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There is no doubt that the past few years have seen sharp contrasts and quantum change within the global payment marketplace across every vertical sector. There have been palpable sighs of relief from everyone – individuals, to businesses and Governments themselves - to have finally emerged from the pandemic’s darkest days. However, these have inevitably been offset by the global economic fall-out demonstrated, most emphatically, by a very severe cost of living crisis and rising inflation in many countries. This has had an acutely negative impact on just about every commercial sector. Where then does the future lie and what trends and developments can we expect for the payments industry into 2023 and beyond?
Mobile payments have, more than most, seen the emergence of a ‘new normal’ encapsulating significant advances in the recognition of, and approach to, service levels and how these can seriously affect customer satisfaction and loyalty. In essence, there has been a much-increased recognition of the intrinsic value behind optimising the overall customer experience. Delays at point of sale, queuing and lack of choice are amongst the most obvious frustrations. When trying to complete a shopping, dining or other transaction from beginning to end can involve the requirement for multiple devices such as barcode scanners, Chip and PIN devices, security tag machines and receipt printers. This process is both slow, complex and irritating. 2023 looks like it will deliver continued progress in the development of new technologies to counter such impediments. For example, it seems very likely that we will benefit from the advent of personal smart devices where customers enter a venue, select their goods or services and actually use their own device to build a basket and checkout their own purchases directly. Likewise, we expect the steady implementation of SoftPOS technology, which enables merchants to use NFC (Near Field Communication) embedded smartphones or tablets as secure payment terminals. Obviously, this is intended to deliver a simpler and more seamless customer experience – and therefore a happier merchant as well.
The acceleration of the trend towards the widespread adoption of digitalisation will prove beneficial for any organisation which wants to prove how nimble and agile it is. It will still need to demonstrate how its people use technology to support their client and then how they can use this technology to help those customers’ businesses develop and evolve for the future. So, we are seeing a growing interest around things like data at the moment and payments providers will be better able to predict and understand a lot about how and why customers buy the items they do. For example, what are their preferences? Where do they like to spend most of their time across the different sales channels? Merchants can then utilise this data to identify patterns more accurately across the purchase chain, such as how many items does one need to stock in a particular store or location at any given time. By analysing a shopper’s prior purchasing record, they can also start to understand and predict how many people they are likely to see come through the doors of their outlet – highly valuable information indeed. Another obvious benefit for merchants is that this data will help them to implement loyalty programmes – or improve existing ones. Loyalty is absolutely critical for businesses to maximise client retention! Therefore in 2023 and beyond it will be increasingly important to adopt digitalisation and recognise how it can help businesses organise themselves and make them able to embrace the changes that are already here and those that are just around the corner. These will be the businesses who prove to be the most agile and consequently the most successful.
Change often appears from nowhere and the least expected developments can revolutionise the marketplace. I remember, almost a decade ago when Chip and PIN first started to emerge in the UK, retailers were reticent, pushing back saying that we were just trying to fix a problem – mainly fraud - that didn’t exist. Well, things and attitudes have certainly changed. One only has to look at how contactless payments now involve watches, rings and other previously unimaginable methods.
So, clearly any aspiring successful organisation will need to invest heavily in the buyer experience, whether this is in the physical service offering, or technological advances across multiple channels – not resting on its laurels. The world of payments is a fast moving and exciting one where it is always fascinating to see what comes next.
