About the author: Ricky Graziosi is a Product Manager responsible for Marqeta’s Digital Wallet and Tokenization products. Ricky has experience in Payment Processing, Card Issuing, Digital Wallets, and Tokenization.
We’re excited to announce an expansion of our digital wallet and tokenization capabilities with the launch of Web Push Provisioning for Apple Pay and Google Pay digital wallets. This provides developers with another method for pushing a card to a user's digital wallet directly through a web browser without needing a mobile application, opening up additional use cases and payment experiences that can be leveraged both in-store and online.
Check out our quick explainer video that walks through what web push provisioning means for developers.
Tokenization explained
For developers that may be new to the concept of tokenization, it’s the process of storing card details at the network level with a surrogate token and adding them into a digital wallet to pay for goods and services. This offers cardholders the ability to immediately use the payment method upon issuance of the card and the versatility to pay online or in store with the touch of a few buttons or a simple tap and verification.
Provisioning methods
Web Push Provisioning is an exciting capability that leverages Marqeta’s existing instant issuance capabilities. It builds on the success of several other provisioning methods Marqeta currently offers. These include manual-entry by the cardholder, card-on-file where the digital wallet already has the cardholder information, and in-app provisioning where a mobile app dynamically creates a new virtual card then adds it to the digital wallet for instant availability of funds.
As developers choose which provisioning method is the best fit, it’s good to understand that each approach has pros and cons. For instance, manual-entry is simple, but a user could get frustrated having to key in their information, and doing so makes it prone to typing errors. In-app provisioning eliminates the potential for those types of mistakes, but it often requires users to download an app for one-time use, which can be a pain.
That’s where Web Push Provisioning comes in, making it possible for cardholders to add cards to their digital wallet of choice via their browser, seamlessly adding it to their mobile device. This eliminates the need to install an app simply to add a card to a digital wallet, and overcomes the resistance of consumers that could have been a deal breaker.
Implementation is a fairly straightforward and light lift for card programs and includes integration into APIs with Marqeta as well as Apple and Google wallets. At a high level, this integration requires adding a JavaScript Library to your front end web page, as well as integrating with your backend to deliver the necessary parameters to Marqeta.
Marqeta’s Money20/20 demonstration proved to be a good real-world example of a Web Push Provisioning use case. We distributed hundreds of physical cards at the show featuring a QR code with instructions for the user to scan the code to get a $5 virtual card issued and added to their Apple or Google wallet. As shown in this Anatomy of the Swipe video, it was as easy as a couple button pushes and a few seconds.
We’d love to hear from you. Comment below to let us know what questions you have or how you see Web Push Provisioning fitting into your payment experiences.
Hello @davew thank you for reading! We are not sure of the exact timeline, but this will be available in sandbox in the future. Currently we are restricted by some limitations with the digital wallet providers and the networks. We will update here once it is available.
@rgraziosi Great demo. On the backend, is this using an Apple App Clip as a shim to talk to the wallet or is apple exposing provisioning services directly to safari/javascript?
Thanks @tpurves, this is a direct integration with Apple to it's web push provisioning APIs. We did the same thing for Google and worked with them to build it initially. The provisioning services are build on direct integrations without the use of app clips and have the ability to provision to all supported devices using apple and google wallet. (Phones, tablets, browsers, watches)
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