With so much uncertainty, the only thing that's clear is how different the sector may look a year from now. Here's an overview of the leading trends in technology that will impact payments and banking in 2018.

As bitcoin's market swings steal the headlines, there are some people in the cryptocurrency industry who are trying to push the market back toward its original intent as a decentralized means of payment.

China's central bank has put the brakes on mobile and e-commerce payment schemes in the past, mostly from the standpoint of having a wary eye on third-party players elbowing their way into financial services.

With so much uncertainty, the only thing that's clear is how different the sector may look a year from now. Here's an overview of the leading trends in technology that will impact banking in 2018.

Here we take a data-driven journey into 2018 and some of the key trends that we’re likely to witness.

China's Ant Financial Group, the company behind Alipay, was among eight companies that EMV standards governing body EMVCo has named as technical associates to its secure-payment consortium.

For all of the noise in the payments industry around transitioning to real-time and same-day digital payments — and in the mainstream media around the bitcoin craze — paper checks still persist as the preferred means of disbursement for the majority of business-to-business transactions.

With the increased demand for heightened security and the increased costs, there will also be a growth in attacks from nation-state actors, writes Antwayne Ford, president and CEO of Enlightened.

Major retailers accept bitcoin, and BitPay reports that it will process more than $1 billion in payments this year. Even McDonald's is reportedly considering that it will accept bitcoin payments, writes consultant Collin Canright.

Mobile wallets have always been a hard sell. In many countries, credit and debit cards work well enough that consumers don't want to learn a new way to pay. But banks and technology companies are committed to bringing their wallet apps to market. In an effort to stay competitive, these companies have spent considerable effort to get their wallets to stand out not only against competitors, but against the compelling option to keep using cash and cards.

Bitcoin, the “gateway currency,” is but one application in an enormous pool of possibilities that blockchain technology presents, writes Alexander Koles, CEO and founder of Evolve Capital Partners.

Businesses should not only focus on securing payments that come through, but also pay attention to account creation and logins to prevent them from becoming additional vulnerable points of exploitation, writes Justin Lie, CEO of CashShield.

Consumers’ behavior around paying bills is often fluid and millennials put a high priority on paying bills immediately, which sometimes means with cash.

Alipay is chasing Chinese tourists to Japan, where it’s signing up a growing number of retailers and eyeing the long-term potential of the nation’s $45 billion digital payments market.

Here we take a data-driven journey into 2018 and some of the key trends that we’re likely to witness.

In a relationship-based business, it’s not enough to sell your customers a sharp tool to pay for things. You also have to help them avoid cutting themselves with it.

Bandwidth, sophisticated content and store locators can all help retailers draw and keep consumers as digital shopping and payments become mainstream, writes Herman Yau, CEO of Tend.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will soon kick off a cash-back incentive for credit card customers who pay with a mobile wallet, and it doesn’t matter if the transaction is handled by its proprietary Chase Pay platform or Apple Pay, Android Pay or Samsung Pay.

The key to safety is not just the proliferation of investment options, but also the knowledge that hopefully accompanies it, writes Stephen Bielecki, a lawyer at Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolff & Cohen.

Millennials aren’t the only ones who want convenience — everyone, regardless of age, wants it. Where age comes into play is just how someone defines what ‘convenience' is.