How will digital payments look like in 2030?

By Gaia Lamperti

Published on the occasion of Web Summit 2021 happening this week in Lisbon, ‘Navigating Digital Payments’, Worldline’s latest report, envisions the future of payments from now to 2030 based on analysis of current trends.

The European leader in payments and transactional services worked with a team of Scientific Community experts to get professional views, insights, and visions from leading experts on what will drive innovation in the sector.

“Payment processing is like an iceberg. Just a small part sits visibly above the waterline; the vast majority sits below the surface,” is how the report opens. From the study emerged that one of the key factors driving business success is the end-to-end customer experience with payments companies that deliver better customer experiences seeing revenues increase up to 15% and achieving higher valuations.

The payment experience (Pay-Xperience) forms a crucial part of this overall customer experience to the point that, when the service is poor, it could lead to customers abandoning their purchases. Conversely, a payment experience that matches customers’ needs may not only help them complete a transaction smoothly, but is also likely to increase loyalty, boost repeat custom and elevate brand perception.

Worldline also identified 3 dualities that exist in digital payments and offer a useful lens to understand how the future of digital payments will be shaped in the next decade:

• Unification taming diversification: The proliferation of business models and new forms of currency can be tamed to create straightforward, sustainable solutions
• Seamless interactions amidst accelerated digitalization – Secure, inclusive digital solutions will enable new in-store experiences and autonomous payments
• Implicit trust from regulations – The regulatory landscape and the protection of privacy should be embraced in a way that will enable the data economy and trust at the point of sale

“We observe every day that the payments space is changing rapidly, in innovative and disruptive ways. And these changes quickly ripple out to retailers and the many other businesses who depend on payment technology daily,” commented Giles Grapinet, CEO at Worldline. “Complexity is increasing: in cross border payments, omni-commerce, the range of payment methods, and a plethora of other areas. But it is ultimately payment service providers who must orchestrate all of these diverse payments systems and technologies to simplify them for consumers and merchants.”

Other key figures from the report:

• More than half of the €806 billion NextGenerationEU recovery plan (agreed at the end of 2020) will support modernisation, including research and innovation and digital transitions
• IoT payments market is expected to reach $27.6 billion by 2023
• Global losses from payment fraud have tripled from $9.84 billion in 2011 to $32.39 in 2020
• Worldline’s fraud detection capability has already been improved by up to 30% thanks to AI