Where Innovators Intersect: Innovation Project 2015

Move over tradition, it’s time for innovation — for the third year running.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, today (March 18), Innovation Project 2015 kicks off its two-day event that will drive payments leaders through “Innovation At The Intersection” — this year’s theme intended to implicate how innovation in payments and commerce is at a crossroads, moving from one particular way of thinking and doing innovation to another.

“No longer is it the case that the future of our industry is decided or even influenced by those of us who’ve been in this business for years might call, the ‘traditional payments’ players,” said MPD CEO Karen Webster, addressing the Innovation Project crowd Wednesday morning. “Instead, our future — our collective future — is being shaped by a number of ecosystems and platforms that are just as robust, just as complex and just as powerful. Ecosystems that are keenly interested in understanding the impact that payments can have on them — as we are in payments to help them explore what’s possible.”

The theme, Webster noted, is a “nod to the complexity that is the payment and commerce landscape today.” And today, it starts with mobile — the one device that is slowly connecting every human around the world, the one device that consumers don’t let leave their side, and the one device that’s changing the way how we communicate, interact and pay.

“More than any other, mobile is the ecosystem that has given rise to the sea-change taking place in payments today,” Webster said. “The mobile devices that are owned by nearly every single human being on this planet, and never far from their reach — are part of an ecosystem operated by some of the most powerful players in the world. And, now, among the biggest names in payments.”

Whether it be shopping, paying bills, checking a bank balance, transferring money or making a payment using that device, mobile has transformed virtually every industry it touches — and the payments industry is at the forefront of it all. Offline and online worlds have become one, and mobile is leading the way consumers live their lives and conduct business.

And it’s those consumers driving the decision makers today.

“This intersection fuels the creative energies of innovators everywhere who see the mobile device as a transformative tool in solving many of the old problems in payments and retail and financial services, and more importantly the way to create many more new and powerful opportunities,” Webster said.

More than just mobile, the digital disruption in the industry today has “invaded just about every corner of banking and financial services,” Webster says, which was the result of a transition that started more than two decades ago, but today, that shift has accelerated as “mobile banking now gives ways to banks that are only available to consumers via mobile and digital channels.”

For the young or the old; the banked or the unbanked; the financially served or financially underserved, technology has created a massive shift in how money is transferring from one hand to another — or one device to another, to be more accurate. Those who once lacked basic banking needs are being served through this new intersection of innovation and new waves of thinking.

Paving the way for emerging technologies, mobile has brought a new way to reach consumers. Whether it be through handsets, PCs, phones, wearables, cars, appliances and even accessories and clothes, consumers are now more connected then ever. This hyper-connectivity has enabled a new level of payments and commerce — done anytime and anywhere. That’s the next intersection consumers are traveling through, and it’s paving new directions for merchants.

“At the intersection of apps and enabling technologies, innovators and technologists are giving merchants and consumers creative new tools and options to engage, and doing it in a way that protects the integrity of their data, their privacy and preserves their confidence in transacting in a digital world,” Webster said.

Social networks started as a way to change the way people communicate, but now they are changing how people shop (and pay). Through “pins on Pinterest, reviews on Yelp, or posts on Wanelo,” the concept of social commerce has evolved. And it’s driving a new way of thinking.

“Social influence is a powerful force in many aspects of commerce and its impact at the intersection of payments and commerce is still evolving,” Webster said.

And then there’s the concept of cyber breaches and security.

“Today, instead of talking about their cards and points, issuers and networks are talking about how they enable secure mobile payments as a way to elevate their brand and therefore their position in the digital wallets of their consumers,” Webster noted.

But we’ll get more into that later in the week — along with nuggets of information about what you may have missed from this year’s Innovation Project.

So what exactly is Innovation Project all about?

“To understand what’s ahead.”

“To understand what to do now.”

To understand what steps to take.”

That’s also what innovators in payments are trying to figure out. And why they gathered in one place — in Cambridge, the epicenter for higher thought — to discuss, debate and determine what direction the payments industry is taking.

Comparing the payments intersection to one of the busiest intersections in the world — just outside of Tokyo, in Shibuya, Webster said that the payments industry can sometimes be a space of chaos and clutter, but there are leaders trying to navigate us through it all.

“Instead of 10 lanes of traffic, we have millions of merchants trying to navigate a payments intersection that has never looked busier and more dangerous,” Webster said. “Instead of five pedestrian lanes, we have hundreds of millions of consumers with mobile phones and soon Internet-enabled wearables – who are paying attention to only one traffic signal — and that is their connected device. And instead of a city planner with the mantle for deciding how things get done, we have hundreds of players in the payments and commerce ecosystem who are all vying to play that role.”

And that’s the role that payments players have in navigating today’s world of innovation, disruption and chaos.

“The decisions that each of us and the organizations we serve and make at those intersections this year and in years to come will define just how orderly our passages are in the decades that follow. And who emerges to rule the road,” Webster said to the room of payment innovators on Wednesday.

Need an Innovation Project refresher? Catch our cheat sheet.