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JPMorgan Chase & Co. is planning to shut down its Chase Pay app in the banks third reversal on digital offerings in as many months.
The bank started informing customers Wednesday that they will no longer be able to pay with their smartphones when shopping in stores, according to an email seen by Bloomberg. They will still be able to use Chase Pay on the websites and apps of retailers that accept it.
Its an about-face on a product introduced four years ago to compete with rivals like Apple Inc. that are working to transform how consumers pay for products and services. Consumers have been slow to take to paying with their smartphones in stores.
Eric Connolly, head of Chase Pay, said in an interview: when we started this, it was four years ago the payment space has changed a lot over the period of time and customer behaviour has changed. A lot of merchants have shifted to buy online, pick up in store and have invested in their online presence and their apps.
The bank says it wants to capture a larger share of a market long dominated by PayPal Holdings Inc., whose digital wallet was accepted by about 70% of online merchants at the end of the second quarter. Fewer than 1% accepted JPMorgans, according to a study by industry publication PYMNTS.com.
JPMorgan spokesman Pablo Rodriguez declined to say how many online retailers currently accept Chase Pay, adding that the bank expects that number to increase. In a statement on Wednesday, the company said that GrubHub Inc. will soon accept the wallet.
Other digital experiments by JPMorgan have failed to take hold. In June, it shut down digital bank Finn a year after rolling out the brand nationally. A month later, it cut ties with fintech company On Deck, whose technology platform it had used to originate online small-business loans.
JPMorgan has been testing other technologies to lure consumers to spend more on its cards. It has been adding tap-to-pay technology to its cards and joined with Cardlytics Inc. to offer coupons for select merchants inside its mobile app.
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