Colin Close, payments expert, Planet
Enabling customers to deliver payment experiences that align with consumers’ ever-increasing expectations and needs is key for the payments industry in 2024. The reality is that nobody really ‘enjoys’ making a payment. In fact, for some people it can be the most stressful part of the entire journey, for shoppers and guests alike. The goal is to take and make the payments bit easy, so it doesn’t detract from the brand experience that our customers want to provide for their shoppers and guests.
This means offering choice and flexibility of payments across all channels and making the process fast and simple, so that payments become a seamless part of the overall shopping or guest experience. To do that well, our customers need to be able to integrate payments into the business-critical software they use to run their businesses. This is the driving force behind connected commerce and underpins innovation in payments technology.
A push towards sustainable PayTech
Retailers and hospitality businesses are becoming more conscious about the impact they have on the environment. In part, this is driven by the emergence of Gen Z who tend to place a higher value on sustainability, but for many businesses it’s simply the right thing to do. Sustainability in payments is both an exciting and vital area for innovation. This goes beyond the traditional understanding of financial transactions and is about embedding eco-consciousness into every swipe, tap, or click. As we progress further into this decade, ensuring sustainability across all forms of PayTech will be more of a necessity.
For example, technologies like blockchain and AI have the potential to enhance transparency and efficiency, minimising the environmental footprint of transactions. Moreover, the emergence of digital wallets and contactless payments is not just about convenience – it’s reducing the need for plastic cards and the associated environmental damage. Digital receipts and e-invoices are other ways of reducing waste that we’ll see more of, further cementing the role of sustainable payments in environmental conservation.
Additionally, moving towards SoftPOS opens-up the opportunity to accept payments on everyday mobile phones alongside the functionality offered within smart devices, reducing the number of dedicated payments terminals required and benefiting the environment.
The good news is there’s a lot the industry is already doing to reduce its impact on the environment and there will be more to come as pressure builds from consumers on businesses to move sustainability higher up the corporate agenda.
Generative AI’s influence
Generative AI presents great opportunities to revolutionise the way payment technology works. But, while its applications in customer servicing with Chatbots, and in compliance and anti-money laundering have already been demonstrated, it’s still early days for practical application – and I’m keen to see how this develops and where it takes the sector in 2024.
First-movers in retail are developing kiosks that can give personalised AI recommendations – for example, for make-up – and basket the recommendations and payments through a digital token. There’s also scope for using generative AI in hospitality to interrogate guest data held on the Property Management System (PMS), including payments, to help develop profiles and enhance loyalty programmes through better targeting of rewards and offers.
Now it’s about going from talking into action – focusing on implementing generative AI to benefit both businesses and consumers.
The long-term future of PayTech
For retail, we’re already seeing a move towards payment acceptance on everyday mobile phones thanks to SoftPOS. This will continue into 2024. In ten years, it’s unlikely that POS hardware as we understand it today will exist – and that means minimal queues, reduced costs, and an overall improvement in customer experience.
Convergence between software and payments is only going to accelerate. Although the UK is still behind the US market in terms of speciality software, we will see the transition to connected commerce speed up next year, bringing online and in-store closer together.
Managing these new forms of payments can be daunting, so it’s important that firms have confidence in their payment partnerships. Experienced partners add value through their ability to manage digital wallet payments across all channels and use the payments data for better customer insights and operational efficiency. Being open to collaboration will be the differentiator between a business that’s bounded, and one that’s moving into 2024 on the front foot.
