Technology service provider Fiserv continues to invest in its digital solutions including its digital wallet platform, CardHub, which allows real-time controls, transaction monitoring, digital wallet support and enables digital issuance of new, lost and stolen replacement debit and credit cards.
Fiserv clients include Microsoft and Google, as well as banks like Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Evermore Bank and Marlborough, Mass.-based Main Street Bank. The technology provider has a “variety of clients already using the digital issuance solutions and is adding more every day,” Jeri Scheel, senior director of product strategy for digital solutions at Fiserv, told Bank Automation News. 
Bank Automation News sat down with Scheel to discuss digital issuance, adoption of the digital wallet and CardHub enhancements for digital card issuance, and more. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.
Bank Automation News: What is the state of digital wallet adoption today?
Jeri Scheel: Digital wallets are one of those areas that [have] really taken off as a result of the pandemic. A recent study, 2023 Global Payments Report, found in the last eight years in North America, digital wallets have become the leading online payment method. Digital wallet growth has actually come at the expense, to a degree, of cash. Cash use is down to 16% usage globally, and it’s expected to go down to 10% by 2026. So, cash is not king in this aspect.
Digital cards really help a financial institution meet cardholders’ unmet needs. Clients don’t have to go to a branch to pick up a card, they don’t have to wait up to 10 days to get their plastic, they don’t even have to be home to get the card. This is useful, for example, in high-stress situations when a card is lost during travel or when a card has been compromised. The client benefits because they can receive a new card digitally, and the financial institution benefits because the cardholder can start using the card immediately.
BAN: What are the benefits of the shift to digital issuance?
JS: The immediate benefit for digital issuance for financial institutions is revenue. Digital issuance means transactions, it means loyalty, it means engagement. FIs can issue a card and clients can keep transacting while they wait for a plastic card.
Additionally, FIs can avoid rush charges. If a client is on vacation or a business trip and needs a card, instead of shipping them a card, they can have immediate access to make transactions.
The Fiserv digital issuance product launched in March with a total of six clients.
BAN: How does digital issuance work?
JS: Within the digital experience, you get a text message, you click on it, and the card gets added to your digital wallet. When the plastic card arrives, there’s nothing else you have to do. If you don’t have digital issuance, and you get your plastic card, you would have to physically put it in the digital wallet. Whereas with digital cards, you’ve done it already. The CVV automatically updates in your wallet, and you have the plastic card available for your card-present transactions.
BAN: What is Fiserv working on in 2023 within the digital issuance space?
JS: Since March, Fiserv has issued about 15,000 digital cards and client and cardholder feedback has been taken very seriously. Through feedback, Fiserv has determined that one area that needs attention is the delivery of digital cards through text message.
When a digital card is delivered via text, the URL can be lengthy and might even be mistaken for spam. Fiserv is looking to convert the digital card URL into something more easily recognizable by consumers.
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