Counting down to 2020, grab this in case you fall behind!
You may start to see a trend. Payment innovation revolves around smartphones. This momentum did not stop in 2019 but actually began to accelerate with the emergence of new technologies. Not surprisingly, mobile phone payments will continue to grow and become a thing that everyone should pay attention to. According to a BI Mobile Payments report, in-store mobile payments are expected to grow from $75 billion in 2016 to $503 billion by 2020. This, of course, puts 2019 on track to be the largest year for mobile payments.
Taking China as an example, the successful practices of mobile payment in China proved that mobile payment is definitely not a thing written in water. Paying with your phone in China has become a daily gesture. According to a survey, 92% of people in China’s largest cities use Wechat Pay or Alipay as their main means of payment. And the phenomenon is the same in rural China: 47% of the rural population is reported to use mobile payments very regularly. Well, you will wonder why mobile payment works in China? Check the fundamental reason, we can tell that it’s the rapid growth of e-commerce and m-commerce, however, mobile payment and e-commerce are mutually beneficial, Alibaba said the Singles’ Day in 2019 sales on its online shopping platforms reached a record 268.4 billion yuan (about 38.3 billion U.S. dollars) less than two days, marking a year-on-year growth of about 25.7 percent, and nearly 100% of the orders are paid by mobile payment.
Moreover, we can tell that mobile payment is not only a faster and more convenient payment method, but it can also be the entrance of a smarter future, the engine of the growth of all the Internet of Things, Messenger Bots, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, etc. Due to the boost of commerce real-time buying, facial recognition, QR code, AI voice assistants and various robots have also been developed to offer quicker and smarter purchase and delivery services for consumers. Also, when we need to put the technologies like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality into commercial use, a large part of them will be used in e-commerce, there is no doubt that the developed e-commerce will promote the development and application of the formers.
However, there is still something we should be worried about alone with the development of smarter mobile payment. Until December of 2019, We’ve already seen some great improvements in the simplicity of payment and security. However, there are still a majority of users who are not able to wave their smartphone over a point-of-sale device to complete the payment with the full confidence that their information will remain secure, for them, security has seen great threats with the implementation of biometrics in smartphones (i.e., fingerprint and face scans). Especially because of the emergence of scandals about the disclosure of users’ personal information by social media and IT giants, people are no longer trust their smartphones. Security and privacy issues can be one of the largest blocks in front of the people who were decided not to get involved in mobile payment.
In order to prevent falling behind on the road of development of the whole world, and get prepared for the growing of the Gen Z, unlike every generation before them, this group doesn’t know life without digital devices and high-speed Internet, no one should ignore the growth of mobile payment in the near future. As noted by digitaltransactions.net in a report produced by Javelin, only 18% of Gen Z used cash compared with 33% of Millennials in 2012. It’s gotten easier to purchase something on Facebook and other social media platforms as well. This integration of payments with social, “plays directly to the habits of the Gen Z consumer,” the report stated. “The channels Gen Z interacts with are evolving, providing valuable insight into how they want to interact with payments — from e-commerce purchases to complex financial transactions — and what they will come to expect.”
So hold on, do not fall behind, the engine has started.
