3 factors transforming the consumer payment experience

Consumer spending patterns evolved significantly during the previous year across all demographics. The real manifestation of cashless, paperless and seamless digital transactions is now led by mobile and internet based payments, thus fueling the growth for digital commerce.

Nevertheless, digital payments across physical touchpoints have also seen remarkable progress thanks to innovation and backing from the ecosystem. Retail merchants are registering high demand to facilitate contactless payments as consumers now prefer the convenience of making payments on-the-go via cards or mobile.

The fact that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has raised the contactless limit to INR 5,000 from INR 2,000 is a testament that the ecosystem is ready to widen its scope to empower a plethora of new merchant groups that can offer high-ticket size products to customers. Simultaneously, UPI and QR based payments are on the rise while innovations around wearables, tokenization, SoftPOS among others are gearing up to address varied needs of customers as well as merchants.

As we continue to combat pandemic and live a new-normal life, we are certain that newer payment trends will emerge to further enhance the growing payments landscape in years to come.

Some of the key factors that will add value to the payment infrastructure in online space and transform the way we make payments today are highlighted below:

Recurring payments

Keeping in view the changing payment needs, RBI had issued a framework for processing of e-mandates on recurring online transactions for cards, wallets, and UPI. Be it entertainment, education, consumer durables, or investments, consumers now prefer to automate their payments and bills by enabling auto debits. Recurring payment delivers convenient and transparent experience to consumers for paying their utility bills, subscriptions, mutual fund investments, insurance premium payment and host of other services Recently, in order to prevent any inconvenience to the customers, RBI extended the timeline for stakeholders to migrate processing of recurring online transactions with Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) till September 30, 2021. As the majority of Indians are falling under the ambit of a formal banking system, they are able to leverage financial services and hence enabling recurring payments across demographics is becoming the need of the hour.

International e-commerce

While merchants are willing to take their products and services beyond national boundaries and are eager to explore new markets to boost sales and revenue, consumers prefer to choose from a wide range of international products and make payment in local currencies. There is a huge scope to transform customer experience in cross border payments and technology solution providers are optimising processes in this arena to offer greater benefits to users.

Payment orchestration

With the rising payment methods at customers’ disposal, it has become essential for merchants to provide multiple payment options while ensuring seamless UX. Payment orchestration plays a crucial role to equip customers with new-age payment methods and at the same time, helps merchants to facilitate multiple payment methods under a single platform. It helps both the parties by providing API integration and enabling seamless checkout experience. In addition, value-adds like aggregating and processing data to provide real-time analytics and reconciliation services addresses key pain points faced by merchants today.

At the end, consumers will benefit from innovative solutions that will be simple, seamless and secure and this will drive a change in behaviours to using less cash and more digital.