Payments Trends and Buzzwords of 2016

3 topics/trends rose to the top:

 

•  Mobile wallets
•  Pay trend Real time payment initiatives in the US
•  US’s long awaited toe in the water with EMV or as so many wrongly call it today, Chip & Pin. 

 Buzzwords of 2016

 Wearables – and I am not talking about fitbits and Apple Watches. Wearables are going to have a new family member join the fray, Virtual Reality headsets. Samsung made a move to bring Oculus Rift to the masses with Samsung Gear VR. In a replay of everything that Samsung and Android have gotten to market with first, VR could be the one that they keep attention and market share away from Apple, only 2016 and beyond will tell.

Biometrics – we saw biometrics slowly and discreetly enter the payments arena with Apple’s Touch ID or Samsung’s Fingerprint Scanner. Whether to unlock your bank’s mobile application or pay for goods at the POS, fingerprint scanning was the first step into using biometrics to authenticate a user. Look for facial recognition to be the next big piece, say it with me… Pay by selfie!

BankingAPIs – with PSD2 around the corner (and across the pond), the fight for opening up banking APIs to third parties will come home to roost; you saw the initial battle lines drawn this past week from both Chase and Bank of America (with likely more to follow) in terms of dealing with account aggregation sites and sharing customer data. I think this is going to be a hot topic as the year kicks off and likely stay at a rolling boil throughout the year