The Douugh Ltd (ASX: DOU) share price is surging in early morning trade. This comes after the company announced it has launched a new instant virtual card. At the time of writing, the financial wellness app provider's shares are up 8.1% to 20 cents.
What did Douugh announce?
The Douugh share price is on the move as investors appear pleased with the company's latest update.
According to this morning's release, Douugh has launched its instant virtual card push provisioning in partnership with Mastercard.
Push provisioning is a type of technology that allows the user to link their card details within the app to a digital wallet. This eliminates the obsolete method of having to input the card numbers manually into the smartphone.
The new contactless payment method seeks to improve the customer experience through significantly reducing wait times to begin making purchases. Traditionally, it takes up to 10 days to receive a physical card, and sometimes longer due to COVID-19 supply chain delays. However, now customers can be instantly issued a virtual card and add it directly to their mobile wallet.
Douugh believes this will lead to improved customer activation rates. This is because the consumer banking fintech is one of the first to offer this feature in the United States.
According to a Mastercard survey, eight out of ten people stated that they use some form of contactless payment method. Most of these consumers explained that safety and security were the main reason for the digital adoption.
Management commentary
Douugh founder and CEO Andy Taylor touched on the company's instant virtual card launch, saying:
We are delighted to announce the launch of push provisioning. This is the achievement of yet another critical milestone for the business. It allows us to dramatically shorten the cycle time for customers to be able to use the Douugh service.
As we see the US catch up with Australia in terms of the adoption of contactless mobile payments, it's been vital for us as a mobile banking platform to be able to become digital first in how we facilitate the payment experience at point of sale.
About the Douugh share price
Since its listing in October last year, the Douugh share price has rocketed by almost 1,000%. However, year to date, Douugh shares have increased by only 8%.
On current valuation grounds, Douugh has a market capitalisation of around $66 million, with approximately 359 million shares on issue.
