Chase Pay merchant integration officially winds down this month

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
10th March 2021

JP Morgan Chase has decided to wind down its Chase Pay merchant integration. The decision comes just a year after the bank shut down the Chase Pay app.

The Chase Pay button was used by gas station operator Shell, Starbucks and Walmart – which is now developing its own fintech solutions.

Chase Pay embarked on a number of partnerships to remain relevant

According to Finextra, the bank spent “north of $100 million in investment[s]” on the QR-code based digital wallet, which launched back in 2015.

A Chase Pay timeline

In March 2017, JP Morgan Chase bought the payments technology of Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) to boost adoption of Chase Pay.

MCX, set up by a consortium of US retail companies including Walmart, had developed CurrentC – another mobile wallet billed as an Apple Pay challenger, but which quickly became defunct.

CurrentC wanted to circumvent card fees and replace the payment ecosystem. It was an ambitious vision for its time, but one which the industry is now seeing happen through the technology of open banking.

The mobile wallet shut down in June 2016, nine months before JP Morgan Chase bought it. The bank also integrated with rival digital wallet LevelUp in December 2016 to speed up the payments process for quick-service Boston merchants.

In July 2017, Chase Pay entered into a partnership with PayPal. It allowed customers to add Chase cards via Chase Pay to PayPal accounts. The two also linked on a rewards programme, and PayPal could process payments on ChaseNet – the bank’s closed-loop payment network.

A year later, the bank struck a deal with Samsung. Chase Pay customers could link their accounts to Samsung Pay on Galaxy phones through the new deal.

It opened up Samsung Pay’s magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology, along with NFC, to pay with Chase Pay across a much broader set of US-based partner retailers.

But in August 2019, the bank decided to stop investing in the app. Just three months earlier, it has announced the shuttering of Finn, its the mobile-only banking offshoot.