The Changing Payment Industry
The global payment industry is valued at $2 trillion by 2020, according to McKinsey’s 2016 Global Payments Map, and understandably people want a cut of it. Leveraging on digital technology, non-bank entities are stepping up to the challenge of improving or solving current problems in the industry, with open banking and the development of e-commerce ecosystems set to drive significant disruption in the coming years.
Mobile devices are empowering e-commerce by making cashless transactions more convenient, and have received acceptance from the masses. Features such as NFC, and utilising camera to scan QR Code or for identification, are some ways that payment services secure transactions. Mobile applications and software for authenticating and authorising transactions also provide a better user experience and peace of mind.
Payment service providers like Alipay and WeChat Pay in China, and the financing service M-Pesa in Kenya are just a few successes that are changing the industry’s landscape. Let’s not forget Google Pay and Apple Pay, two digital wallet services whose customer base may well reach into the billions.
Meanwhile, the nascent cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology is inevitably going to be integrated by existing companies and start-ups, especially in the finance industry. Start-ups leveraging on the blockchain technology are developing applications to resolve current issues ranging from inefficiencies in cross-border payment to micro-financing.
Featuring faster and cheaper transactions, with immutable book-keeping, the technology’s main impediment to widespread adoption is only in its scalability, but that issue is being solved. The incorporation of trustless smart contracts into or on top of digital currencies seems only a matter of time.
Cryptocurrencies — the alternative to traditional fiat currency as a store and transmitter of value — features more advantages over fiat currency, and therefore, makes adoption of cryptocurrencies likely to continue while traditional payments lose ground.
In place, however, are numerous different cryptocurrencies and wallets. The absence of a wallet to “rule them all” means everyone is competing with each other for users. For end-users, this status quo is inconvenient as some merchants accept only certain cryptocurrencies and not others. There is a need to consolidate all these solutions and end the juggling of the crypto-wallets and cryptocurrencies.
Capitalising this opportunity, X-Infinity is creating a unified cryptocurrency wallet that allows consumers and merchants the ability to transact as easily using any blockchain asset as a currency, aiming to provide maximum convenience while adhering to the highest security standards in the ecosystem.
Learn more about X-Infinity at http://www.xinfinity.io.
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Recently, “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain” are the rage and hailed to be the silver bullet to solving the world’s problem. But (relatively) older technology are still relevant and crucial in propelling the world’s industries to a new era. While the application of blockchain technology in various industries are only being studied and tested, modern mobile phone is already disrupting the way people make payments.
In the next article, we will take a look at the features and advantages that blockchain technologies are bringing to the payment industry and how it will change the rules of the game.
This could see XINFINITY become the store of any blockchain asset. The ownership of goods can be assigned using the wallet and smart contracts could then execute functions without the need for intermediaries.
New and improved solutions and capabilities are influencing consumer behaviour and expectations. The use of cryptocurrencies is an example of consumer-led technological change.
[https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/how-the-payments-industry-is-being-disrupted] [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-payments-industry-explained-2014-12]
