A Comprehensive Overview of Key Services for Integration With Digital Wallet

The market for digital wallets is growing exponentially. Statista predicts that the global eWallet transaction market will reach $9.4 million in 2025, well above the $5.8 million mark in 2021.

Juniper Research also confirms this; the total number of digital wallet users worldwide will exceed $5.2 billion in 2026, up 53% from 2022. 

How to develop the perfect payment app with all sorts of integrations for potential customers, satisfying their choice variability

Explore the list of major integrations for digital wallets and get our recommendations for specific services in this article.

 

User identification by KYC standards

A strict Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure helps verify customer risks, speed up onboarding, and prevent spoofing attempts. According to a Signicat report, almost 2 out of 3 people break the onboarding because of its complexity, duration, and data-intensive requirements.

Implementing the right KYC/AML solutions into an eWallet will ensure:

• Compliance with requirements regarding KYC procedures.
• Remote onboarding through visual analysis of documents and a person’s face.
• Improved user experience and loyal customers.
• Increased protection against fraud.
• The minimum number of rejections during the adaptation period.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier  

1. Pricing. Choose the best payment model. The pre-pay model is suitable for experienced companies and involves paying for KYC services before receiving them. The pay-as-you-go model is usually the choice of startups and allows you to pay post-facto. The final price depends on the number of inspections.
2. Service charging model. Choose a KYC provider that charges a fee for successful authentication or offers multiple verification attempts per session. This will help avoid an increase in costs.
3. Documents coverage. Find out if the service provider supports the documents you need and which regions they work with, targeting potential users of your product.
4. Additional authentication methods. Make sure that the provider supports other authentication methods required for the countries covered by the product in addition to verification documents.
5. Experience in a particular geography and segment. Research the market audience for your product and its geolocation by region. View case studies and request vendor information to help you find out their customer service experience from countries that are right for you.
6. Technology. Cooperate with a provider who uses an optimal and up-to-date SDK. This can be a mobile app or a customer engagement software product.

Examples 

• Onfido
• Ondato
• Veriff
• Shufti Pro
• Jumio

 

Find a partner among banks

eWallet is directly linked to the user’s bank account, therefore an eWallet operator needs to either obtain a license on their own or get a 3rd party to offer account services (Banking as a service model). 

Since the former option is extremely costly and time-consuming for startup companies, a partnership should be established with one of the banks that offer account services. We will focus on the latter option, as it is preferable for most situations.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier  

1. Support of the region where the product is planned to be launched. Each area has its own banks, which can become partners of the organization. Therefore, the provider must have a license in the region you need.
2. Technical competence. Analyze the bank’s documentation, security regulations, and data protection assessments. The RNDpoint team has been providing technical due diligence services to startups for over a decade and can help you verify the provider.
3. TCO (total cost of ownership). Evaluate the future integration results with the bank once the project is up and running. Consider the integration or user fees, depending on your product’s goals and growth targets.

Examples 

• Solaris 
• ClearBank
• Railsr
• Starling Bank
• BBVA

 

Select a card-issuing partner by region

Digital wallets that offer credit or debit cards should find a reliable card-issuing partner.

As with a banking license, you can choose between obtaining your membership with Visa and Mastercard or a 3rd party solution. 

As becoming a member with Visa or Mastercard directly requires a financial license, most startup companies would work through a 3rd party on the card issuing. It’s worth noting that every region has its own card-issuing products and companies that can partner with your organization. 

Some partner banks may include this functionality as part of their offering; in this case, the need for a separate vendor may disappear.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

1. Their offer. Compare your product’s features with the offer of potential card-issuing partners and their commissions. E.g., if you want to introduce personal debit cards into your digital wallet, look for them in card-issuing partners’ offers in your local market.
2. Technical capabilities. Analyze the technical offering of a potential supplier including their anti-fraud systems, online authentication options, or other features, based on your product requirements. RNDpoint offers assistance with technical due diligence, safety, and compliance audits.
3. Tokenization. These days, almost all wallets offer Apple Pay and Google Pay as part of their value proposition. It is worth checking with the supplier whether card tokenization is included in the supplier’s offering.

Examples 

• Marqeta 
• Paymentology 
• Moorwand
• Wallester
• DECTA

 

Card schemes

The most popular card schemes are Visa and Mastercard. They have very similar business models and operate worldwide. 

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

The choice of card scheme will be predetermined by choosing a bank partner or card issuing partner. Therefore, the payment system for your future digital wallet does not require detailed analysis and evaluation.

Examples

• Visa
• Mastercard

 

Attract open banking opportunities

Open banking usually enables obtaining account information including transaction history, balances, and payment initiation directly from any bank account of your user

Each region has its own open banking regulations, so choose a provider with this factor in mind. One of the most developed markets in terms of open banking is the European Union, and we had seen many examples of open banking products launched in the last few years.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

The main rule: decide whether you need to implement this solution in your product. Open banking is most often used for two purposes: to score users by gaining access to their accounts and to make payments from account to account.

Examples 

• Tink
• Truelayer
• Plaid
• GoCardless 
• Yolt

 

Ensure cross-border transfers

Cross-border transfers can enable your users to transfer money in a cost-efficient and fast way, as opposed to using expensive and slow traditional cross-border payment options like SWIFT. 

Add cross-border transaction platforms to your digital wallet with simple API integration. A third-party service will provide the banking network’s regulation, compliance, and connectivity. 

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

1. Audience preferences. Look for corridors or currency pairs that may be useful for your audience, and choose a provider that supports them.  
2. Markups for currency pairs. Analyze which currency pairs will be regularly used among your audience and compare their prices.
3. Availability of local payout systems. Consider the location of potential users of the product. E.g., if your users are in Poland, check if it’s possible to transfer money from your eWallet to a Polish bank account and whether it’s possible to withdraw money instantly via BLIK or another local payment system.

Examples 

• Airwallex 
• CurrencyCloud
• Apex Group
• FXCM

 

Cooperation with credit bureaus 

If you are planning to provide lending services, credit bureaus should be added to the mandatory services. These agencies provide client scoring to help you assess the solvency of potential borrowers. 

Please note, such services are very region specific. Each country has different credit bureaus that provide lenders with credit reports and ratings.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

1. Providing loans within eWallet. If your product offers credit solutions, then you need an integration with credit bureaus. RNDpoint is ready to help you launch credit services by providing loan origination solutions.
2. Local credit bureaus. There are often many local credit bureaus that provide more favorable conditions than international ones.
3. Unit economics. Sometimes the unit economics of a loan will not let you use credit bureau data profitably. For example, in case you will be provisioning micro-loans, it won’t be worth getting a credit bureau for every loan application but potentially worth it on a user basis.

Examples 

• Equifax
• Experian
• TransUnion
• CARFAX

 

Payment gateways

Integrate a payment gateway for account top-ups and money transfers. Gateways are usually connected directly with card networks and banks and are highly scalable and useful.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

1. Complexity. Evaluate implementation steps, technical capabilities, and service conditions for an eWallet. RNDpoint specialists can help with the payment gateway selection and integration using our product ProcessMIX, a platform that speeds up the entire process by three times. 
2. Cost. Compare prices for standard transactions and additional features for a fee. 
3. Add-ons. Analyze the extra features and their relevance to your product. E.g., if your users need P2P money transfers with Mastercard Send, you should definitely check if the payment gateway has this option.

Examples

• Stripe
• PayPal
• PayU
• Checkout.com

Tokenized payments 

Integrating a digital wallet with tokenized payments is important, foremost for security reasons. Such payments use a unique token to represent a credit or debit card number, which is securely stored in a cloud-based token vault. 

These services will ensure your digital wallet faster and more convenient payments, an excellent user experience, and a convenient alternative to traditional card payments.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

The choice of tokenized payments depends on the partner bank and card issuing partner. If they support tokenized payments, your digital wallet will be able to offer them as well.

Examples

• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Garmin Pay
• Samsung Pay
• Xiaomi Pay

 

Configure notifications

Real-time updates such as transaction confirmations, account balances, and payment reminders help users stay informed of their account activity and reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions.

Implement SMS/ push/ email notifications to provide customers with confidence in successful transactions and streamline the user experience.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

1. Preferred method of communication. Consider three types of notifications: push, SMS, and email. Choose which method suits your product and interacts with users best. 
2. Deliverability. Consider push notification statistics, especially delivery rate. This metric may have different values depending on the country. 
3. Cost. Compare the pricing plans, focusing on the price per unit, the countries served, and the packages of the features provided.

Examples 

Push notifications

• OneSignal
• Firebase
• LeanPlum

SMS

• Twilio
• Infobip
• DeskAlerts

Email 

• MailChimp
• SparkPost 
• GetResponse

 

Customer support solutions

Providing 24/7 multichannel support for your digital wallet users is becoming a norm these days. Integrating one of the customer support systems will not only enhance customer service, and improve customer satisfaction, but may also serve as an important user insight generation tool.

Factors to consider when choosing a supplier

1. The complexity of integration. Evaluate the system implementation process. The RNDpoint team can provide considerable assistance in installing the customer support system.  
2. Cost. Study the cost of ownership depending on the selected support model for the product. While some may look cheap in the beginning – they might become too expensive as your business scales and the number of agents grows.
3. System functionality. Look at the customer support system features and cross-check them with your business needs. E.g., you may need a feature for automatic ticket transfers between agents or in-app support – make sure that your system of choice offers these options.

Examples 

• Zendesk 
• HubSpot
• Zoho 
• Upservice

 

Comprehensive eWallet with RNDpoint integration services

RNDpoint offers an eWallet white-label solution that speeds up the eWallets’ time to market, completing the development in an average of 2–4 months.

We also provide all types of integrations for digital wallets. Our team can help you choose the right services to be integrated into an eWallet, and analyze the relevance of developing a needed system from scratch or buying a 3rd party tool.

We use our own low-code ProcessMIX platform for rapid process control. It makes the integration process three times faster and cuts financial costs in half.

If you need an estimation of the digital wallet development cost or any advice on the integrations, feel free to contact our experts.

FAQ

What are the three most important features of eWallet?

1. Card operations: top-up and payments, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. 
2. Digital account operations: top-up, money transfer, P2P payments.
3. Lending: credit cards, cash loans. 

In terms of lending and BNPL functionality, RNDpoint can automate all processes with its ABLE solution within 2–4 weeks.

What are the two overlooked elements of eWallet?

1. Back-office elements: admin panel that allows for flexible rate and commission setting, analytics, and user management. 
2. Backend elements that are high-load, flexible, and easily customizable. 

RNDpoint has a white-label solution that allows quick implementation of these two elements.

What is eWallet architecture?

The eWallet architecture is complex, involving multiple layers dealing with extremely sensitive personal and financial data. It is essential to define the architecture in a way that enables both security and scalability. 

The RNDpoint team is positioned to advise on eWallet architecture issues, as we have 14 years of experience and have implemented 120+ FinTech projects.

Does operating an eWallet require having a license?

Not necessarily. You can get your own license, but to start an eWallet business quickly you can use a 3rd party license (Banking as a service model). 

What are the main steps in launching a digital wallet?

There are six key steps in the process:

1. Define your product value proposition.
2. Develop business requirements for your product. The RNDpoint team can help you co-create those during the Discovery phase.
3. UI/UX design and prototyping. Designers create a user-friendly interface, select color schemes, as well as approve the prototype of the app. 
4. Development. Build your product with the help of a team experienced in financial software development.
5. Testing. Done almost in parallel with development, but rigorous end-to-end testing and F&F launch are also advised before the product launch.
6. Release and maintenance. The product is published on Google Play and App Store. Once launched, the product is updated and supported.

How much does it cost to build an eWallet?

While the cost of an eWallet may vary from a modest $50-70,000 for an MVP, it may rise for more sizeable and complex products that require multiple integrations or multiple application screens.

You can contact RNDpoint for a detailed estimate of your eWallet development.