The news: Early Warning Services partnered with Fiserv to expand Paze acceptance through its merchant network.

Scaling up: Paze launched in October 2024. Its strengths as a mobile wallet include passwordless sign-in, payment method optimization, and tokenized security measures—all key factors to challenging the likes of Apple Pay and PayPal.

But Paze still needs to expand both sides of its network. Until recently, Paze relied on partnerships with individual merchants to gain digital wallet market share. It’s also only available at the seven banks that own EWS.

Fiserv’s impact: Paze’s partnership with Fiserv is a big win for the mobile wallet—building on a similar partnership with Worldpay. Fiserv’s extensive merchant network, which includes Clover, opens up Paze for the wide acceptance it needs to really scale. 

As more consumers start to see Paze as an option across the web, adoption could take off.

Our take: Paze’s product offerings hold value and firepower to siphon away existing digital wallets’ current users. Consumers are already hungry for “one-click” solutions, and Paze automatically integrates with bank partners so that customers don’t have to manually input their card details.

Looking forward, EWS should pull from its Zelle blueprint and expand beyond the owner-bank ecosystem to find growth opportunities.