15 Things to Watch in 2015 in the Payments Industry

Published January 2, 2015 10:46 AM

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Updated October 20, 2016 10:02 AM

1 Min Read

The payments industry is quickly adapting to new technology, new regulations and new consumer demands. Here are 15 of the industry's major transformations already in progress.(Image: iStock)

EMV in the USA

October 2015 is the deadline for most companies in the United States to be able to support EMV-chip card payments. Some have fast-tracked their plans, but others are not expected to be ready in time. (Image: Shutterstock)

US dollar bill and binary code (Digital Composite)

Jason Reed/Getty Images

Faster Payments

Several entities including Nacha, the Federal Reserve and The Clearing House have undertaken projects with the goal of speeding up electronic payments in the U.S., enabling same-day or real-time payments. The industry's growing attention to Bitcoin could also fuel some faster-payments initiatives. (Image: Thinkstock)

An attendee demonstrates the Apple Watch after a product announcement at Flint Center in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. Apple Inc. unveiled redesigned iPhones with bigger screens, overhauling its top-selling product in an event that gives the clearest sign yet of the company's product direction under Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Apple Watch

Apple Pay is already in consumers' hands, but what will happen when it reaches consumers' wrists? The 2015 launch of the Apple Watch may be the make-it-or-break-it moment for wearable payments, particularly since Apple's smartwatch will come with NFC a technology that's absent from most other smartwatches. (Image: Bloomberg News)

Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks Corp., speaks during a media event in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, April 18, 2012. Starbucks is planning a bigger push into smaller cities in China as the world's largest coffee-shop operator triples stores in the country that will become its second-biggest market by 2014. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Howard Schultz

Nelson Ching/Bloomberg

Starbucks in Mobile Payments

Starbucks is already a force in mobile payments, claiming 90% of mobile-pay share in the U.S. in 2013. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (pictured) says "the real growth is yet to come," but new entrants like Apple Pay and CurrentC will challenge its dominant position. (Image: Bloomberg News)

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. signage is displayed in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce company started in 1999 with $60,000 cobbled together by Jack Ma, cemented its status as a symbol of China's economic emergence by raising $21.8 billion in a U.S. initial public offering. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Alibaba and Apple

A partnership between Alibaba and Apple would be a strong pairing with global reach. The companies' CEOs hinted at such a prospect late in 2014, but neither revealed what their team-up could mean for the payments industry. (Image: Bloomberg News)

The Amazon.com Inc. Fire Phone is displayed for a photograph during an event in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Amazon.com Inc. jumped into the crowded smartphone market with its own handset called Fire Phone, ramping up competition with Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg

Mike Kane/Bloomberg

Amazon Wallet

An Amazon wallet app snuck onto Android and Fire phones in mid-2014, with no marketing and few features. If Amazon has bigger ambitions for mobile payments, it will likely build on this app. (Image: Bloomberg News)

The CurrentC application (app) is demonstrated on an Apple Inc. iPhone 5s for this arranged photograph in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014. CurrentC, the retailer-backed mobile-payment system touted as an alternative to Apple Inc.'s platform, was hacked during a test of the technology, resulting in some e-mail addresses being stolen. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

CurrentC Launch

The long-awaited Merchant Customer Exchange wallet, CurrentC, is planning a 2015 debut. At that point, it should become clear if the retailers who bet on CurrentC and against Apple Pay made the right move. (Image: Bloomberg News)

PayPal Spins Off

Under eBay's current timeline, its PayPal unit should become an independent company sometime in 2015, opening up opportunities for partnerships with companies that might not have cared to work with PayPal as a unit of a major online marketplace. (Image: Shutterstock)

Global Grab

As U.S. companies like Apple and Square plant the seeds for expansion for their mobile payment offerings in other countries, Alipay, Ingenico and many others are eyeing the U.S. and other foreign turf. (Image: Shutterstock)

Interactive Cards

Companies like Coin (pictured) and Stratos are betting that consumers would be willing to pay for an all-in-one device that stores all of their payment cards, even though the shift to EMV might work against their goals. And banks are evaluating options for using interactive cards to store multiple accounts.

Security and Identity

In the aftermath of the 2013 Target data breach, many companies began discussing the use of tokenization to replace sensitive card data with a secure value called a token. Some want to wipe out passwords entirely, and others are looking for ways to build a digital identity that can operate across devices. (Image: Shutterstock)

BitLicense for Banks

New York's efforts to regulate Bitcoin could spill over into other areas of financial services. In particular, state regulator Benjamin Lawsky said he might use his BitLicense framework as a model for banks and insurance companies. In this way, the Bitcoin movement could serve as a catalyst to modernize regulation in financial services. (Image: Shutterstock)

Swipe-Fee Battle Continues

Late in 2014, Google added its name to the list of retailers that would rather stay in court than accept the multi-billion-dollar swipe-fee settlement the card networks reached last year. This fight is sure to continue in 2015. (Image: Shutterstock)

credit card electronic money

Gualtiero Boffi/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Payment Data in Lending

PayPal and Square both have small-business lending programs that base their decision process on the payment data the companies already have from their merchant clients. This is one of many potentially powerful new uses of payment data. (Image: Thinkstock)

Prepaid Blends with Bank Accounts

Regions Bank realized that the pricing that works in prepaid could also appeal to bank customers, so it applied a fee to mobile check deposit. This trend could continue as more banks realize that the practices developed for prepaid accounts can be applied to other bank products. (Image: iStock)