How CT-Payment Inc. Is A Step Ahead Of EMV

The PYMNTS team caught up with experts in the payments field to ask them their views on industry trends, predictions for the future and what their ideal payments system looks like.

Here’s what Denis Robert, President and CEO of CT-Payment Inc., had to say.

PYMNTS: What were the biggest trends and lessons of 2015?

DR: What’s most exciting from a U.S. basis is EMV migration.

In the other markets, we’re adopting and talking wallet and mobile, but instead of really talking about it, it’s operational, it’s executional. So rather than focusing on EMV, we’ve looked at supporting all the large banks and enabling them with mobile technologies, which is one step ahead of the EMV model.

One of the issues is that everyone is coming out with their technology. But the reality is that I think all of these solutions should be a bit more agnostic. They should learn to capture through a wider audience than the one they specifically have within their current niche.

PYMNTS: What are your predictions for moving forward into 2016?

DR: I think in the U.S., obviously the EMV trend will certainly continue, and I think that it will probably accelerate because now we can see that the banks have really been jumping on the bandwagon, so they’re starting to issue cards and that will actually stimulate all of the different processors and partners to get with the music.

I think that 2016 will be a race to get to this technology and to make sure that more and more customers will be able to process with their EMV card.

PYMNTS: In a perfect world, what does the ideal payment system look like?

DR: I would say that it has to be a totally seamless and agnostic solution. There should be one seamless solution that would adapt to every technology. So a bank or processor would not have to say “I need to adapt to this credential because it’s Apple” — there would be regulations that say these are the standards, these are the tools, these are the applications.

That payment solution should be ubiquitous, and should be one single piece of technology. That would be the ideal solution. Everybody tries to differentiate, and from a marketing standpoint, everybody wants to bring stickiness to their technology, and how do you bring stickiness? It’s by differentiating.

So by default, the goal is not to make everything alike, because from a marketing standpoint you want to differentiate your product. So I think we’re far down the line.