As we reflect on the past year in payments, we have read a lot about what’s to come in our industry in the new year. Knowing best practices in how to accept card payments in 2017 is, of course, important for your business’s continued success. Here is three industry experts’ take on what lies ahead for payment processing in the new year.
1. Credit/ debit cards will become useless.
This bold prediction comes from Molly Reynolds, founder of The Unicorn in the Room. Reynolds shared the following about changes in how to accept card payments with Huffington Post:
“Are you one of the many people who prefer to handle all of your financial transactions through your phone? Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions, predicts that credit and debit cards won’t be needed when we walk out the house. “Consumer shopping habits are progressing such that having your phone is more important than your physical wallet,” he says. “With contactless cards expected to double worldwide by 2021 (ABI Research), 2017 will be the year people begin to ditch the wallet as merchants start to standardize the acceptance of contactless digitized within mobile wallets and create incentives to pay this way, downloadable directly to your device.””
As Reynolds points out and as many in the industry recognize is that total abandonment of credit cards would create a huge revenue gap for banks. Banks depend on interest rates from credit cards and overdraft fees associated with debit cards and would stand to lose billions if cards became obsolete.
2. The EMV rollout will keep on rolling.
Despite great strides since the October 2015 liability shift and dramatic changes in how to accept card payments at retail businesses, EMV technology still has a long way to go before becoming fully accepted by every retail business with a terminal. In a recent post on the FICO blog, TJ Horan shares that swiping will still occur at retail businesses well into 2017 and even into 2020 since gas pumps will not be required to have chip-card readers until October 2020.
3. Payments become “invisible”.
In a recent post on Mobile Payments Today, André Stoorvogel shares that the Internet of Things (IoT) will shape the future of how to accept card payments. He writes,
“Providing the consumer with a truly frictionless experience is the holy grail for the payments industry. This has already been achieved in-app with platforms such as Uber but has yet to be translated in-store. In the IoT era, however, we are moving ever closer to delivering a seamless in-store experience. Beacons, geolocation, computer vision and biometric technologies are being combined to deliver a frictionless experience.”
We will see the industry continue to grow in new directions in 2017, many of which will be consumer driven. To learn more about how to accept credit card payments in the new year and stay ahead of trends at your business, connect with Payline today.
