Mercator Advisory Group Releases Comprehensive Predictions for Major Trends in U.S. Payments
2019 Outlook: U.S. Payments builds on Mercator's previously released 2019 Outlooks series to provide a company-wide view on customer engagement, global payments, faster payments, and risk and fraud management.
BOSTON, Jan. 23, 2019 Mercator Advisory group has released its annual Outlook for all of U.S. payments for 2019, following on the release in late 2018 of Outlooks for each of Mercator Advisory Group's Advisory Services — Debit and Alternative Products, Credit, Merchant Services, Prepaid, Commercial and Enterprise Payments, and Emerging Technologies. All can be downloaded without charge.
Download Mercator Advisory Group's 2019 Payments and Banking Outlooks for free.
According to Aaron McPherson, Vice President of Research Operations at Mercator and the primary author of the piece, "2019 will build upon and realize the payment trends we identified in 2018: open application programming interfaces (open APIs), mobile devices, faster payments, and fraud and risk management. Faster payments, in particular, attracted the most attention as same day ACH and Zelle showed strong momentum, with Zelle achieving its goal of displacing Venmo in total payments dollar volume. We expect even more disruption in 2019, as The Clearing House's Real Time Payments (RTP) system emerges out of pilot, new competitors emerge, and the Federal Reserve makes key decisions on how it will participate.
Fraud and risk management advanced considerably, with artificial intelligence, biometrics, and blockchain powering numerous innovative products and approaches. As with faster payments, products that were in pilot in 2018, including new tokenization services, will launch in 2019, and we shall see whether network-based card-on-file tokenization, 3-D Secure 2.0, and Secure Remote Commerce gain acceptance from merchants.
However, the economic picture is darkening after a strong 2018, and all payments players must make contingency plans for a slowing economy. Therefore, customer engagement will become more important than ever before, in order to keep the best customer relationships growing, and help those who may be suffering. Competition will increase, with a continuing series of high-profile mergers and acquisitions, following the acquisition of Worldpay by Vantiv under the Worldpay brand in 2018, and the just announced acquisition of First Data by Fiserv.
Global payments capability is gaining importance, most notably in commercial payments, where globalization is driving increased demand for more efficient and less costly international payment options. Both of the mergers noted above cited global reach as one of their primary goals. Mercator Advisory Group's clients consistently ask us for advice on global opportunities, and we will be enhancing our coverage of global payments in 2019.
Regulations will continue to impact the payments industry in 2019, with the new U.S. prepaid rule taking effect in April, and the establishment of new security standards through the revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) in the European Union. Data protection and privacy will be a key focus in the U.S., following the example of the E.U. with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has had major effects on all U.S. companies with an international presence.
In short, 2019 will amplify and extend the innovations made in 2018 within a more challenging economic and technological context. We at Mercator Advisory Group look forward to providing the banking and payments industry with rigorous, data-driven analysis of these strategic imperatives."
Companies mentioned in this Outlook include Alipay, Android, Apple, Chase Paymentech, Citi, The Clearing House, CULedger, Dunkin' Donuts, Early Warning Services, Finastra, First Data, FIS, Fiserv, Google, Green Dot, JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, PayPal, Paytm, Samsung, Sovrin, Starbucks, Walgreens, WeChat Pay, Worldwide Web Consortium, Venmo, Visa, and Zelle.
Download Mercator Advisory Group's 2019 Payments and Banking Outlooks for free.
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About Mercator Advisory Group:
Mercator Advisory Group is the leading independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.
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