This year was an exciting one for the payments landscape. We saw growing demand for EMV as the industry prepared for new regulations, further market acceptance of new currencies and increasingly widespread interest in mobile payments and NFC solutions. And the negative things – including multiple security breaches – acted as motivators for change.
We believe everything that took place in 2014 helped set the stage for future innovation. So what’s to come for payments in 2015? Below are our predictions for the new year.
1. Digital currencies will become an accepted form of payment for legitimate goods and services.
We’ve seen increased adoption of digital currencies by organizations in 2014, and we believe that acceptance of these payments will continue to accelerate into the new year. To support the demand for acceptance of digital currencies, including Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin, we recently announced a partnership with GoCoin, which should be especially useful to ISOs, acquirers and their merchants in 2015.
2. Increasing use of mobile payments will further emphasize the importance of mobile marketing for merchants.
2014 may have been the year for talking about mobile marketing, but 2015 will be the year that merchants really start to look at mobile as a resource for advertisement and generating revenue. Through payment applications, merchants have the potential to offer discounts, display advertising banners, offer VIP messages and share reward opportunities directly from the mobile devices that customers use every day. This easy-to-use technology is now available to ISOs and acquirers, and it is entirely customizable in real time to meet the needs of every business.
3. 2015 will see a significant increase in people using NFC payment methods at point of sale.
With this year’s launch of Apple Pay, consumer awareness of NFC payment methods is at an all-time high and will only increase in 2015. The landscape is changing, and merchants will need to support a wide variety of payment methods simultaneously in upcoming years, including mobile, EMV (chip-and-pin as well as chip-and-signature), cloud-based payment forms residing in digital wallets and common magnetic stripe cards.
4. EMV-ready payment terminals will be a necessity for merchants in the new year.
With several high-profile data breaches at companies such as P.F. Chang’s and Home Depot in 2014, there continues to be widespread demand for increasingly protected transaction solutions, putting the pressure on anyone involved with the EMV transition. This almost goes without saying, but the looming threat of responsibility for not being up-to-date with EMV will require merchants to implement EMV-ready payment terminals and force ISOs and acquirers to support these solutions by the October 2015 deadline (if they haven’t or aren’t already).
What do you think will happen in the payments space in 2015? Share your thoughts on Twitter and LinkedIn.
