The year is 2030. It is a sunny summer morning and you are just finishing a relaxing breakfast together with your family.
The doorbell rings for a delivery of several essential household items on which you are running low, plus your food for the week. But you never placed this order or booked this delivery slot.
Instead, a loyal, autonomous, context-aware smart agent placed it on your behalf. Using data from IoT devices in your home combined with knowledge of your past habits, the agent identified the products you needed.
Using knowledge of your budget, spending habits and loyalty programmes enabled identification of the best supplier on your behalf (taking into account availability and delivery costs).
Using knowledge of your diary and habits the agent chose a convenient delivery slot.
Once all of this was done, you were quickly consulted to check you were happy with the proposals. Then, after your agreement, the agent autonomously completed payment for the order on your behalf using a digital currency.
As you unpack your delivery, you think about the amount of effort that your smart agent saves you, giving you more quality time with your family and friends, and to enjoy your hobbies.
This is just one scenario taken from a smart new report by Worldline called Navigating Digital Payments.
In the coming years, the experience of making and receiving payments will be transformed. Many innovations that are currently gaining traction will mature and converge to create a level of convenience that would once have seemed like science fiction.
Orders will be placed and paid for autonomously
New business models, digital currencies and traceability solutions will enable greener ways of living. Much of this will be powered by data sharing, which will utilise privacy-preserving technologies to ensure security and trust.
And fraud detection techniques will advance to improve protection whilst reducing friction.
This advance will be driven by the fact that business success is closely tied to the quality of the end-to-end customer experience that companies offer, with studies finding that those who deliver better customer experiences earn greater revenues and achieve higher valuations.
The payment experience forms a crucial part of this overall customer experience
A poor payment experience can lead to customers abandoning their purchases. Conversely, a payment experience that is perfectly matched to the customer’s needs can not only help them smoothly complete a transaction, but can also increase loyalty, boost repeat custom and elevate brand perception.
However, providing this type of payment experience is not straightforward. This is due to a fundamental duality that exists.
The payment landscape has grown in complexity and will continue to do so. However, consumers increasingly expect the payment experience to be simple.
They do not want to consciously think about or choose the channel or payment method to use. And they do not want to keep multiple cards in their physical wallets, use multiple e-wallets on their phones, or even install different apps depending on who and where they are paying.
The report calls this chasm between the complexity of the payment landscape and the simplicity desired by consumers the payment experience gap. Worldline are convinced that this gap will continue to grow.
They are equally convinced that those organisations who can successfully understand and bridge this gap will be better placed to compete in their markets and deliver long term prosperity.
To help understand this gap, the report analysed it from three perspectives: 
The report is large, it is not possible to give a comprehensive treatment of every aspect of the payment experience.
Therefore it has focussed only on those topics where there is expectation there will be the greatest change over the medium term and where it believes businesses need to start their preparations now.
For each of these topics, it provides a summary of the current state-of-the-art, the changes we are anticipating, the challenges on the horizon and the choices that organisations must plan for now.
To download the report, CLICK HERE
The post Navigating Digital Payments – Reshaping CX by simplifying complexity appeared first on Payments Cards & Mobile.
