Alyona Degrik Shevtsova: banking and Mobile Payments in 2019: Expectations-Reality, Forecasts

2019 is the year of the continuing trend of the fintech industry for mobile payments. We are talking about a comprehensive trend that covers all financial services. Customer expectations are set for products of fintech companies, but primarily for the banking sector. Speaking about the world, this trend was launched by financial startups, in Ukraine — by an innovative bank. Which continued by a banking startup. All this led to the acceleration of the process of digitalization of banking services, and we see the first serious results in this from new leaders (for example, “Ok, alpha!”)

To deal with this stream of projects, statements, new solutions and approaches, which everyone involved in the case are talking about, is quite difficult. I see three main trends for mobile payments, which are worth paying attention to the business and users deeply involved in it.

# 1: Innovation Driven by the «Digital Race»

In American fintech community there is the concept of “big tech”. This is the name for the big technology giants like Amazon, Apple and others, who are the main challenge makers for a fairly conservative US banking environment. Old-timers like JPMorgan and Bank of America have incredible resources, but chasing innovations in technologies that change the very essence of the bank-client relationship is becoming increasingly difficult. In Ukraine, top banks began to realize earlier that the future would go beyond the transactional approach.

Banks are turning into a “financial partner” for their customers. To stay afloat and with customers — it’s necessary to change. Constantly and without the desire to “put a gun on the mantelpiece”. All companies, whose products operate with customers’ money, are oriented to the benefit for the user in various aspects. In other words — the semantic meaning of payment goes beyond the movement of money from point A to point B.

We are talking about a personalized approach: customizing the payment service, eliminating unnecessary steps and endless confirming windows. Tap on the choice of action that the user asked, tap on the confirmation — this is how the payment should now be made in the application

Ubiquitous online with action history in the app allows to create personalized plans for customers. To do so that the user himself created his financial goals and achieved them. In this, as you can guess, there is a huge potential for small and medium consumer lending.

# 2 Focus on seamless payment

Continuing the idea of ​​two tapes for a payment transaction — the outcome of a business into smartphones basically simplifies the life of the user. For business, this is another challenge — competition and product requirements are growing. The goal of such competition is to optimize and simplify the approach to the transaction. Here’s how this is can be achieved:

UI / UX research — we analyze the application by the screens, we look at what is obviously superfluous, what can be redone and simplified, and what needs to be revised in order for its functionality to work.Biometrics: Touch ID, Face ID. Passwords are boring. Show your face or finger to a smartphone is faster, safer and “more fun”. This is an experience of direct interaction, and not indirect (by entering a parameter on the keyboard)Integration of universal payment tools. And again I’m speaking about Masterpass. It’s customer bank card base in Ukraine is obviously the largest. Removes the need for registration because of a single account.

# 3: Use, not buy, model and its effect on the payment process

When you listen to music on your smartphone, do you use Apple Music / Google Pay Music? Watch movies and TV shows on Netflix? These are the most obvious and understandable waste transformations for not buying forever rather subscribing to services. Less obvious and still reaching trends are sharing / renting a car, clothing rental services for a while, etc. The described model is only gaining it’s peak.

What does this mean for mobile payments? In the first place — the development of clear interfaces for costs segmentation. The application is very important to have a convenient and customizable spending planner, in which you can set limits on subscriptions, set the minimum amount on the balance sheet at which the write-offs take place, and, of course, a competent notification system and upcoming charges.