How Will We Pay In 2018?

A wise man named Ferris once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

So it is with payments, where innovation moves pretty fast, too. Blink and all of a sudden, you’ve gone from swiping cards to tapping at the terminal – or from asking a search engine for directions to asking Alexa, in a near shout, for all manner of assistance.

Thus, how we will pay is always a question. It’s a continuum, of course, one where the past informs the future, where form follows function and where the consumer is, eventually, always right.

What lies ahead? It is, of course, too early to tell. But some stats serve as signposts, pointing to the ways that financial institutions must mull over the ways individuals interact with them. Consider the fact that 77 percent of consumers want their FIs to enable new ways to pay. Retailers might do well to pay attention to the fact that 61 percent of consumers say shopping – as an overall activity – is unproductive and even boring. Lively up yerself, retailers.

Think tablets and smartphones are the way to go? To a point, the answer is yes. But we live in an age where the super-connected, are well, super … connected, and so merchants are going to find ways to reach those who own as many as six (!?) devices.

The readiness is all, said the Bard – another wise man, right up there with Ferris.