Microsoft Pay (previously Microsoft Wallet) was a

mobile payment A mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device, as the cardinal class of d ...

and

digital wallet A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet, is an electronic device, online service, or software program that allows one party to make electronic transactions with another party bartering digital currency units for goods and services. This can ...

service by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

that allowed users to make payments and store loyalty cards on certain mobile devices, as well on PCs using the

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...

browser. Microsoft Pay does not require Microsoft Pay-specific

contactless payment Contactless payment systems are credit cards and debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near-field communication (NFC, e.g. Samsun ...

terminals, and supported existing contactless terminals if used on mobile devices. Similar to

Android Pay Google Wallet (or simply Wallet) is a digital wallet platform developed by Google. It is available for the Android, Wear OS, and Fitbit OS operating systems, and was announced on May 11, 2022, at the 2022 Google I/O keynote. It began rolling ...

, Microsoft Pay utilized

host card emulation Host card emulation (HCE) is the software architecture that provides exact virtual representation of various electronic identity (access, transit and banking) cards using only software. Prior to the HCE architecture, near field communication (NFC) ...

(HCE) for making in-store payments. The service's original name was also originally used for a feature included in

Internet Explorer 4 Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris, and H ...

and

Internet Explorer 5 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first Browser wars, browser war. Its distribution methods and Wi ...

that allowed users to store credit card information to use with a limited number of supported sites.

History

Microsoft Wallet was launched on June 21, 2016, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was initially released to participants of Microsoft's

Windows Insider Windows Insider is an open software testing program by Microsoft that allows users globally who own a valid license of Windows 11, Windows 10, or Windows Server to register for pre-release builds of the operating system previously only accessible ...

program and was later made available to the general public on August 16, 2016, with the release of the Windows 10 Mobile Anniversary Update. The service was launched exclusively to

Windows 10 Mobile Windows 10 Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. First released in 2015, it is a successor to Windows Phone 8.1, but was marketed by Microsoft as being an edition of its PC operating system Windows 10. Wind ...

in conjunction with an update to Microsoft's Wallet app. The launch of the Microsoft Wallet service established Microsoft's own in-house mobile payment platform, enabling it to bypass its prior dependencies on third parties for contactless payments on Windows-based smartphones. Microsoft's mobile operating system had previously supported contactless payments for

NFC NFC may refer to: Psychology * Need for cognition, in psychology * Need for closure, social psychological term Sports * NFC Championship Game, the National Football Conference Championship Game * NCAA Football Championship (Philippines) * Nati ...

-equipped handsets as early as 2012 in

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was su ...

and the original Wallet app. However, in the prior operating system, Microsoft depended on third-party intervention to make the payments feasible. Mobile carriers had to support this by providing secure element SIM cards to customers. Additionally, in the United States, mobile carriers

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...

, and

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

required use of their joint-venture developed platform,

Softcard JVL Ventures, LLC d/b/a Softcard (formerly Isis Mobile Wallet), was a joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon which produced a mobile payments platform known as ''Softcard'', which used near-field communication (NFC) technology to allo ...

, to process the payments. When Softcard was purchased (and subsequently shut down) by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in early 2015, it left the Windows platform without a viable contactless payment system in the United States. The new platform allows Microsoft to coordinate directly with financial institutions and credit card issuers to make contactless payments on Windows-based smartphones, beginning in the United States. On November 15, 2017, Microsoft rebranded Microsoft Wallet to Microsoft Pay and allowed payments to be processed through it on

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

. Microsoft retired the service on February 28, 2019, coinciding with the company's end of support for

and subsequent exit from the mobile OS market at the end of the year.

References

External links

* {{Mobile payments Microsoft Mobile payments in the United States Mobile payments

History

See also

References

External links