Deutsche Telekom has decided not to pursue the concept for a SIM-based, mobile wallet any further. It therefore plans to take the MyWallet app off the market.
We launched the mobile wallet concept, and the associated mobile payments card (the MyWallet Card), on the market two years ago – which was quite early for such a service. We were thus one of the first players in this area, and we saw an opportunity to join with partners in developing a range of attractive related services and business models.
As to the technical side of things, we chose an NFC-based, SIM-card solution because we thought it would provide both the best security for payment transactions and the greatest convenience for customers. Now, however, various internationally operating companies have been investing heavily in competing approaches, and thus it seems questionable whether a SIM-based solution is going to be adopted as a standard.
In addition, the market has grown more slowly overall than we had originally expected it to. As a result, even though a number of discount store operators came aboard, retail adoption of NFC-capable terminals has failed to live up to our expectations. And while the banking sector has been showing greater interest, banks are focusing on other priorities at the moment and have been unable to agree on what approach to use (cloud-based, terminal-device-based or SIM-based).
As a result of these factors, customers are not accepting the system as we had hoped they would, and our customer numbers have been in the low tens of thousands. Therefore, we have concluded that we need to pull out of this market segment in Germany.
Some of our national companies, such as our LBU in Poland, are continuing to pursue their own activities in the area of mobile payments, however.