Morgan Stanley Comments on Visa's Digital Wallet

Morgan Stanley is providing some commentary on Visa's V new digital wallet. “We spent the day with Jim McCarthy (Global Head of Product) and investors, and gained a much better understanding of yesterday's strategic announcement,” Morgan Stanley writes. “We believe the perception of it being just another ‘mobile wallet' understates the initiative, as we view it as bringing Visa's historical network processing scale, speed and security into the next generation of payments, which will include new form factors (mobile), players (MNOs, media, social networks, handset manufacturers, technology companies, etc), and value propositions to merchants, issuers, and consumers. “The extent to which this initiative gains momentum with investors (and eventually drives stock appreciation) will depend on Visa's ability to add new channel partners and show consumer adoption uptake. At the very least, we think the discussion around Visa's mobile strategy will mitigate some investor concern about the threat of disintermediation around new/alternative payments.” Visa closed Thursday at $79.93.