From the rise of digital payment services becoming a regular feature in business to the roll-out of 5G technology, there have been many transformative technologies in recent years that have changed the state of payments for businesses and customers alike.
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Paytech has modernised payment speeds enormously, along with efficiency and risk protection for SMEs, offering a significant opportunity for businesses to optimise their operations. These are just a few of the ways that digitisation will become ubiquitous in 2021 and beyond.
Rise of Contactless Payments
In a bid to maintain social distancing and health and safety guidelines over the past year, contactless payments have boomed, paving the way for a range of contactless payment options. Payment options such as QR codes and smartphones to ‘tap and go’ solutions and wearable tech make consumers the world over increasingly reliant on contactless methods. A study by Juniper Research found that 27% of all digital commerce transactions by 2024 are expected to be made with QR codes.
Not only are contactless payments increasing in popularity and usage in-store, but they will be at the core of omnichannel or cross-shopping experiences, which customers have come to expect from the businesses they deal with.
Contactless payments could be the differentiator that set your business apart from competitors and improve brand loyalty from your customers.
For many shoppers, a store that doesn’t offer contactless payment methods is a store that doesn’t get their custom. In a study by VISA, 48% of consumers claim they wouldn’t shop at a store that only offers payment methods which require contact with a cashier or a shared machine such as a card reader, resulting in a huge loss of sales for businesses reluctant to join the cashless trend.
Voice-activated payments
Photo by Malte Helmhold | Unsplash
Voice activation has already accelerated a range of daily tasks, from logging into accounts to activating cards and paying bills. This innovative technology has the power to improve financial services significantly, and in more ways than simply convenience. The rise of chatbots with speech to text/text to speech conversion make this a great technological feature for improving accessibility for customers too.
Powered by Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Language Processing, voice activation technology is a common feature of our homes and cars. It’s already used as part of payment processing systems where biometric security and smart verification is used. But over the next few years, we’re likely to see this technology being rolled out in the financial sector for banks, payment providers and other financial institutions to benefit from.
Digital currency
Photo by Dmitry Demidko | Unsplash
Cryptocurrency payment gateways will allow businesses to accept digital currency payment transactions in exchange for goods and services, opening up a new avenue of opportunity for companies and greater choice for customers.
Following the effects of 2020, more people are beginning to trust cryptocurrency as a safe option. However, in order to convince more people to use this technology, companies need to emphasise the importance of security.
There are many benefits for businesses in choosing to adapt to cryptocurrency payments, from lower transaction fees to no chargebacks and easier international transfer facilitation, which is ideal for small businesses who are reluctant to accept international sales as a result of cross-border transaction fees.
Cryptocurrency can be integrated with POS systems, shopping cart software and eCommerce platforms, offering convenience and flexibility for business owners. And as the understanding around this technology grows, the benefits are becoming clearer to businesses, from faster payment processing to reduced overhead and operational costs.
By engaging with digital currency, companies will be able to enter the future of paytech on a local and global scale and stay relevant among competitors.
Final thoughts
The popularity of digital banking and paytech has been growing over the past decade, and initially, it was targeted at younger, more tech-savvy consumers. However, the pandemic outbreak accelerated the use of these types of payment options around the world for all users to enable businesses to remain efficient and offer the best possible customer experience.
Digital payments have emerged as the fastest and safest option for a range of sectors and, over the coming years, we will see more and more innovations appearing to meet the new demand.
