The future of payments – Just say the magic words...
Bottom Line: When you think about how quickly technology has changed pretty much everything in our lives – it’s incredible. Think about how different your everyday life is today with Smart Phones, Smart TV’s, GPS – you name it. The odds are that virtually every aspect of your day is different today compared to ten and certainly twenty years ago because of it. There’s a universal driver behind it all. The proliferation of the consumer internet. It probably seems odd that something 30 years old is still generally in its infancy but that’s the case. Think about how old most industries in this country are for a moment that are central to our everyday lives...
- Telephone: 143 years
- TV: 92 years
- Computers: 80 years
And here’s another one for you. Payment systems. The first record of a payment system,similar to a check, is 2,371 years old. Not kidding. Romans invented it as far as we know. And here’s the thing. Payment systems are still rapidly developing. Have you paid for something by voice? If you haven’t it’s only a matter of time.
According to Business Insider, 23 million Americans, or about 11% of adults, have used voice payment systems thus far. The most common way – through a smart speaker (Amazon’s Alexa to be exact). With smart speakers in more than 40% of homes it’s only a matter of time before you’re doing it too. Every digital payment system is already enabled this way (Apple Pay, Google Pay,Paypal/Venmo) and it’s about to go mainstream. In recent years we’d made the migration to chip and pin technology in the US to help crack down on fraud. Imagine not having to have cards that can be stolen at all?
You’ll have your payment information stored with your bank and or/mobile service providers and dictate what you want to pay and how you want to pay. In fact, you’ll likely be paying regular bills this way too (at least for the ones you don’t have automated). As we make the move toward this technology - not only will we still evolving a system created nearly 2,400 years ago. We’ll be making life easier and more secure in the process. That’s one thing technology hasn’t always done in our lives.