UGO Wallet was announced back in 2013 before being released last November. Dubbed as “Canada’s First Open Mobile Wallet,” UGO is both a partnership between TD Canada Trust and PC Financial, and an app that brings together payments and loyalty programs.
UGO is available on Android, BlackBerry and iOS. Despite this, adoption of the service has been relatively slow. In an interview with Bloomberg, UGO CEO Alec Morley said the company has over 100,000 users, with 50,000 users jumping on the service since December. Morley is also estimating that those same users will upload 250,000 loyalty cards to the service by the end of the year.
Android users can use UGO to store their loyalty cards, and pay for items under $100 via their NFC-enabled smartphone. The iPhone version of the app has only the loyalty card option available.
When it launches in Canada, Apple Pay could become an important competitor to UGO, though Morley doesn’t seem worried.
“We see a world, in Canada at least, where there will be a number of wallets,” Morley said. Canadians already trust banks to keep their money safe, so the connection to Toronto-Dominion and President’s Choice is an advantage for UGO,” he said. “We welcome the competition.”
The article was originally published on our sister-site, MobileSyrup.