There was no better place to be last week than Ho Chi Minh City and Milan, discussing the future of global retail payment innovation, amongst the 1,500 delegates at Seamless Vietnam, and 10,000 attendees of the Salone dei Pagamenti. Both events left us with a feeling of excitement and an awesome sense of contributing to something revolutionary.
Amongst the many discussions at both shows, whether it was talking to customers or engaging with the panel debates, one common thread underpinned everything else: “How new technologies are changing the way we transact”
Payment evolution - where East meets West
We have been talking about cashless for years. Greater security, new technologies and government initiatives mean that consumers worldwide are continuously moving away from cash to using more and more electronic forms of payment. Although 6 billion payment cards are issued globally each year, and indeed physical plastic remains the west’s preferred payment type, Asian countries are adopting smartphone payments at an incredible rate. As technologies evolve, so do the form that payment preferences take. Being able to provide merchants with an in-store solution that offers an all-encompassing set of payment acceptance methods, has become a key, yet challenging, task for payment service providers and acquiring banks.
Changing retail landscape
New technologies are fueling consumer expectations and, with the increasing digitalisation of retail, merchants have to rethink everything in order to meet ever-changing customer expectations. At PAX Technology we are helping global retailers to improve their customer’s experience by providing elegant families of high-tech SmartPOS and SmartECR solutions - no longer just secure contactless payment terminals as we all knew them - but which offer new services and functionalities, all based around an increasingly smartphone-like design approach in terms of Android and marketplace appstore concepts. Together with our acquiring bank customers, we are delivering exciting new apps and services to merchants, enabling them to become more efficient, professional and relevant.
Reshaping the payment ecosystem
The arrival (at last!) of new technologies such as Android, inbuilt cameras, QR codes and Cloud based infrastructures, are totally reshaping the payment terminal ecosystem as we know it. But it’s how these new technologies are applied that will differentiate the winners from the losers over the course of the payment industry’s next decade. Marco Rizzoli, Country Manager of PAX Italia, pointed out during a panel discussion that:
”We need to work not just as individual organizations, whether a bank, supplier, payment provider, or merchant, but we must collaborate to build a system that benefits everyone. Together we are strongest. No one can build the perfect solution.”
Although the Italian and Vietnamese events took place last week on two very different continents, the strong undercurrent throughout both conferences was the growing power of customers; our world is converging, and no matter where your business is located, listening and understanding your customers is the key to implementing successful payment solutions.