Entrust Datacard On Digital Identity And Security Trends

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.

Entrust Datacard’s Ray Wizbowski, VP of Financial Vertical Marketing, spoke with us about trends in payments across the financial institution ecosystem, trends in security in FinTech and what’s next for the industry.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE BIG TRENDS YOU’RE SEEING IN PAYMENTS IN 2015?

RW: I think the biggest trend is the transition from physical to digital payments. When you look at where payments are going and where the emphasis of innovation is today, it’s really into the eCommerce digital payment arena.

What we’re seeing in the financial world is a focus on providing that capability for their customers, that they want to make sure they have both sides of that. … The omnichannel experience is where they are focused. It can’t just be looking at the digital world. It’s looking at the entire experience a consumer would have interacting with a financial institution and then their ability to help them make payments.

Personalization has become such an important part of making customers feel loved and appreciated. That starts at the beginning of a relationship with a personalized debit card that you can get right when you open that account. And then moving that into a digital identity that you can use to do secure transactions in the eCommerce environment.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES IN THE FINTECH SPACE YOU’RE SEEING?

RW: You have a real need for stronger security controls and transaction monitoring. But that all has to tie back to the user experience. It can’t just be in a vacuum. It really has to understand who I am as an individual. Big data analytics plays into that — understanding what our consumers’ typical usage patterns are. And then you look at the broader ecosystem — things like real-time payments. We’ve seen some strides in the marketplace toward real-time payments, but we’re really not there yet.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR PAYMENTS FOR NEXT YEAR?

RW: Mobile, mobile, mobile. 2015 has really been Apple Pay, Samsung Pay. … It’s really put that emphasis on that secondary way to pay. … There is a strong emphasis on the secondary way to pay, which is in the mobile form factor. We believe things are moving in that direction. We believe from a payments perspective there is going to be more and more adoption of that technology. It will be a slow growth over time.

PYMNTS: WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL PAYMENTS SYSTEM LOOK LIKE?

RW: The ideal payments system is a secure way to identify myself to anybody who I want to transact with. Whether it’s through wearables or through something I can always have — probably a mobile phone. And then for that to be frictionless. Having a secure transaction that automatically knows which payment product I want to use and how I want to use that. Then that the payment becomes secondary to what I’m doing, which is I’m trying to acquiring something of value.