With everything going digital lately, digital payments and currency are expanding globally as well. Consumers today are going cashless and this innovative evolution is just the beginning. Below, are the top five Payment trends to look out in 2022 from our CFTE experts today:
1. Significant Payment Trend throughout the Year from Jean-Michel Godeffroy
Jean-Michel Godeffroy is the President at JMG Consulting and former Chairman of the T2S Board at European Central Bank.
In October 2020, the Central Bank of Bahamas issued “Sand Dollars” which was the first CBDC. Later, in December 2020, the “Libra cryptocurrency” was renamed “Diem” due to the progressive ambition of becoming a global currency. In July 2021, the People’s Bank of China issued a white paper for their digital currency, e-Yuan to replace some of the circulation cash. Up till now, residents in China opened at least 140M wallets. In July 2021, ECB launches its digital Euro project aims to ensure that in the tech era, companies and consumers can continue to have accessibility to the safest form of money which is the central bank money. In October 2021, Jon Cunliffe made a speech on whether cryptocurrency is a financial stability risk at SIBOS. He stated that crypto assets are worth $2.3T of the global financial system and 95% of them were unbacked. So, just to be cautious, we have to think very carefully about what could happen and be concern about the other regulatory authorities as these sometimes may be overlooked or unfamiliar by people.
2. Instant Payment Trend is the New Normal from Fred Bär
Fred Bär is a Co-Author of “GAIN DIGITAL TRUST” and Secretary General of EACHA. He was a Senior Associate Consultant at Payments Advisory Group in the Netherlands and a Senior Lecturer at CFTE.
A2A instant payments are the new normal in Europe. As some countries such as the UK, Denmark, and Sweden have started the digital payment system since 2013, instant transfers are outpacing traditional credit transfers by an increase of 30% from 2020, now becoming 50%. However, Euro countries from 2017 upon such as the Netherlands and Spain are still in the process of catching up rapidly. Nonetheless are in the lead for the instant transfers in contrast to France and Germany. The European Central Bank implemented mandatory interoperability.
Facebook’s shelved “Libra” and changed to “Diem” to be a stable coin for the US only. The innovative potential remains but annoyed regulators worldwide remain. Hopefully, in 2022, facebook may regain strength and improve relations overseas. CBDC has already implemented live implementations from China, Bahamas, and Cambodia to jump on digital currencies. For proof of concept, Sweden, South Africa, and Canada accelerated development for CBDC. This past year, we saw a huge increase in the number and size of funding for scale-up companies such as Stripe, Square, and Klarna who are still in the growth sprint stage. CFTE is also keeping an eye on the mature payment giants such as Paypal, Alipay and Mastercard are now starting to gain market value by simply keeping their platforms available and performing.
3. Southeast Asia Contactless Payment Trend from Grace Chong
Grace Chong is a First Class LLB Graduate from UCL who now works as the Lead of Regulatory and Digital Business (Payment Specialist) at Simmons & Simmons for Singapore and Hong-Kong. She is also the Board Member of Women in Payments, IAPP, ACCESS Singapore and AML Committee Member of The Singapore’s Laws Society.
Fintech dominates the financial digital services and products such as “Super app” which are the bundling of financial services on payments apps like KakaoPay and Gojek. BNPL is gaining momentum among millennials and Generation Z. Partnerships such as Standard Chartered Bank announced a 10-year partnership with Atome, Singapore’s BNPL financial service. Regulators in various countries like Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand are considering responsible lending laws. E-payments and E-commerce industries to expand by 5.5% by the end of 2021. 61% of Southeast Asia (SEA) residents prefer cashless methods as 91% of them have moved to contactless payments. In Singapore, 66% of consumers do non-cash transactions using QR-codes in their daily life. Malaysia, 40% has the highest mobile wallet usage in SEA, followed by the Philippines. One to watch is Patriot, a Singapore Interbank payment system founded by JP Morgan, DBS and Temasek launched its first pilot to focus on USD and SGD. Digital asset payments are gaining popularity as Grab and TripleA are enabling crypto. Bitcoin in El Salvador is the current paradigm as a legal tender.
4. Cross Ecosystem Payment Trends and their Effects from Fabian Vandenreydt
Fabian Vandenreydt is the Owner of FabianVDR Advisory Services, Advisory Board Member of RE5Q, Startup Genome, Features Analytics and Greenomy, Advisor of eppf, ADGM Academy, Star, TISATech Ambassador, Senator of WBAF, Industry Partner of Motive Partners and Program Director of Payments in Digital Specialisation in CFTE.
The term CBDC is still fluid, whether it is public or private, commercial or central bank money or stable vs unstable? Tokenization of existing securities and digital assets will go institutional. Users need fragmentation and providers overlap and focus on small medium-sized enterprises with cross-border payments. The value of payment data is increasing so financial crime compliance is increasing in financial institutions. New solutions for cross-ecosystem and rails analytics require good talents to move to real-time analytics and come up with detection. Now, innovation and regulations are far more intertwined than they used to be.
5. Fintech Products and Investments Trend from Ritesh Jain
Ritesh Jain holds a PhD of Finance and Banking from University of Portsmouth and Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from RGPV. He previously was the Chief Operating Officer of the Global Head of Digital Technology Delivery in HSBC Bank. Currently, he is the Co-founder of Infynit and Senior Lecturer of CFTE. He is also an Advisor Member of the Harvard and MIT Technology Review.
Nowadays, consumers prefer BNPL rather than credit cards and overdrafts. However, since there are no fixed regulations, there may be an overwhelming load of debt for the fintech company offering these. Contactless card transactions reach $2.5T in 2021 dominating the contactless landscape and there is the growth of 45% between 2020 and 2021. Cryptocurrency penetration tripled and led investment movement to purchase crypto. Overall fintech investments have hit $91.5B in 2021, doubled than last year’s total. There were 42 unicorns in the 3rd Quarter of 2021 as the pandemic led to the birth of new fintech startups.
Conclusion
The Covid-19 pandemic may have fastened the growth of digital wallets and contactless payments with BNPL and cryptocurrency taking the lead. It will be fascinating to see what 2022 digital trends may progress further.
