RBC Sees Big Payments Changes Right Around The Corner

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

Jeremy Bornstein, head of payments innovation at RBC, spoke to us about the difference stages of commerce and the next big thing for payments.

PYMNTS: What have been some big trends, successes and challenges you’ve been following in 2015?

JB: We’ve been plotting this transition of commerce and the way consumers buy from this “Imagine Commerce 1.0” in the 50s, when it was all about newspapers and television guiding people to buy, to this “Commerce 2.0,” where it’s about loyalty and going to a store to explore and research a project. For the last few years, we’ve been talking about “Commerce 3.0” since the early 2010s – a melding together of the various steps in the commercial transaction. We’re even seeing signs of the emergence of a “Commerce 4.0,” and the change from each of these generations is happening faster than ever.

PYMNTS: Third-party wallets have been the talk of the town recently. What’s your take on these becoming more commonplace?

JB: We’re in a bit of a privileged position in Canada, being so close to the U.S. and able to watch it experience the rollout of these third-party wallets. We’re watching what consumers are doing with them, how they’re using them and what drives usage and behavior. They’re not in Canada yet, but this is all about consumer choice and ensuring that our clients can choose our  payment vehicles with the wallet or applications of their choice. If Amazon were to develop a wallet and our clients loved it, we need to make sure our credentials are available in a place that is safe and secure and where our clients want them to be.

PYMNTS: Are there any trends you expect to grow over the next few years?

JB: Social payments are going to be enormous next year. Over time, you might see the disappearance of the point of sale – getting that Apple Store experience where there isn’t that traditional checkout location. We’ll see more of that, but it won’t happen overnight. I can imagine walking into a Costco and showing my mobile phone to the checker on the way out. It could increase the use of in-app payments, which makes more problems for us. Wherever our customers want to use their RBC accounts, we need to be ready for it.