The pandemic situation and the rise of E-commerce platforms have resulted in a drastic change in the customers’ purchase patterns. As a result, there has been an increasing demand for advanced payment solutions. This resulted in most businesses switching to digital solutions or contactless payment solutions such as online banking or mobile banking. As a result, it has been the on-go option for most customers.
Businesses now aim to provide customers with a touchless shopping experience in the present times of social distancing. Moreover, with the evolving trends of transactions, contactless payment solutions will undoubtedly be the future payment method.
Digitization has been a huge leap towards achieving fast, secure and convenient payment methods. There has been a massive development in digital payment methods over the past few years, and more changes are about to come in the coming years.
The Future Trends of Payments in a Cashless Society
A faster, secure and convenient mode of payments is clearly the main criteria of using contactless payments. Therefore, businesses need to choose a suitable mode of payments and include all the major payment channels for the convenience of both customers and the company.
The following are a few future payment trends leading to a cashless society:
Biometric Authentication
One of the quickly emerging trends of payments is biometric authentication. It is a verification method that involves the structural characteristics of the person. The verification methods of biometric authentication include facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, heartbeat analysis, iris recognition, vein mapping and heartbeat recognition.
It is a unique payment method that provides efficiency, accuracy, and security, is considered a highly secure payment method, and helps build customer loyalty.
The transition from Cards to Codes
The EMV (Europay, Master Card, Visa) technology has gradually increased over the past few years while introducing customers to a more secure and computerized payment method.
The EMV technology works on using unique codes that vary for every transaction, enhancing the security of payments while enabling people to manage their bank accounts safely.
Smart Speaker Payments
With the evolving technology of smart speakers and home assistants, they now allow users to give voice commands and come up with a voice response in return. For example, people can now use voice commands to make orders from various applications such as Swiggy or Zomato and update weather or traffic.
However, automation is now making smart speakers the mainstream and people can now use them for purchasing products such as groceries, home care and clothing through voice commands.
Contactless Payments
Contactless payments are now the most rapidly growing forms of payments in 2021. contactless payment solutions allow customers or users to wave their smartphones at readers and make payments making it a more convenient form of payment than inserting a card.
Contactless payments generally use NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. Many major companies such as Apple, Samsung, and Google now have their own contactless payments such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay.
The Dominance Of Mobile Wallets
A mobile wallet is a mobile application and mimics the actual wallet while enabling people to send money to others and receive money from other users. They also enable users to get rewards, pay utility bills or buy travel tickets along with many other options.
Many companies are also aiming to create their own brand-specific mobile wallets, such as ONPASSIVE’s “O-Wallet”, to provide users with more secure and contactless payment solutions to enhance their customer experience.
Today security is critical for contactless payments irrespective of the payment method. Integrating powerful technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with payment technologies provides companies and users top-grade security for their transactions.
Conclusion
Digital payments will be the future of payments, and in the coming years, people will shift to complete cashless and digital transactions from physical cash. Therefore, businesses need to keep up with the trends and provide users with contactless payment solutions powered by top-notch technologies such as AI and Machine Learning and enhance user experience with a secure and faster payment mode.
