Payments Execs On 2019’s Payments Innovation Watershed

One decade draws to a close, the next one looms. Only a few months into 2019, the year is already shaping up to offer a bit of a watershed in how we pay and how we get paid.

The headlines may trumpet the size of multi-billion dollar deals, as Fiserv links with First Data, and FIS gathers Worldpay into its fold.

As the 2010s roll off into the 2020s, the fact remains that technology is blurring the lines that used to exist before the (continuing) digitization of commerce. Along with this trend, as transactions between firms, between people and all the permutations thereof span currencies and timezones, a few guideposts stand out: Everyone wants more speed, better data, mobile movement of money and, of course, security is paramount.

PYMNTS queried nearly two dozen C-level executives from companies at the forefront and intersection of technology and innovation. Here, you will find insight into what’s next, but also what we need to leave behind. The password is passé, the machines are learning, the data is big and getting bigger. Above all else, said several respondents, matters more than ever.

How to get there remains a matter of debate, and is a driving force behind innovation. Some of the executives we spoke with pointed to new ways to establish digital identity as among the biggest innovations on the horizon worth pursuing, perhaps through the use of distributed ledgers or . Others said the digitization of commerce, with an attendant move toward omnichannel, will drive change in the decade ahead.

As always, in payments, the one real constant is change. Read on to see what’s top of mind as we go “out with the old and in with the new.”