Trends in the payments ecosystem are a lot like fashion: what’s hot one year, likely won’t be the next. The rate at which technology innovations, business and consumer spending habits, and security fears evolve vastly impacts payment processing trends.
What’s worth taking note of in the second quarter of 2017 is what trends are driving payments today, and which ones will stick. That’s why we’ve broken down the top five hottest payment processing trends driving the payments innovation needle forward today.
Hottest Processing Trends in 2017
Payment Processing Trend No. 1: Instant Payments
Whether you’re talking B2B or B2C, business and consumers both expect one thing from their payment processing experience: for that payment to be transacted in near-real time.
From a business perspective, you want your funds reconciled seamlessly, quickly and in a manner where you know when that money will be in your merchant account. From a customer perspective, they expect funds to be drawn out of their account (or returned, in some cases) nearly instantly.
But thanks to the payment processing industry and financial institution investments in faster payments initiatives, the instant payments trend is here to stay — and will continue to refine itself as payments processing tech evolves.
Payment Processing Trend No. 2: FinTech
This is probably the hottest buzzword in payments today, and for a good reason. With an influx of concerns over digital identities (another trend), cybersecurity, payment speed, and providing a digital payments experience, the world of FinTech is expanding at a rapid pace. As the fintech landscape continues to evolve, the role of a fintech development company becomes increasingly crucial in shaping the future of merchant processing, payline data, and the overall digital payments ecosystem.
With new players emerging into the payments processing world every year, FinTech companies and platforms have the power to transform how the concept of exchanging money is conducted. Instead of relying on a physical connection, or even a credit card on hand, FinTech innovations have paved the way for many other payments trends (mobile payments, mobile banking, digital payments, biometrics, etc.)
Not only are financial institutions and payments companies investing heavily in FinTech, businesses today are starting to integrate better technology into their payment processing.
Payment Processing Trend No. 3: Omni-commerce
Gone are the days where businesses can think about their companies as being strictly a physical place. Today, businesses must have a digital presence that spans a website, social media and apps. This has transformed how businesses manage customer interactions, inventory control, sales tracking and overall day-to-day business flows.
The omni-commerce trend has also put pressure on businesses to think about what platforms are worth investing the most time and money toward. This means balancing how much effort is focused on growing their website presence, versus a mobile site or app. It also has challenged businesses to think about how their functions across each of those models.
Payment Processing Trend No. 4: Subscription Economy
Much like the sharing economy trend, which has paved new ways to transact between people and companies, the subscription economy model is also gaining traction.
Because recurring payments through subscription models offer companies steady revenue streams, it’s easy to see why this trend is catching on in virtually every sector. This has also created an entirely new need for efficient payment processing technology that can power high volumes of recurring payments on a monthly basis. This fast-growing trend has also created a new opportunity for payments players to capitalize on.
Payment Processing Trend No. 5: mPOS
Increasingly, payments trends has been heavily driven by the mobile ecosystem. This includes payment processing through the mobile-point-of-sale, AKA the mPOS. Naturally, this trend was born out of one simple concept: business isn’t always conducted in a physical store.
At Payline, we’ve embraced this as one of the top processing trends by offering businesses of all sizes the ability to transform their payment processing by taking it on-the-go — using virtually any device, at anytime and anywhere.
The mPOS trend continues to evolve as more players emerge into this space, paving way for new, innovative payment processing methods. Because mobile payments are gaining popularity, and customers expect businesses to accept payments digitally at anytime, the mPOS trend isn’t a passing fad.
Anna Lothson is a content contributor for Payline Data. She previously wrote for PYMNTS.com, as a Sr. Content Producer, where she focused on financial services and payments innovation, fraud and security, emerging payments, and FinTech news, research and thought-leadership content across the payments industry.
