With this article, we wanted to take a fresh look at what’s new in payments, a pretty broad area and constantly under change. What is certain is that the push to make payments “painless” or “frictionless” continues, driven by uber-like successes.
In industry after industry, “appification” takes many forms, but what is common is that apps are all about creating a seamless experience in an environment that’s more interactive, function-rich and personal than traditional web interfaces.
The “appification” of commerce is transforming the buying experience and making it easier and more convenient for shoppers to interact with, use, or order products and services and eliminates friction from the payment process. While disrupters like Uber may have been first to jump in, the pool of innovators is filling up with traditional companies such as Domino’s and Kohl’s that have proved it possible to use apps to revitalize their brand, win new customers and increase ticket sales and revenues.
Using APIs, companies can embed payments and personalized buy buttons into any app or site and deliver contextualized commerce in places where people are most likely to purchase.
Innovations in the cloud are making the public cloud more secure and reliable and private and hybrid cloud environments more accessible, accelerating the momentum of commerce in every context.
Tokenization, which masks buyers’ sensitive information during payment, is increasing security and buyer confidence even further by adding an extra level of security to sensitive credit card data.
New advances in artificial intelligence and data analytics are helping marketers provide the right context for each customer and dynamically configure pricing to meet regional needs, as well as deliver special offers to reward and encourage loyalty.
When customers have the right options at their fingertips, they feel in control and are more motivated to interact, download, engage, follow and buy – all key outcomes that marketers are seeking. Of course, there are many more things to be added on “what’s new in payments”, what would you say is the next big thing that will directly impact the way we do business?
