Microsoft is working on mobile payment app service for Windows 10, a top Microsoft executive said in a joint interview with The Verge and Recode. The concept of mobile payment app is not new for the tech giant as it has had the basis of a wallet in its mobile operating system since Windows Phone 8. However, a full mobile payments option has been missing.
"Windows is going to have a wallet concept. You’ve seen it on phones before. We’re going to continue to iterate it," Joe Belfiore, corporate VP of the company's operating systems group, said. "We’re going to think about the range of payment scenarios."
The mobile payments app stores credit cards, coupons and membership information to improve both – the in-store payment experience and online payments with Windows devices.
Regarding security of the online transactions, he cited Windows Hello, the company’s new facial recognition technology, as a good example of the "kind of technology we’ll build into devices for authentication to make… payments better."
Other tech giants have already set foot in the mobile payment app system. Apple last year announced Apple Pay, a mobile payments service that offers an easy, secure and private way to pay. Similarly, Google developed Google Wallet, and recently released Android App as its second attempt at mobile wallet. Microsoft acknowledges that mobile payments system is quite complex and has its challenges.
"[Mobile payments] is just one of these things that is a massive network of complexity," Belfiore said. "I think the biggest challenge is, What effect will cause enough of the right things to align that you’ll get a good experience with all the places that you want it to happen in? And that’s kind of a world problem."
As far as the launch of the mobile payment app is concerned, all Belfiore would say is, “Soon.”
