Industry trends update: benefits of Tap to Pay, GenAI, and other emerging payments technologies

Financial institutions that add tap-to-pay capabilities to their business banking apps can offer microbusinesses, sole proprietors, and freelancers simple ways to accept card payments, says Ian Benton in a recent Impact Note from Javelin Strategy & Research.¹

A recent Forrester report⁴ examines the benefits of other emerging technologies in payments. Among the technologies offering benefits within one to two years, the report lists:

• Conversational AI. These applications provide a simple language-based UX that embeds payments and drives chatbots, consumer devices, and digital experiences. Conversational AI can help banks and other payment firms save costs by automating queries. "Online commerce and voice-enabled payments will see the biggest impacts," says the report's author, Lily Varon. Key areas will include helping customers and businesses during the purchase journey and with post-purchase reconciliation.
• Edge intelligence will use local data for more efficient payments and better experiences, meeting increasing customer demand for personalized and localized experiences that can't easily be processed by core infrastructure. Examples include payments approval within a VR headset. Edge intelligence can also enable greater security by integrating device biometrics and other factors into payment authorization.
• Zero-party data (ZPD) platforms will assist firms in optimizing payments by helping them ask customers for information that's hard to infer and deliver personalization that isn't intrusive. This can help enhance customer trust and loyalty with payment services that are contextualized according to point of use and customer preferences.
   

When it comes to technologies expected to deliver benefits within two to five years, the report includes generative AI (GenAI). Most firms surveyed for the report (including Visa) said they planned to increase their investment in GenAI over the coming year. The majority said they would start by focusing their GenAI efforts on back-office transformation (rather than customer-facing solutions) to improve employee productivity, automate rule optimization, or enhance customer support.

Visa has pioneered AI in payments since 1993 and Visa Ventures has been investing in innovative payments and commerce solutions since 2007. Now Visa is among the first payment networks to invest directly in GenAI through its recently launched $100M Generative AI Ventures Initiative.

We'd love to talk with you about these and other trends and innovations in the payments industry. Feel free to reach out and discover how Visa Acceptance Solutions and our uniquely open payments platform can help you build the future of payments.

And keep an eye out for our next update for more news and analysis.