In her keynote session, the president of International Markets at MasterCard, Ann Cairns highlighted, “if you create something really easy to use, people will adopt it” and it is interesting to note how the industry is moving towards the conclusion that nothing is more convenient than making payments at home. Already this year we have seen Samsung and MasterCard partner to roll-out a fridge that can make payments, although that is still just a computer inside a fridge. Amazon is doing interesting things with voice-payments on Amazon Echo and let’s not forget Amazon Dash.
In an interview with Wirecard’s EVP Global Product Strategy, Christian Von Hammel-Bonten, explained why: “The timeframe between wanting to buy and buying is getting smaller,” he said. “Most commerce is happening at home. We have a lot of day-to-day stuff to order and anything that makes it easier, customers will adopt.” An interesting observation, one echoed by the head of Amazon Payments, Patrick Gauthier, who told PaymentEye on Monday: “The full home is becoming a hub of commerce”.
Christian says this all goes back to the story of payments, not the process. “The user story is ‘I want to go to the hotel’ and not ‘I want to order a taxi’.” It’s a very clever way of looking at things because not only does it succinctly stress the notion of customer desires as the most important thing to consider, but it also humanises the concept of payments.
Part of the story is knowing the main character. Christian points out that “we don’t understand the context the user is in,” explaining the importance of being able to identify whether a person wants to ‘go to the hotel’ in a personal or business capacity. In a business capacity may mean one is able to travel in a cab that is subsidised by the company, whereas personal may mean wanting to cut down on costs and take public transport. This ties in to the observations made by Saleem Dhanani who said that the proliferation of mobile technology is a game-changer for Big Data and learning more and more about the customer.
So, once we know the story and the main character, what does the ending look like? For Christian, it’s the intelligent automation of payments – making payments frictionless so that the user doesn’t have to do anything. He presents a hypothetical example of an interactive mirror that tracks what toiletries are running low and automatically re-orders them.
If that’s the ending then I cannot wait.
You might also be interested in…
> Our coverage of the beginning of Money20/20 Copenhagen.
> Our deep-dive into one of the Monday Track Sessions covering top payment trends.
> Our coverage of the rest of Money20/20 Copenhagen event.
Missed our Payments {R}evolution Magazine at Money20/20? Not to worry, download the digital version by clicking on any of the articles below!
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