BFC Bulletins Monthly News Digest
Tags Blockchain Data HR Identification Open Banking Payments Regulation Startups
Payments are a trending topic in the FinTech world. Here are 18 predictions for what’s in store for payments in 2019:
- APIs– every board room is discussing APIs, but the conversations around them will most likely start to shift to proofs of concept as innovation continues to accelerate.
- Real-time– the trend for everything is being driven by the concept of “real-time”. In the payments sector, this is more than just moving a payment from point to point; rather, it involves important data that comes with payments. In 2019, real-time will continue to shape discussions and may even move to beyond real-time and into predictive.
- Payment controls– payment controls have morphed from an on/off debit card discussion into how total payment experiences can be controlled in a centralized way.
- Cyber– we are now moving completely past analogue payment systems into fully-cyber ones.
- Open banking– the first signs of the true power of open banking are appearing, and business cases will soon start flowing in based on value propositions that weren’t available before open banking opened the door.
- Identity – in the digital payments ecosystem, there is a new imperative to be able to validate identities quickly and easily.
- Data– data is where all value of the payments ecosystem will come from; it’s the primary fuel that will drive all other value propositions.
- Trust– trust is the ultimate customer-centricity measure; without it, you can’t have loyalty. And without loyalty, you don’t have customers – you just have people who have transacted with you.
- Blockchain– if we were to create a new ecosystem from scratch today without any heritage infrastructure, it’d be built on blockchain. Now, we are just waiting for the perfect case to pop up and show us why blockchain is vital to the future of payments.
- Open– how open is too open? That’s the question we’ll hear more of in 2019 as open banking and open APIs get pushed more and more into the forefront.
- FinTech – FinTech is here, and having strategies in place to work with newly-introduced ideas is crucial to success.
- Disruption– with new immediate payment initiatives coming online every day, the overlaying services that are based on older batch-based processes will need to adapt to survive.
- Standards– the standards discussion has gone into overdrive in the last few years. Standards will remain a key theme over the next 3-5 years as more and more regions introduce PSD2-like regulations.
- JSON– JSON is the native tongue of startups and developers in the market today; to get the most reach, speaking JSON is a necessity.
- Talent– the ability to attract and retain talent in today’s market will prove to have a measurable impact on financial institutions’ future success.
- Machine learning– this is where the full potential of machine-to-machine payments lives; it is where learning, adapting and true autonomy live.
- Risk– deciding not to play in the new payments ecosystem sandbox opens up a certain level of risk that will start to materialize in 2019.
- Regulation– regulations can be a much-needed push or an impediment. The current state of regulations is putting a lot of funding into the market. The rise of open banking and PSD2 will push the need for FinTech regulations even more in 2019.
