions.

EWise CEO Alex Grinburg recently told me that tapping bank accounts for payments offers users and merchants an important choice that can reduce the cost of fees and drive up transactions. He said it’s also something that can be tapped now while others are waiting for near field communication payments to emerge.

“There is no reason to separately fund a wallet or a separate PayPal balance. That’s not where the money is. If you have a bank account you’re good to go, that’s all you need,” he said.

This is still early days in mobile payments, but we’re often hearing most about specific approaches like NFC, carrier billing or services like Square. But there is a lot of room for innovation and as Dwolla and eWise are showing, there’s a big opportunity in tapping cash accounts to fund payments online and offline.

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