Cuscal courageous with Samsung wallet
Thirty-eight bank and credit union affiliates of Cuscal will offer Samsung Pay from today, rounding out the mutual ADI sector's support for digital wallets.Cuscal enabled Android Pay for its affiliates around a year ago and Apple Pay later last year.How is this pair of e-wallets that preceded Samsung Pay faring? You can ask - but, as always on this topic, no-one tells."The various 'Pays' do not allow disclosure," Robert Bell, general manager of product and service at Cuscal, said.Mark Hodgson, the head of mobile payments at Samsung Australia offered a vague observation, that take up was "very encouraging", with the wallet supported so far by Citi, American Express and Westpac."I can't give concrete numbers," Hodgson said. "They lie within our expectations."Those expectations may be very low indeed if the approach of one group of banks - including Samsung Pay supporter Westpac - is any guide.A report late last week from Forrester Research, its "2017 Australian Mobile Banking Benchmark", is a telling update on digital wallets. This report, though, is more notable for what it did not say, rather than what it said.This "benchmark" omits any discussion on mobile payments and digital wallets in which Forrester sets out to "use our Mobile Banking Benchmark methodology to evaluate the retail mobile banking services of five retail banks in Australia."One section of this report summarises responses to the question: "Which of the following banking activities have you performed on a smartphone in the past three months?""Paid bills" garnered a response of 27 per cent, while "transferred money to others" came in at 30 per cent.The obvious response: "Made a payment at point of sale" did not feature - assuming Forrester asked the question.