The ‘How the world pays’ White Paper by RS2 reviews the current and future trends and how consumers and businesses make and receive payments. The paper raises important questions about what payment systems to accept and what that future will look like. Some of the key global trends they identified were:

• the world is paying increasingly digitally with debit cards being fastest growing payment instrument in both the developed and emerging markets
• online payments: in the US and the UK consumers love credit and debit cards, while in the rest of the world there is much more take out local alternative payment methods not running on the international consequence
• the more digital, the more local seems to be happening globally at both the point-of-sale and online. This is shown by the rise of local debit cards and the online alternative payment methods. (RS2 believe that merchants must accept that unless they can localise payment systems, they will miss out on sales.)

Future of payment systems - they will disappear?

The white paper as expected reviews the rise of biometrics and the use of block chain in payment systems, and other popular topics. However, it unexpectedly goes way beyond most reports and analyses with Radi El Haj, CEO, RS2 saying that:

“We present five important future payment trends here. However, the future of payments may yet be more radical — it may not be about payments at all. 

• Firstly, payments may simply disappear as they just happen seamlessly in the background. 
• Secondly, the value of payments may be in the data that travels with payment, rather than the actual transaction message itself.”

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CTMfile take: This RS2 White Paper is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking that has been published recently. It is well worth a download and a read. You probably won't agree with some of it, but it will make you think about your assumptions.