Top Trends in Retail Payments: A New Celent Report Is Out
3 February 2014
Last week we published our annual report on Top Trends in Retail Payments, which looks back at 2013 and calls out the main themes to watch for in 2014. In 2013 we observed interesting developments in each of the four dimensions defining the battleground for mobile payments - see the chart below. Starting with customer interface, we are seeing the rise of mobile apps from retailers and service providers. These apps focus on adding a digital layer over service provision with seamlessly integrated payments capability. We call this trend “contextual payments” – recognising that customers engage in a broad set of activities and ensuring they are able to pay in any context, while acknowledging that the actual service provider is likely to offer a richer digital experience and customer interface than a generic open payments wallet. 
One of the effects of contextual payments is the increased willingness of banks to consider enabling all types of payments directly from the bank accounts rather than cards, either by building "push" solutions or deploying APIs to expose banking services and enable account access from retailer and other apps. While there has been no breakthrough in the adoption of NFC-based contactless payments in 2013, the emergence of host card emulation (HCE), might just breathe life into NFC and contactless payments by enabling banks and other providers to host credentials in the cloud while making use of the phone’s NFC interface but bypassing secure element owners. However, in our view BLE and Beacons will play a much more important role in marketing than they will in payments. Celent clients can download the report here. If you are interested in hearing me discuss these and other trends in more detail, please join me for a webinar on February 13th - more details here.
One of the effects of contextual payments is the increased willingness of banks to consider enabling all types of payments directly from the bank accounts rather than cards, either by building "push" solutions or deploying APIs to expose banking services and enable account access from retailer and other apps. While there has been no breakthrough in the adoption of NFC-based contactless payments in 2013, the emergence of host card emulation (HCE), might just breathe life into NFC and contactless payments by enabling banks and other providers to host credentials in the cloud while making use of the phone’s NFC interface but bypassing secure element owners. However, in our view BLE and Beacons will play a much more important role in marketing than they will in payments. Celent clients can download the report here. If you are interested in hearing me discuss these and other trends in more detail, please join me for a webinar on February 13th - more details here.