In some circles, there’s been a lot of hype about mobile wallets. As a marked improvement to physical credit cards — chip-enabled or mag stripe — they offer a touchless POS experience that’s perhaps more valued now than many had expected in today’s socially distanced world. And the ability to store multiple cards on your phone makes carrying a physical wallet nearly as old-school as tendering cash or paying with a check at retail locations.

But the world is moving online more rapidly than ever — both for consumers and businesses. While it’s great that I can choose to use my personal Visa or my company’s American Express using my phone, the reality is that mobile wallets are essentially mobile containers for an underlying credit card or bank account and, as such, fall far short in handling many B2B use cases.

So, yes, “What’s in your wallet?” may be a great question. But the idea that you would only want or need to use a credit card is the wrong assumption. Particularly, for B2B payments.

Digital transformation demands more for B2B payments than simply digitizing the card network paradigm. 

The Difference Between Mobile Wallets and Digital Wallets

A digital wallet is different. While a mobile wallet may be the digital analog to a wallet full of credit cards, a digital wallet on an intelligent payments platform is more akin to a screen full of banks and a wallet full of as many currencies as are needed to conduct business with nearly anyone, anywhere.

The payments platform provides a next-gen payment technology overlay connecting accounts to banks globally using open API access. Regulated in the same way as a bank, the payments platform manages Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance using automation tools and business rules to greatly simplify access to account data for users while restricting distributions until compliance is assured.

Meanwhile, a digital wallet enables users to actually store funds in multiple currencies in separate, currency-specific, and purpose-driven wallets that all roll-up within a single account, enabling companies to easily manage funds in accordance with their business structure whilst connecting an ever-expanding ecosystem of partners, suppliers, customers, and contractors.

Digital Wallets Improve B2B Payments

This creates any number of opportunities to address B2B use cases to enable both cross-border and direct payments that can skip past the card networks digitally. Without the need for a merchant account to accept payments, partners and suppliers will appreciate that they do not have to forego some 3+% of their revenue as a cost of doing business simply to accept payment.

The payment platform and digital wallets also let users bypass many of the high fees charged by banks for handling international transactions while providing for lower cost currency exchange as well as facilitating the frictionless movement of those funds via wallet-to-wallet transactions to nearly anyone, anywhere.

All of this allows companies to integrate global payments and FX directly within their software platform to generate new revenue streams. Managing digital wallets in connected accounts enables a level of oversight and automation not found in traditional payment systems, allowing service providers to deliver a better payment experience for their customers and their customers’ payees.

The Future of Mobile Payment Apps

But what about mobile? The payments platform UEX, of course, is responsive and easily managed on any mobile device. Partners, in turn, have created their own proprietary mobile solutions integrating all the promise of digital wallets by white-labeling the payments platform within their own app, even powering the white-labeled solutions to power others’ brands. And now, XTRM has announced its own mobile app on the Apple App Store so Individuals can send/receive and exchange funds instantly in 35 currencies all in a truly borderless environment in the palm of their hand. And then transfer their funds to their local bank.

So now, what’s in your digital wallet?