Paze’s merchant network expansion crawls forward with GNC tie-up

The news: Paze scored another merchant partnership, this time with health and wellness brand GNC, per a press release.

How we got here: Early Warning Services (EWS) is building out Paze’s merchant network now that the wallet is widely available to US credit and debit cardholders.

• Pilots of Paze began last summer, but it wasn’t until September 2024, that the first major bank, U.S. Bank, rolled it out at scale.
• The wallet became available to customers at Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, PNC Bank, Truist, and Wells Fargo in October.

What this means: Paze’s merchant network is still quite limited, and this GNC tie-up won't move the needle much.

• EWS began rolling out the wallet with smaller merchants, like SMBs that use GoDaddy. Other tie-ups EWS secured include Omaha Steaks and Cinemark.
• To date, its largest merchant tie-up is with Sephora.

But it still isn’t available at major ecommerce sites like Amazon, eBay, or Walmart. Availability on these platforms will be crucial for Paze to start gaining significant traction.

Our take: Paze could transform the digital wallet industry—but not for some time given its slow merchant rollout.

Still, other wallets like Apple Pay and PayPal will need to prepare for Paze’s influence. They can do so by investing in some of Paze’s innovative features, like payment method optimization.

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