What Innovation in Payment Means

As a payment nerd, you usually wait a long time for an innovation to arrive in everyday life. In addition to technical development, there are many stakeholders, all of whom want to have their say. These new ways you can also use at the GranaWin casino.

Besides the necessary budgets and the various interests in politics, companies, and shareholders, there are also regulatory challenges (besides data protection and consumer rights) that cannot be underestimated. The value chain from end customer to merchant consists of issuers, technical processors, schemes, potentially payment terminals, acquirers, and many other participants. Everyone must take action for innovations to find their way into everyday life.

At PEX 2025, the observation was made that payment is “solved” (in the sense that processes and user experience can hardly be improved)? There is certainly some truth to that, but as is often the case, it is also a matter of perspective, and there have rarely been so many of them as there are today.

The acceptance of a new feature also depends on users (both end customers and merchants). Sometimes, in addition to innovation, a push is needed – the correlation between the invention of contactless payments in the early 2000s and the current share of contactless payments is not without reason associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a technology that is over 20 years old and admire it as innovative.

The Duden defines innovation as: “Realization of a novel, progressive solution to a specific problem, especially the introduction of a new product or the application of a new process.”

This raises the question of whether there is payment innovation and what to expect next. The list of possible topics is long:  

– AI-supported processes and systems  

– Digital Euro  

– Instant Payments (and all related topics)  

– Biometric authentication methods  

– EUDI Wallet  

– and many others.  

And, of course, there are new payment methods, some with remarkable success (BLIK, TWINT, etc.). Each of these topics fills exciting discussions around the fireplace and the occasional roadmap. However, finding an industry-changing technology is a more challenging task.

Instead, there is a mountain of regulation and technical tools, such as QR-code-based payment methods, which are not used due to their groundbreaking technological innovation, but rather because the distribution of payment methods, especially at the point of sale, is costly and time-consuming, along with many other innovations that payment providers are working on.

Many market participants in payment have grown over the years; there have been (or still are) acquisitions and mergers, aging platforms, and established organizational structures. This contributes to the fact that the time from the idea to the go-live is often comparable to that of building a new highway bridge. Like building a highway bridge, there are good and less good reasons for the duration. Or, framed as a question: Can this be done differently?

Yes, it can, and because payment is a business strongly driven by scale, it must be done. Platforms need to be updated and consolidated. Organizations should be structured around products, not platforms. Payment is no longer an unexplored research field, and it is therefore important to prepare for the future to retain or gain innovation power.

Another thought: Payment is a means to an end and is subordinate to the actual purchase, that is, the interaction between end customers and merchants. Customer loyalty is an important tool for retail and other sectors and requires more than just payment processing. Therefore, some merchants address the customer interface with their own digital (loyalty) solutions; payment is a building block and must function seamlessly within the solution. This is often easier said than done, as customer loyalty hits limits when the offered payment methods are not accepted. This applies to grocery shopping at the checkout as well as in-car payments or ticket purchases in public transport.

Even if it may not be considered “innovative” in the sense of the Duden’s definition, the payment industry has many topics in sight. In addition to digital application processes and providing as many payment methods as possible, linking and analyzing data from all sales channels, simple yet secure customer authentication, and a willingness to collaborate based on the understanding that only open systems stand a chance for broad acceptance.