Microsoft Wallet

~ the goodbye ~

microsoft wallet did not reach turkey. it did not really reach anywhere. it was a tap-to-pay app for windows 10 mobile, a phone platform that had basically no users by the time the wallet shipped. the app launched into the windows insider channel on june 21 2016, opened to everyone on august 16 the same year, got rebranded microsoft pay in late 2017, and was switched off on february 28 2019.

the feature itself was fine. you added a credit card to the wallet, the phone did host card emulation over nfc, you tapped it on a contactless reader and the transaction went through. honestly, this is the same model apple pay and android pay used. for whatever reason, the carriers and banks microsoft signed up did the same kyc-style verification flow you saw on the other platforms.

the missing piece was the phone. by 2016 windows 10 mobile had been written off by the industry. the lumia 950 sold poorly, the lumia 950 xl sold worse, and microsoft itself wrote down $7.6 billion on the nokia handset business in july 2015. the wallet was a payment system for the phone that microsoft had already given up on. it was almost a press release more than a product.

i was on android the whole way through, like most turkish engineers in their early thirties. in those days, contactless payment in turkey ran through bkm express and the bank apps, not through a phone-os-level wallet. by 2018 troy cards were appearing on most android nfc terminals. windows phone never had a meaningful presence in turkish operator stores, so microsoft wallet was a product you read about in english tech blogs and never installed.

~ the chronicle ~

~ what it was ~

the wallet had two modes. you could store loyalty cards and gift cards and tap them at compatible terminals, or you could store actual payment cards. the loyalty side worked anywhere with a barcode-scan terminal. the payment side worked anywhere with nfc contactless. it was the second mode microsoft pitched in its keynotes.

the bank list at launch was four institutions. all four were small us regional banks (people's united, first tech, kingdom of money credit union, woodforest national bank). microsoft never landed the big four. that absence was visible in the press from the first month. without chase or wells fargo or bank of america, the wallet could not advertise itself as a real wallet.

~ the decline ~

the rebrand to microsoft pay in august 2017 was supposed to expand the surface. for some reason microsoft framed it as a cross-device payment system that could live in edge on desktop too, not just on phones. that part shipped quietly and never gained any meaningful adoption. nobody was checking out on microsoft websites in 2017 through a wallet feature in the edge browser, that pattern belonged to apple pay on safari and to amazon-style express checkouts.

~ the day it died ~

the windows central post in december 2018 carried the news plainly: microsoft wallet for windows phone would stop working on february 28 2019. honestly, microsoft did not write a long obituary. the retirement was bundled with the end-of-support for windows 10 mobile itself. by then nobody who still had a lumia was using it as a primary phone. the wallet was deleted from a category that microsoft had already lost the ability to sell into.

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