The year 2016 will be historically acknowledged as the year of demonetisation in India. While the public tried to deal with the aftermath of the surprise government move, retailers and fintech companies in India saw a new trend emerge. By the end of 2016, mobile internet usage overtook desktop for the very first time.
The emergence of this trend meant that in the coming days, we would see mobile first strategies prevailing in mobile banking and e-commerce, and marketplaces, brands and banks will have to put in an extra effort in ensuring that their payment systems remain up to date so as to keep pace with the constantly changing environment. However, it has been observed that customers often end up opting out of a purchase if they find the payment procedure time-consuming and difficult to comprehend. But, the tech sector is making sure that it keeps innovating and making advancements to the already available tech on a timely-basis to make sure that this doesn't ends up being the case.
Here, we talk about how the following three tech innovations can help in changing the future of payments:
Unique ID
Both the merchants and the banks are now making a much needed shift from multiple payment authorisation features to the creation of a single unique ID that will allow the users to make faster and more secure transactions. A unique ID will also make customers easily identifiable across multiple channels.
Synaptics, a US-based human interface company, partnered with KeyLemon to come up with an authentication option, where a user has an option of choosing between fingerprint authorization, facial recognition, or go for both the options at the same time. Synaptics' founders strongly believe that this can significantly help in increasing security and convenience during mobile payments and banking. In addition to this, the company's new authentication option could also lead to banks and marketplaces opting out of token, password and PIN security features.
Along with Synaptics, tech biggies Apple and Google are also in the process of globally launching fingerprint payment authentication with their Pay apps. A number of banks like Wells Fargo are also trying to catch up with the trend. MasterCard had already started verifying payments through both facial recognition and fingerprints authentication since the end of last year.
Bluetooth: A New Chapter Unfolds
Bluetooth, which had somewhere lost its importance as the world of tech progressed, is now ready to be reborn and take over the world once again. According to tech experts, Bluetooth has the potential of being widely utilized in a range of mobile features and services in the coming years. The unique combination of the wireless connection's high transmission speed and low energy consumption can be expected to particularly affect P2P payments.
A UAE-based startup Bridg has already developed an app that allows smartphone-to-smartphone money transfers by harnessing the power of Bluetooth. The only catch here is, that the app requires at least one of the two devices involved in the transaction to be online. The app can prove to be a major attraction in markets with poor internet connectivity.
Pay As You Go
The end of 2016 saw e-commerce giant Amazon introducing the world to Amazon Go - a physical convenience store, wherein people can easily shop for groceries by scanning the items they want with their smartphones. What caught everyone's attention was that Amazon Go didn't have a checkout process; this was because the bill amount would automatically get deducted from customers' Amazon accounts once they left the store.
Amazon Go is being massively appreciated both by experts and users as its model provides a much faster and more convenient payment option than all the other existing ones. This model is expected to have a huge influence on strategies of other retailers, especially the ones that are still heavily reliant on bricks and mortar sales. However, given the need of human interaction in several retail experiences, the impact might just not be as profound across all the retailers.
The emergence of this trend meant that in the coming days, we would see mobile first strategies prevailing in mobile banking and e-commerce, and marketplaces, brands and banks will have to put in an extra effort in ensuring that their payment systems remain up to date so as to keep pace with the constantly changing environment. However, it has been observed that customers often end up opting out of a purchase if they find the payment procedure time-consuming and difficult to comprehend. But, the tech sector is making sure that it keeps innovating and making advancements to the already available tech on a timely-basis to make sure that this doesn't ends up being the case.
Here, we talk about how the following three tech innovations can help in changing the future of payments:
Unique ID
Both the merchants and the banks are now making a much needed shift from multiple payment authorisation features to the creation of a single unique ID that will allow the users to make faster and more secure transactions. A unique ID will also make customers easily identifiable across multiple channels.
Synaptics, a US-based human interface company, partnered with KeyLemon to come up with an authentication option, where a user has an option of choosing between fingerprint authorization, facial recognition, or go for both the options at the same time. Synaptics' founders strongly believe that this can significantly help in increasing security and convenience during mobile payments and banking. In addition to this, the company's new authentication option could also lead to banks and marketplaces opting out of token, password and PIN security features.
Along with Synaptics, tech biggies Apple and Google are also in the process of globally launching fingerprint payment authentication with their Pay apps. A number of banks like Wells Fargo are also trying to catch up with the trend. MasterCard had already started verifying payments through both facial recognition and fingerprints authentication since the end of last year.
Bluetooth: A New Chapter Unfolds
Bluetooth, which had somewhere lost its importance as the world of tech progressed, is now ready to be reborn and take over the world once again. According to tech experts, Bluetooth has the potential of being widely utilized in a range of mobile features and services in the coming years. The unique combination of the wireless connection's high transmission speed and low energy consumption can be expected to particularly affect P2P payments.
A UAE-based startup Bridg has already developed an app that allows smartphone-to-smartphone money transfers by harnessing the power of Bluetooth. The only catch here is, that the app requires at least one of the two devices involved in the transaction to be online. The app can prove to be a major attraction in markets with poor internet connectivity.
Pay As You Go
The end of 2016 saw e-commerce giant Amazon introducing the world to Amazon Go - a physical convenience store, wherein people can easily shop for groceries by scanning the items they want with their smartphones. What caught everyone's attention was that Amazon Go didn't have a checkout process; this was because the bill amount would automatically get deducted from customers' Amazon accounts once they left the store.
Amazon Go is being massively appreciated both by experts and users as its model provides a much faster and more convenient payment option than all the other existing ones. This model is expected to have a huge influence on strategies of other retailers, especially the ones that are still heavily reliant on bricks and mortar sales. However, given the need of human interaction in several retail experiences, the impact might just not be as profound across all the retailers.
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