table of contents · kamaljeet rastogi, vp at mahindra comviva 44 dan lane, president and ceo of...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 4 Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra 5 Paul Thomalla, Managing Director EMEA & SVP for ACI Worldwide 6 Christian Spaltenstein, general manager of the Americas for AFEX 8 Sheryl Mckenzie, VP of Marketing for Product And Capabilities for Aliance Data Retail Services 9 Bill Nichols, CEO of AnywhereCommerce 10 Arroweye Solutions‘ President and CEO Render Dahiya 11 Azimo’s CEO Michael Kent 13 Stephen Sheinbaum, Founder of Bizfi 14 Teri Llach, CMO at Blackhawk Network. 15 Larry Blaney, Cachet’s EVP of Sales 17 Rhett Rowe, President of Capital for Merchants 18 Derek Webster, Founder and CEO of CardFlight 19 John Brown, President of U.S. Operations at Cardlytics 20 Erdal Yazmaci, General Manager for Cardtek 21 Ryan Falvey, Director for Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation in San Francisco, CA 22 Daniel Weiss, CEO of Chartwell Compliance 24 Adam White, Vice President and Product Manager at Coinbase 25 Commerce Signals COO Sheraz Shere and CPO Russ Schrader 26 Jeremy Gumbley, CTO at Creditcall 28 Denis Robert, President and CEO of CT-Payment Inc 29 Entrust Datacard’s Ray Wizbowski, VP of Financial Vertical Marketing 30 Aaron Frank, CEO of Final 32 Bill Lodes, First American Payment Systems SVP of business development and strategy 33 Doug Brown, SVP and GM of Mobile Banking at FIS Global 35 Chris Burfield, Product Marketing Director, ePayments at FIS Global 36 Bob Legters, senior vice president of product at FIS Global 38 Chris Winship, partner at FTV Capital 39 Denise Purtzer, VP of Business Development, for FuturePay 40 Adam McDonald, President of Humboldt Merchant Services 41 Marc Winitz, CMO for i2c Inc 42 Marc Freed-Finnegan, CEO of Index Inc 43 Kamaljeet Rastogi, VP at Mahindra Comviva 44 Dan Lane, President and CEO of MerchantLink 45 Anbu Gounder, co-founder of Minkasu 47 Ludwig Schulze, CEO of Mistral Mobile 48


Rob Cameron, Chief Product & Marketing Officer at Moneris Solutions Corporation 50 Peter Ohser, Executive Vice President-U.S. & Canada Operations of MoneyGram 52 Marcelo Bellini Garcia, managing director of sales at Morpho Cards USA, and Philippe Le Pape, VP of sales at Morpho 54 Levi King, Co-founder and CEO of Nav 55 Rick Yang, Partner at NEA 56 Roy Banks, CEO of NMI 58 Marc Gardner, CEO of North American Bancard 59 ALEXANDER LOPATINE, PRESIDENT AND CO-CEO AT NYMBUS 60 Tobias Schweiger, CFO and COO at PAY.ON AG 62 Scott Galit, CEO and Director at Payoneer Inc. 63 Peter Read, President of Peoples Card Services at Peoples Trust 65 Simon Black, CEO of PPro 66 James Bergman, Executive Director of Processing.com 67 Mike Cottrell, Director of Sales & Marketing at ProPay 68 Jeremy Bornstein, head of payments innovation at RBC 70 Tim Walsh, VP Corporate Box Office & RGCA Chairman of the Board 71 Chris Larsen, CEO of Ripple 72 Andy Freedman, Head of Marketing at Riskified 74 Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood 76 Dan Kramer, Senior Vice President of SHAZAM, Inc. 77 Norm Merritt, President & CEO of ShopKeep 78 Alon Feit, CEO of Splitit 79 TableSafe CTO Michael Weaver and COO Steve McKean 80 Lisa Shipley, EVP & Managing Director at Transaction Network Services (TNS) 82 Maarten Bron, UL‘s Director of Innovations 83 John McLeod, VersaPay’s VP of Marketing 85 Serge Elkiner, CEO and Co-Founder of YellowPepper 87 Jay Bhattacharya, Co-founder and CEO at Zipmark 88


INTRODUCTION

As we make the turn into the finishing line of 2015, we are closing out quite a busy year in the payments world. With security taking a prominent role in payments this year, EMV seemed to be the buzzword on everyone’s lips. Of course, only if they weren’t talking about mobile payments, another big theme this year as many new players jumped onto Apple Pay’s bandwagon. In fact, along with EMV, “pay” was a big buzzword in 2015, as all the new releases had pay in their name from Android Pay, Samsung Pay and even Chase Pay. From PayPal separating from eBay to become a standalone, publicly traded company again, to Square, First Data and World Pay making their public debut, another big theme was stock market debuts with some big names leading the way to help put a value on financial technology’s future. And those are just some of the big highlights and themes for 2015! In an effort to get a pulse of what the big takeaways this year were, the PYMNTS team spoke with nearly 75 executives throughout the payments and commerce ecosystem who gave their take on 2015 and made predictions of what we all will be talking about in 2016. Happy reading!


BILL BARHYDT, CEO OF ABRA

PYMNTS: IN 2015, WHAT HAVE THE BIGGEST TRENDS, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES BEEN FOR ABRA?

BB: We’ve sort of become the poster boy for blockchain technology, and all eyes have been on that lately. It’s been a little overwhelming to see the sea change in interest in the technology more or less within a few weeks earlier in the year and it hasn’t stopped. That’s been the biggest surprise over the last year, but it’s been great for Abra since that’s our business: enabling digital cash for consumers.

PYMNTS: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE USE CASES FOR THIS TECHNOLOGY IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

BB: Blockchain was created for one purpose: to avoid the double spending of bitcoin. People think it was created for other reasons, but they’ve figured out that it can be used in other ways, too. People are still trying to come up with those methods, but the momentum is heading toward global cross-border money transfer. That’s what we’ve built. You can immediately send money to any phone number in the world in the same way that you send text messages. I think business payments is also an interesting use case.


PAUL THOMALLA, MANAGING DIRECTOR EMEA & SVP FOR ACI WORLDWIDE

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE THEMES IN PAYMENTS FOR 2015 AND WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES?

PT: I think the themes are easy. The challenges are quite regional-specific. The themes are immediate or real-time payments … blockchain — everyone is talking about blockchain, whether they understand it or not. And the third one is about APIs and trying to get the glue together. I think they are the key areas in 2015.

Generally, what people forget is: The reason that so many people have gone to immediate payments has very little to do with the business case, per se, of the bank right now. It’s generally about regulating because it’s good for the country or good for the region, and there’s a lot of rationale for taking all of the costs out.

In the U.S., it’s more about a commercial free spirit … which I don’t think needs swift change. Therefore, around the world you see a digital have and a digital have not.

I don’t think you’re going to get [an international] standardization anytime soon, so banks will want to move more quickly in regions. And then technology will glue it all together, and I think people will move quickly.

PYMNTS: WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE FOR PAYMENTS?

PT: In 2020 … I think you’ll see immediate payments just about everywhere in the world. I think by then you will not see the silos that we have. Right now, we have cash, debit, credit, ACH [etc.]. You’ve got to believe by 2020 people will be saying “why? All I’m doing is


moving value from A to B. Why do I need all these silos?” They will all [move] to immediate rails and that will save the banks fortunes. It will save the retailers fortunes.

Right now payments is so old-fashioned we think of it as a thing in its own right. Whereas in 2020, we’ll probably not think about payments per se, it will be invisible. … If you think about payments as sort of like a loyalty program, I think that’s more the way it’s going to feel.

There won’t be a conscious act. … It will be transparent. We won’t see it. And I think from a retailer’s point of view, or a service provider’s point of view, that will be a good thing.


CHRISTIAN SPALTENSTEIN, GENERAL MANAGER OF THE AMERICAS FOR AFEX

BIGGEST TRENDS (A LOOK BACK AT 2015)

“One of the biggest trends we see right now is the democratization across payments, which is what comes with the Internet – what was once part of big banks alone has now become a global phenomenon, with customers now, all over the world being able to use services, across the spectrum,” said Spaltenstein. “Where people in some countries may once have not been able to have a bank account now they are able to make payments, for example, using a mobile wallet.”

PREPARING FOR 2016 AND BEYOND

Continuing trends will definitely be technology, projected the executive. “It will be a movement, and a continued one, toward linking up between parties within payments, about integration and partnering up. With everyone introducing new products, even the biggest companies are willing to speak to anyone to get new ideas out.”


SHERYL MCKENZIE, VP OF MARKETING FOR PRODUCT AND CAPABILITIES FOR ALIANCE DATA RETAIL SERVICES

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE BIG TRENDS YOU’RE SEEING IN PAYMENTS IN 2015?

SM: I think one of the biggest trends is how [retailers] can get their arms better around knowing who their customer is, regardless of the channel they are on. They do a great job of that if the customer is online. In-store, it’s a little bit more difficult to do. I think you’ll see more than one view of customer focus.

… As much as 18 months ago you didn’t see as much interest in apps. You didn’t see as much interest in in-store payments via mobile device. After the advent of Apple Pay, the industry has woken up.

Retailers have now glommed on to it, and they are really focused on “how do I continue to own the customer and provide them with that type of mobile experience that deepens the loyalty, but is easy and convenient as well?” I think that is more than here to stay. It will take a few years yet for the adoption to really hit peak in my opinion, but that’s one of the things that’s going to continue to stay with us.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR PAYMENTS FOR NEXT YEAR?

SM: I think that the big thing that you’re going to continue to see is about how do you connect to the customer and how do you keep them engaged. … I think what you’re going to see in 2016 is greater and greater connectivity to who the customer is. We like to call it the “moments that matter” — getting to them in the moment when they are going to make that decision that matters. I think you are going to see a lot of that in 2016.


BILL NICHOLS, CEO OF ANYWHERECOMMERCE

BIGGEST TRENDS

“One of the biggest obstacles for us, like everybody else, has been EMV. For anything that requires any sort of certification related to EMV, whether it’s on products or on gateways, getting the certifications has been extremely difficult,” Nichols said. “But that also represents an opportunity because it creates a barrier of entry if you get in there early and have a product that is certified, you can then go to market quickly. We got lucky because we had a few EMV-ready products released in the international market so we were able to easily add those into our existing channels in the U.S. and the products were ready to roll.”

“When talking about delivering those transactions to the processors, those processors are very tight on their resources so it’s been a long struggle to get products certified with processors,” he added. “With EMV and point-to-point encryption becoming more relevant, it becomes a lot more difficult.”

2016 AND BEYOND

“Going forward, processors need to be put on notice that they need to staff up in order to handle the growing need for certifications,” Nichols said. “I don’t see that demand going away anytime soon — that is our biggest challenge right now in getting products to market.”

“But the security benefits of EMV are valid. From a global perspective, it was obvious that when EMV was implemented, whether done with chip and signature or chip and PIN, there was fraud reduction and you could also witness fraud migration from one country to another country that did not have EMV implemented.”


ARROWEYE SOLUTIONS‘ PRESIDENT AND CEO RENDER DAHIYA


RD: There are three big things going on payments. First is mobile. Apple Pay coming out made it into a big trend. The usage statistics say it’s a big challenge and people have to come up with more ways to make mobile engaging and friendly. The second is EMV and the conversion of cards. EMV is a huge, huge conversion. It has never happened in a country this size before. Because it’s still in an early stages, it’s going to create challenges for consumers. The third one is personal customization. We’re seeing a lot of our clients focus on getting their product to the consumer in a personalized and customized way. If you look at the prepaid scene, for example, instead of offering a rebate you see something that drives an action.

It drives an action for that consumer because you targeted a message to them. You know they were looking for another adjacent purchase when they purchased the first thing. As the industry consolidates you will have to differentiate yourself. More and more people are looking at the differentiation point as a way to target personalized experiences for consumers.


RD: There are two things I see growing in 2016. First is EMV. Although there had been tons of talk about it and we had a shift in October, I saw statistics that say 73% of consumers surveyed didn’t have a chip card in their wallet. As we continue down the EMV path we need to educate clients and consumers on it because it is a


mystery. EMV does two things to an issuer: it adds cost and complexity.

The second thing is focusing on consolidation in the payments industry, especially on the pre-paid side. Consolidation means you still have to differentiate from others to be successful. There will be more products where you can target consumers directly, one-to-one, with messaging.


AZIMO’S CEO MICHAEL KENT

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST THEMES, SUCCESSES OR CHALLENGES YOU’VE SEEN IN THE INDUSTRY THIS YEAR?

MK: It’s been a great year for payments. There are more people wanting to talk about payments, putting money into payments, investing in payments and selling product to payments, so I think it’s been an amazing year for the industry. I think that 2015, for a lot of people, has been about raising money. Companies in retail and financial services, particularly payments, have raised a ton of capital. If 2015 is about raising the money then I think 2016 is going to be all about execution.

PYMNTS: WHAT DO YOU SEE AS BEING LARGER ISSUES OR THEMES LOOKING FORWARD TO 2016?

MK: I think 2016 will be super interesting and maybe the market will become a little bit more sensible. I think the Square IPO will be really telling in how the wider market perceives this new, emerging sector. If I had to make a prediction for 2016, it would be that good companies are going to be executing and there will be a diversion between those doing things well and those that potentially don’t have product market fit or don’t quite have a business model that works.


STEPHEN SHEINBAUM, FOUNDER OF BIZFI

PYMNTS: WHAT WERE SOME TRENDS IN 2015

SS: Disparity in price points between what the banks are charging and what over-capitalized companies are charging is reducing and, simultaneously, products are becoming well accepted.Technology will be used for dual purposes: For front end processes, to make the interface easy for consumers, as well as for backend processes by merchants. And there will be greater emphasis on transparency, with regulation being key.

PYMNTS: WHAT ABOUT PREDICTIONS IN 2016

SS: We will see a rise in regulatory pressure pushing toward more transparency and accountability. Will see more products with weekly pays than daily remittances. The average term for loans will be longer, extended by six months. Companies will want to be versatile platforms, almost like a one-stop shop. Technology will embolden the ease of use with regards to financial products.


TERI LLACH, CMO AT BLACKHAWK NETWORK.

EMERGING TRENDS

“We had this hypothesis that as physical and digital start to play together in a more cohesive manner, you can call it omnicommerce, unified commerce,” Llach said. “I think the new term this morning was distributed commerce. All sorts of ways to talk about it. Everyone’s looking for the next buzzword, I think.”

“But the fundamental thing is both of these things are working in conjunction. Some people picking physical and some people picking digital. So our hypothesis was physical was more for gifting and digital was more for self-use because there are so many offers on cards,” Llach said.

She pointed out results from a recent study on consumers who bought physical and digital gift cards. The study found that 60 percent of consumers shopping for physical gift cards would buy for gifting purposes, whereas 40 percent would buy for self-use. On the digital side, the study found about 37 percent of users shopping for gifting purposes.

“And I think what you will see a lot more in the next year is that distinction is going to get bigger and bigger. Where people on the gifting side want to stick something in an envelope or want to hand you something because they want that kind of connection with a thing,” she said. “The e-code is less and less important to have that connection because if you get in on a discount with loyalty points or something like that.”

On the digital front, consumers tend to trade gift cards or redeem loyalty points for getting discounts on buying gift cards, which is leading to making discounting and buying gift cards complimentary, she said. “You have this one side that can stay very, very robust for gifting — physical — and the other side is going to get more and


more discount-focused for self-use and I will bet you when we recheck this at the end of next year it’s going to be like 70-30 (digital). They are not going to disintermediate each other. They are going to complement each other,” he said.

WALLETS AND DIGITAL GIFT CARDS

“Gift cards are a great thing, but they can be something that you forget home, you don’t know the balance. There are some pros and cons that make it really easy to buy them, not as easy necessarily to use it,” Llach said. However, the amalgamation of digital gift cards and mobile wallets is the way people shop and use gift cards, she added.

While there has been rapid growth in digitization of gift cards and their introduction to mobile wallets, there are obstacles still hindering the growth — POS being the biggest one, she pointed out. “A lot of POS systems are old, a lot of these franchises under one retailer have different kinds of POS. So as soon as you start to get the redemption point — the more cohesive and accepting the technology, you’ll see a greater consumer adoption,” she said.


LARRY BLANEY, CACHET’S EVP OF SALES

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT TRENDS YOU’VE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS YEAR?

LB: As far as the prepaid market itself, it’s exploding. It used to be just a couple of use cases but today there are countless use cases and we keep hearing about new ones all the time. Education was important for us in 2015, it helped when the CEO of Green Dot said at a major conference that if consumers under 45 years old are not given a great mobile experience you will lose them.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIG THINGS YOU ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO OR WATCHING FOR IN THE NEXT YEAR?

LB: Adding innovation into the platform and working with our existing customer base to get feedback from them and drive further enhancements. Also connecting into a lot of the processing platforms and payments networks out there to establish an open architecture platform for prepaid. We see 2016 as being extraordinary in terms of customer acquisitions, transaction volumes and mobile user adoption. We believe that the adoption of mobile payments will continue but there needs to be standards; there’s a great deal of issues there now. For instance, all of the major card issuers have P2P solutions but Visa P2P can only send payments to Visa. As these standards come forward and it becomes frictionless for the consumer, then you’ll start to see payments really increase.


RHETT ROWE, PRESIDENT OF CAPITAL FOR MERCHANTS

PYMNTS: WHAT DO YOU THINK WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS IN 2015?

RR: Within the merchant cash advance space, 2015 continues to move at an accelerated pace. It’s a wonderful industry because it’s changing almost daily. New programs and delivery systems are so speed and delivery are big trends in this space. As we saw in 2015, it is very critical if there is even the hint of a trend it needs to be acted upon. So for example, we’re looking to automate the process, so instead of a 24-48 hour approval period, we’re looking to do that the same day. So, approve, fund the same day. Making it much more automated of course, that’s the current pace of business. The people that survive and do well and continue to do well are those that can act quickly on new and developing trends.

PYMNTS: SO WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR 2016?

RR: Well with respect to the merchant cash advance space, 2016 will likely bring 2 big trends: regulation and consolidation. Next year will bring some attempt by the consumer protection bureau to regulate the merchant cash advance space. While there will be an additional trend of acquisitions within the merchant cash advance space.


DEREK WEBSTER, FOUNDER AND CEO OF CARDFLIGHT

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME TRENDS THAT THE PAYMENTS INDUSTRY IN PARTICULAR HAS FACED THROUGHOUT 2015?

DW: The EMV migration in the U.S. with the liability shift this month has been the biggest thing the whole year.

We are also seeing a lot of interest from developers for EMV. In August and September, we saw so many developers get in touch with us wanting to know about EMV hardware.

PYMNTS: WHAT ABOUT PREDICTIONS FOR 2016?

DW: The next six or nine months will be about shift, and after that, there will be a role for contactless and NFC payments. We will also see a trend in building payments in NFC-enabled devices.


JOHN BROWN, PRESIDENT OF U.S. OPERATIONS AT CARDLYTICS

BIGGEST TRENDS

JB: My take is that the big trend around payments, at least from our vantage point is that there’s a tremendous amount of value in that data in and of itself. It’s not just about making the payment, but also about how you can leverage the payment into other things. There are lots of companies, in addition to Cardlytics, who are doing things around that. It’s in some ways heartening to see, even though some of it may be competitive to us, because it shows that this is a real industry, this is a real business.


JB: There are two vectors of growth for us — one is, we’re continuing to build out our network of financial institutions. We do view ourselves as a network in the sense that we offer content from advertisers and we distribute that out to the financial institutions that we work with. So building out that network is really big.

We’re finding a lot of our analytical products to help advertisers understand their marketplace a little bit better. There are some companies out there today that have data transaction analytical products to help advertisers understand how they are performing in the Los Angeles MSA versus their competitors. But they may not have absolute rights to the data or other kind of limitations. We’re working directly with the source, which is the financial institution, so we have the ability to create further refined analytical products for advertisers. What we’re going to be rolling out is a lot more kind of toolkit things, where advertisers can log into us directly and get real-time information about what’s happening in terms of spending.


ERDAL YAZMACI, GENERAL MANAGER FOR CARDTEK


EY: The big trend is mobile payment technologies. Mobile payment technologies are getting into different business sectors. Not only the retailers, but also the public transportation, or gas stations, running devices. Even through consumer domains. For example, connected TVs. The mobile payment and general payments business is getting into every rut in our life. … All these big players are getting into the payment business. This is really different because in the past the payment businesses were only managed by banks. But now, there are lots of giant companies like Apple getting into the payment business.


EY: The mobile payments trends will continue to grow in 2016. It’s still at the very early phase at the moment. There are lots of announcements, lots of news. But still, the adoption rate is still not high, because there are some obstacles for mobile payments. The ID is very nice, but when you want to implement it, you have to manage lots of things at the same time. It’s not so easy (to integrate new systems).

In 2016, the companies like Apple, Google and others will push this technology more and more to go into our life. As there are lots of players pushing at the same time, I think they will achieve. Most of us will start using mobile payment technologies — not only for the payment in the retailers, but in more complex environments like public transportation, gas stations, etc.


RYAN FALVEY, DIRECTOR FOR FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS LAB AT THE CENTER FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES INNOVATION IN SAN FRANCISCO, CA

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES AND TRENDS YOU SAW IN 2015?

RF: A lot of the issues we are seeing are around underbanked, but the four major trends we have seen are:

1.The notion of a shift from personal financial services to what we are calling personal financial health applications. I think that difference there is not just about providing people information. Consumers increasingly expect that mobile app to work on your behalf.

2.Another trend that we saw was that a number of companies are investing in prepaid infrastructure — oftentimes not issuing cards, but using prepaid accounts and never actually giving a card to consumer and using that as a way to provide savings applications or help them with payments to bring some new functionality. We actually saw a lot more companies doing that than those using blockchain or the bitcoin infrastructure. The industry is really evolving by letting other companies into the market.

3.We saw nature of credit is evolving. A lot of solutions that we focus on are for providing liquidity. There are age-old models like ROSCA’s savings group, which are now being transformed using technology for use among strangers. And then there are products that instead of charging interest are charging subscription fee.

4.A lot of companies are looking to work through employers to get to employees to solve these problems. So the employer channel is really something the tech industry is looking at to get to these end users.


PYMNTS: WHAT BIG TRENDS DO YOU SEE EMERGING IN 2016?

RF: There’s a surge of entrepreneurialism and it’s going to continue well into 2016. A lot of new ideas are coming out and we are really trying to rethink financial services. A lot of people say that the existing system is not working, but entrepreneurialism is helping rethink the problems and helping attack them.


DANIEL WEISS, CEO OF CHARTWELL COMPLIANCE

PYMNTS: WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF THE RECURRING THEMES IN THE PAYMENTS AND FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRIES THIS PAST YEAR?

DW: One of the main themes that I’ve seen is the expansion of who’s required to become licensed as a money transmitter if you’re operating in the payments industry. It used to consist of companies that are conventional agent-based money transmitters. Over time, more and more FinTech businesses have evolved, which weren’t able to be regulated because they were online or operating overseas. Now, though, the circle of who must be licensed keeps growing larger.

PYMNTS: AS 2015 GIVES WAY TO 2016, WHAT IS THE INDUSTRY LOOKING AHEAD TO?

DW: There are more companies that want control over the whole online marketplace ecosystem, like Airbnb and Microsoft. I think you’ll continue to see these business that people always viewed as services or for strictly tech perspectives becoming regulated – certainly not of their own choice. But I think it’ll help professionalize the industry. People imagine the FinTech industry is all T-shirts and pingpong tables, which is fine, but organizations are pivoting to becoming regulated entities that have good financial safety and management for investors. You’ll see more businesses involved in payments that aren’t banks and more companies, willingly or not, get regulated.


ADAM WHITE, VICE PRESIDENT AND PRODUCT MANAGER AT COINBASE

PYMNTS: IN 2015, WHAT HAVE THE BIG TRENDS AND OPPORTUNITIES BEEN?

AW: In the bitcoin space, one of the big trends has been the recognition and adoption of the value behind blockchain technology. I think what we saw in 2014 was a lot of merchants and eCommerce companies lead the way with bitcoin adoption.

2015 has been less about merchant adoption and much more about large financial institutions taking a look at how not just bitcoin, but blockchain in general can help improve settlement and clearing efficiency. That’s been a big divergence from years past when it’s been much more educational — kind of at arm’s length.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING AS YOU LOOK AHEAD TO 2016?

AW: I do think that, in 2016, that’s where we’re going to start to see a lot of the “killer apps” in the bitcoin space — the Ubers and Airbnbs. What’s something I can do now with bitcoin that I couldn’t do before? ECommerce is great, but I already had a pretty frictionless experience with credit cards.

For merchants, having someone pay me in bitcoins is better because I’m not at risk for fraud or chargebacks, there’s essentially no credit card fees — there’s a lot of benefit to me as a merchant accepting payment. But as a consumer, why am I incentivized to pay with bitcoin? It’s not a huge customer value proposition. What we’re seeing now is other applications built on bitcoin.

I think we’re going to see a lot of those take off in 2016.


COMMERCE SIGNALS COO SHERAZ SHERE AND CPO RUSS SCHRADER

BIGGEST TRENDS

For Shere, there’s been no more important trend in payments recently than connected commerce. “There’s a lot of focus on payments, but at the end of the day, the things that can be really interesting in this ecosystem are less about the actual act of paying,” Shere said. “The thing you always hear back is ‘Well, swiping my card isn’t broken.’ It’s about what you can put on top of the act of paying – offers, loyalty and all those things. But connected commerce is really this network that’s fundamentally closed. In the age of connected devices, there’s no reason why people in the payments networks – think about merchants with a connected POS – shouldn’t be connected to the cloud and speaking to cloud services at all times.”

Schrader added that with more connectivity comes more privacy concerns, and the influx of data will help mitigate those dangers. “The ideas of privacy and security continue to play out, as well as how we can move commerce forward and deliver more than just the taking of money and delivery of goods to give a broader experience,” Schrader said. “Merchants also need help to figure out who are good customers, and how to deal with those customers. Where is the money being spent? Why is the money not being spent? And how can you deliver the value all around, which is where Commerce Signals fits into these trends very nicely.”

2016 AND BEYOND

Moving into the future, Schrader noted that tying performance back to identifiable metrics will help retailers across the board.


“There’s an old saying, ‘Half my money is wasted. I just don’t know which half,’” Schrader said. “In digital advertising, that might be closer to three quarters. And if advertising budgets aren’t being increased for digital, it has to come from other mediums. So how much do you take, and how do you prove that it works? We’re going to be providing merchants with data points that they haven’t really had before.”


JEREMY GUMBLEY, CTO AT CREDITCALL


JG: Without a question, EMV has been the dominant force since data breaches took over in 2014. I think, in the second half of 2015 people realized that EMV wasn’t gonna go away, that the liability shift wasn’t gonna go away and more importantly cards were being issued. So, I would say, EMV has played a huge part in the shape of 2015, but has also driven development of some very interesting technologies — for instance, Apple Pay and a lot of NFC technologies that we are kind of seeing now like Samsung Pay and Google Pay, so I would say 2015 is definitely from my perspective the year of EMV.


JG: I think 2016 and 2017 are also going to be the years of EMV. I think EMV is causing mass reterminalization, which means that everybody is going to be getting a new terminal to support contactless, which then paves the road for Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, so I think that’s really very interesting. I think we are going to see a lot more growth in contactless payments.


DENIS ROBERT, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF CT-PAYMENT INC

PYMNTS: WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST TRENDS AND LESSONS OF 2015?

DR: What’s most exciting from a U.S. basis is EMV migration. In the other markets, we’re adopting and talking wallet and mobile, but instead of really talking about it, it’s operational, it’s executional. So rather than focusing on EMV, we’ve looked at supporting all the large banks and enabling them with mobile technologies, which is one step ahead of the EMV model.

One of the issues is that everyone is coming out with their technology. But the reality is that I think all of these solutions should be a bit more agnostic. They should learn to capture through a wider audience than the one they specifically have within their current niche.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR MOVING FORWARD INTO 2016?

DR: I think in the U.S., obviously the EMV trend will certainly continue, and I think that it will probably accelerate because now we can see that the banks have really been jumping on the bandwagon, so they’re starting to issue cards and that will actually stimulate all of the different processors and partners to get with the music.

I think that 2016 will be a race to get to this technology and to make sure that more and more customers will be able to process with their EMV card.


ENTRUST DATACARD’S RAY WIZBOWSKI, VP OF FINANCIAL VERTICAL MARKETING


RW: I think the biggest trend is the transition from physical to digital payments. When you look at where payments are going and where the emphasis of innovation is today, it’s really into the eCommerce digital payment arena.

What we’re seeing in the financial world is a focus on providing that capability for their customers, that they want to make sure they have both sides of that. … The omnichannel experience is where they are focused. It can’t just be looking at the digital world. It’s looking at the entire experience a consumer would have interacting with a financial institution and then their ability to help them make payments. Personalization has become such an important part of making customers feel loved and appreciated. That starts at the beginning of a relationship with a personalized debit card that you can get right when you open that account. And then moving that into a digital identity that you can use to do secure transactions in the eCommerce environment.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES IN THE FINTECH SPACE YOU’RE SEEING?

RW: You have a real need for stronger security controls and transaction monitoring. But that all has to tie back to the user experience. It can’t just be in a vacuum. It really has to understand who I am as an individual. Big data analytics plays into that — understanding what our consumers’ typical usage patterns are. And then you look at the broader ecosystem — things like real-time


payments. We’ve seen some strides in the marketplace toward real-time payments, but we’re really not there yet.


RW: Mobile, mobile, mobile. 2015 has really been Apple Pay, Samsung Pay. … It’s really put that emphasis on that secondary way to pay. … There is a strong emphasis on the secondary way to pay, which is in the mobile form factor. We believe things are moving in that direction. We believe from a payments perspective there is going to be more and more adoption of that technology. It will be a slow growth over time.


AARON FRANK, CEO OF FINAL


AF: Tokenization and EMV have been the elephant in the room this year. Consumer control has been another big theme and it’s going to be a while.


AF: EMV adoption will continue to increase and rewards will have a major play because tokenization forces it. We’ll also see some weird stuff happen in Card-Not-Present situations and in small banks who haven’t adopted EMV because it’s not financially viable for them. There will be a rise in networks, typically a large stakeholder who holds the key to the kingdom. Players like Visa, MasterCard and Discover will want to build a payment ecosystem no matter what, because the customer experience really hurts if you have 25 checkout lanes. Banks are finally getting out of regulatory issues, and hopefully, we won’t have new regulation to push them to the shadow and we can see financial innovation happen.


BILL LODES, FIRST AMERICAN PAYMENT SYSTEMS SVP OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND STRATEGY

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT YOUR COMPANY ENCOUNTERED IN 2015 THAT YOU SEE CARRYING OVER TO THE FUTURE?

BL: The three things that hit us in 2015 were EMV and all of the adoption struggles with it, mobile payments acceptance — there was a big emphasis on reacting to how clients want to use mobile wallets. The third thing that impacted 2015 was ease of integration. There’s a lot of new technology out there that is allowing folks to integrate to different payments providers with a great sense of ease, and that is clearly differentiating some of those companies from the traditional players in the market.

PYMNTS: IT SOUNDS LIKE ALL OF THOSE THINGS WILL CONTINUE TO AFFECT 2016, BUT COULD YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR NEW ROLE AND THE BIGGEST TASKS AT HAND?

BL: My role is involved predominantly in setting strategies for ISVs in 2016. Adoption should still be a challenge. Getting folks to bring suites of EMV solutions into their stacks, that’s a fairly big challenge, but we feel at First American that we have the product and services to install those types of solutions.

PYMNTS: WHAT KINDS OF FEEDBACK ARE YOU GETTING FROM YOUR CLIENTS ON THE ROLLOUT SO FAR?

BL: It’s slow, but in certain verticals, it’s better than others. That depends on the historical fraud that you seen in respective verticals. For example, a restaurant doesn’t see a lot of fraud per se, so those


folks in that vertical are a little slower to adopt that technology due to costs. They might be a little slow to react to adoption trends versus somebody in retail, where they’d be more apt to put that technology in.


DOUG BROWN, SVP AND GM OF MOBILE BANKING AT FIS GLOBAL

PYMNTS: WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST TRENDS OF 2015?

DB: In 2015, we’ve really seen mobile emerging as the dominant interaction channel for both banks and merchants. Banks need to be able to compete against new technology providers and startups in the space. People are starting to look at alternatives to banks, and mobile has become the battleground for commanding these customers’ attention and relationship.

We’ve seen the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets, and now it’s being complemented by wearables and Internet of Things platform capabilities. The “mobile anywhere” concept needs to extend to multiple devices — wearable form factors, smart home, smart car, and the like.

PYMNTS: WHAT DO YOU ANTICIPATE FOR PAYMENTS IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

DB: One of the platform capabilities we’ve launched at FIS is cardless cash; that’s coming to market in 2015 and we’ll see that expand quite aggressively in 2016. That’s the concept of allowing the customer to use the phone as the secure mechanism to access their funds at the ATM, and using the phone as a “remote control,” if you will, to order ahead your cash and save time.

We’re also looking for a lot more merchant adoption and availability of the mobile payment methods, so we’ll be supporting more and more issuers with Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and the like, and bringing them into the mobile experience. The foundation is set for much broader use and reach in 2016.


CHRIS BURFIELD, PRODUCT MARKETING DIRECTOR, EPAYMENTS AT FIS GLOBAL

BIGGEST TRENDS

“Mobilization of payments is certainly a trend,” said Burfield. “If we look at fraud I think the number of breaches is also a trend. But the more important thing is how fraud has gotten into consumers’ psyche. Look at ApplePay’s launch last year, there is something there that resonated in part due to the consumer sentiment around fraud.” Burfield also added, “the other one I would call out is there has been lots of progress on real-time payments. That’s an exciting trend, something FIS is very actively pursuing and something that will significant impact on change moving forward.”


“Unfortunately some of those trends continue with respect to fraud,” says Burfield. “As an industry we’ve got to continue to keep that front and center in the development of payment solutions. And then real-time as well I think. As you do real-time transactions you have less recovery time on these things.”

He goes on to point out opportunities in emerging mobile wallet capabilities, “a lot of focus on wallet is POS, but there are a whole slew of other transactions that create opportunities and we have areas with challenges. Historically ACH has been a compelling payments solution, but also has challenges with negative confirmation and not offering real-time confirmation, so there’s issues there. And I think by moving toward real-time we start to bring some different capabilities so you can have things like P2P. It’s a simple example, but being able to move money in real-time is compelling.” When asked about EMV and it’s efficacy Burfield comments, “EMV will not be an an end-all-be-all, a panacea. We’ll continue to see


challenges. But the question will be: where do we see fraud continue to move? I think we’ll see a natural increase in card not present fraud.”


BOB LEGTERS, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT AT FIS GLOBAL

PYMNTS: WHAT HAVE THE BIG TRENDS, OBSTACLES AND SUCCESS BEEN IN 2015 SO FAR?

BL: I call 2015 the Year of Necessary Distraction. There were inevitabilities that came to light in 2015 that every issuer and every retailer had to deal with, none of which were dramatically strategic. EMV is a great example – a lot of work for processors, a lot of work for issuers and a lot of decision to make for retailers. Nobody was doing that as a part of a larger deployment strategy. It was just one of those big things that had to be done. It certainly wasn’t a waste of time, but when you talk about the big challenges that issuers and retailers have been facing, EMV isn’t quite the panacea some might think it is.

PYMNTS: IF 2014 WAS THE YEAR OF THE THEORETICAL AND 2015 WAS THE YEAR OF THE LOGISTICAL, WHAT IS 2016?

BL: Execution. You’ve made your decision to move into EMV – now you’ve got to finish moving your portfolio over and educate consumers. You’ve got your wallet decisions made – now you’ve got to get that message out to your clients. In 2016, you should see the issuers focusing heavily on education and reinforcement to the consumer. Innovation is very expensive, especially for issuers and retailers. There’s one sure-fire way to fund innovation, and that’s growth, which will be a primary focus for the industry in 2016.


CHRIS WINSHIP, PARTNER AT FTV CAPITAL

PYMNTS: WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS IN 2015 THAT HAVE POSED CHALLENGES?

CW: eCommerce and mCommerce are the big trends as they relate to payments. The world is still very much driven by cash and plastic at a high level, but it’s being changed very quickly by cards as transactions are moving online and into mobile devices. Security and fraud are also gaining some steam. As transactions move online, it raises a whole host of issues. Most of our clients that moved toward eCommerce and mCommerce were also very interested in their security capabilities and compliance with Visa, MasterCard and companies like that.

PYMNTS: MOVING INTO 2016, WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING?

CW: I’m actually expecting more of the same. From a macro-economic perspective, what I see in the U.S. economy is quite strong – interest rates are low and unemployment is low. Specific to fintech and payments, the interesting trend I’m watching is the bigger startups going public and consolidating. In order to meet the growth expectations of public markets, they can’t do it on their own organically – they need to acquire. This was a big year for consolidation, but I think 2016 is going to be even bigger. Cross-border payments will also be big next year. When things go online and mobile, it really opens things up to the world. Five years ago, the technology and payments ecosystem didn’t exist, but there are now a bunch of companies out there that can help merchants do all that.


DENISE PURTZER, VP OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, FOR FUTUREPAY

TRENDS

If we were to look back on the developments in the payments industry, Purtzer said, the focus has been mostly toward development of mobile technology, but she points out that it was really the launch of NFC-based mobile wallets that eased payments and propelled expansion and growth in the area.

2016 AND BEYOND

“It’d really stick with that mobile theme,” Purtzer said. In 2016, we would see emergence of new payment methods that would steer away from traditional payment methods, meanwhile, continuing to bridge the gap in the changing technology. “There also needs to be a unification of the system and there’s no major adoption of mobile wallets per se. There’s so many choices for all the different people out there and consumers are hesitant to pick up mobile wallets at this point,” she added.

However, Purtzer pointed out, with shoppers adopting to omnichannel offerings, retailers need to move toward further taking out the friction from the checkout process and making it more secure.


ADAM MCDONALD, PRESIDENT OF HUMBOLDT MERCHANT SERVICES


AM: I’m a big advocate, and have been for the last three or four years, of biometrics — primarily fingerprint technology. I think it’s probably the most poised for user adoption, obviously adoption in any industry but payments is a huge, huge issue.

With Apple having such a large market share in mobile, people are getting used to pushing their finger. The thing about retina scanning, I think, is that it’s super invasive, and I think it’s very prohibitive to user adoption. In certain cases, I think you would see it, but in your day-to-day scenario, you’re not going to be seeing people scanning each other’s eyes.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR 2016?

AM: For us in the card-not-present world, I think a lot of the EMV will be more toward fraud mitigation. You’ll see a lot of fraud go online, which is one of the big reasons we pushed so hard for the acquisition of our gateway, which is called Argus, at the end of last year. The fraud mitigation tools that are tied into it and the negative databases are going to be imperative for any card-not-present merchant to be able to mitigate the shift in fraud.


MARC WINITZ, CMO FOR I2C INC


MW: The biggest theme is the role mobile has had in terms of crafting a better customer experience. Everyone talks about mobile and mobile is important, and there’s been a lot of evolution in the mobile payments side — primarily driven from Apple Pay, and now we’re seeing the initial things from Samsung Pay and Android Pay. What it’s doing is showing that there is some path forward to new payments innovation. I think what we’re starting to see is an interest in fusing customer experience and payments together. This is sort of a new, but emerging trend as payments need to come out of the back room of just completing the transaction and play a more essential role in the overall commerce experience.


MW: The biggest thing is essentially this whole concept of payments starting earlier in the commerce journey. Today we think about [payments] at the end of the process. … There’s so much left on the table that the payment can provide to influence the outcome. There’s information about what the consumer is doing at any one point of time (location, likes and dislikes based on purchase history, etc.). All of those elements can be brought to bear to leverage essentially a more intelligent experience.

Payments can really play an influence in how a customer experience occurred or exists. … When a brand or financial institution or enterprise can subsidize that journey with a payment being part of that earlier in the process, we think that can make for a better experience.


MARC FREED-FINNEGAN, CEO OF INDEX INC


MF: I think what’s interesting is that, historically, retailers have struggled a little bit and have had to balance between investing in growth initiatives and investing in infrastructure and security projects. You can’t compromise on security, but it is a zero-sum resource game. Deploying something like EMV is mostly difficult because the in-store infrastructure is often so old. But I’d say in terms of focus for the year, payment security — point-to-point encryption, enabling EMV — has certainly been the major focus for probably everyone in the retail space.

PYMNTS: WHAT’S NEXT FOR PAYMENTS IN 2016?

MF: I think the devices being deployed today have the potential to be both more secure and to enhance the in-store customer experience. I think that some retailers choose to deploy them in a way that’s not taking advantage of the full abilities. You can see pin pads in-store, and maybe the screen is not branded, not beautiful, not that engaging — but there are some retailers deploying these screens and really saying “Hey, this is going to be a multipurpose device.” We’re going to see more and more pin pads in-store, and more and more retailers starting to think about it as an integrated device.


KAMALJEET RASTOGI, VP AT MAHINDRA COMVIVA

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE TOP TRENDS IN THE PAYMENTS INDUSTRY?

KR: We are seeing a surge in demand for mobility enabled commerce — whether it’s telcos, banks, payment networks or retailers. Almost every entity involved in the commerce space wants to enable mobility and make payments and therefore commerce easier. That was the overarching trend last year.


KR: Consumers take time to change old habits, when it comes to paying for things. It’s not the technology that is slow, but the adoption is slow. In 2016, I believe that this situation will continue. There will be a plethora of options to choose from. And, consumers choice will force payment integration and companies to be innovative about making it seamless. The one wallet will become the gateway to most transactions.


DAN LANE, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF MERCHANTLINK

PYMNTS: IN 2015, WHAT HAVE THE BIGGEST TRENDS, OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES BEEN FOR YOUR COMPANY?

DL: The trends we are seeing are definitely EMV, continued adoption of payments security products and services and mobile payments. The complexity of EMV, the timeline and getting all of the parties working together has been a obstacle to the adoption of it. In a surprising way EMV is also slowing the adoption of security products because a lot of merchants haven’t wanted to make an investment in security because they know there will have to be an investment made in EMV, which means they are putting security initiatives on hold until EMV solutions are ready. But security is definitely here to stay, it is changing from a new technology to something people are really getting educated on and realizing it needs to be built into every payments solution.

PYMNTS: HOW DO YOU EXPECT THESE TRENDS TO EVOLVE AND CHANGE AS WE MOVE INTO 2016?

DL: For companies like us who work with a lot of different payment processors and merchants, we will be doing EMV integrations and certifications throughout next year. I think there will be a continued adoption of EMV, but I also believe mobile payments will really start to accelerate. It’s very obvious that that’s where the future is, and consumers are going to want to pay for things with their mobile phones. Merchants also want to respond to their customers, so over time we’ll see more and more mobile solutions coming out and they are going to be made easier to use, more widely available and more prevalent in the public consciousness. I think we will also see merchants thinking about how to pull customers into their stores, and the mobile phone is already helping pull the online world into the


brick and mortar world. Along with that, I expect to see more consumer-initiated transactions rather than merchant-initiated transactions, which feeds into a more seamless and invisible payment experience.


ANBU GOUNDER, CO-FOUNDER OF MINKASU


AG: Mobile shopping has already taken off. Biometrics are here to stay. Customers are more willing to try our mobile payment solutions. Until last year, consumers were not sure if they would be willing to use their smartphones for making payments. … We believe Apple Pay has done a lot of heavy lifting for us. In terms of challenges, only 15 percent of the 60 percent of shoppers converse into real transactions.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES YOU’RE SEEING IN MOBILE PAYMENTS?

AG: In terms of challenges, only 15 percent of the 60 percent of shoppers converse into real transactions. There is a lot of friction on mobile payments on the eCommerce and mCommerce transactions especially. More websites are becoming mobile optimized, but there is no good mobile payment solution in the marketplace which makes the mobile browser transactions quick and easy and secure. There’s a lot of noise in the marketplace with several payments solutions. It is confusing to the average consumers.


AG: We think mobile payments are going to accelerate at a faster rate. We believe the market needs a mobile payment solution that can make mobile browser payments quick and easy and secure. And social commerce and buy buttons will gain traction.


LUDWIG SCHULZE, CEO OF MISTRAL MOBILE

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS, CHALLENGES, OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES YOU SAW IN 2015?

LS: The perspective that Mistral Mobile takes is perhaps a little bit different spectrum than other parties. Our businesses focuses in two primary areas. One is in the emerging market doing mobile solutions for FIs in that region and then doing mobile security products for worldwide customers and so from where we sit, the unique thing that we have seen in 2015 is the amazing growth of mobile money in emerging markets. It’s just astounding.

Within there we see that it’s not just telcos, it started with the telco led environment. What we are also seeing is that banks are now more actively involved in the space now, whereas, previously, it was sort of hands off. As well as just newcomers. For instance, BigCash Deutsche Bank and are doing extremely well in Bangladesh, State Bank of India in India is also developing wallet based products. And, I think, it’s really the expansion of the mobile money environment from some of the simple payments to actually much more complicated eCommerce type of transactions that we would be accustomed to seeing in the U.S. and Canada. So that for us is a big part of what we see that’s been exciting this year.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT WE WILL SEE GOING INTO 2016?

LS: I think, again in the mobile money scheme environment, we are still very much at the tip of the iceberg as there are 2.5 billion people who don’t have access to financial services in the world. It remains a challenge and getting to those people through their mobile phone. But there are still technical hurdles making that difficult because


most people in the world don’t have access to mobile Internet, for example. About 85 percent people in the emerging markets simply don’t have that so those are of course some of the problems that we solve, but of course it remains a challenge for the industry to overcome continual growth to reach that 2.5 billion, which are fundamentally the next middle class. Today, they might be a relatively low value, but in 5 years, 10 years or 15 years, having a relationship with those people, especially in financial services where stickiness is everything, can be extremely powerful.

We are gonna continue to see more parties going after that opportunity space. This 2.5 billion new middle class is something increasingly recognized as a really interesting opportunity. Obviously, in the developed markets and not to undermine any of the great things that have happened in the past year, we are fundamentally shifting people’s mode of presenting a payment mechanism with mobile as opposed to increasing the total size of the pie. Some people would debate, I am sure there is some relative increase, but its not the same as adding 2.5 billion people who have never touched payments. That’s gonna continue to be a very interesting space with a lot of activity and certainly we see the big players continuing to look at it.

If you think of mobile security, it’s a whole new space. There are still a lot of unknowns. We are very much in the early days of figuring out how to optimize all these things. I think there’s still so much confusion about what’s the optimal model, about what’s gonna function, what are consumers going to embrace and what are they not going to — so we are probably still going to see a lot of chaos in 2016. But we are going in the right direction, I think.


ROB CAMERON, CHIEF PRODUCT & MARKETING OFFICER AT MONERIS SOLUTIONS CORPORATION

BIGGEST TRENDS

“There are three main trends,” says Cameron. “The first was hurry up and wait for EMV and then lately we’ve seen a big push. Now we’ve seen an uptick in demand for EMV and EMV-ready solutions. There was a lot of talk about it earlier, but people didn’t start work with the urgency you’d expect until closer to the deadline.”

He remarks, “The second half of ’15 was about that push, because merchants actually started to ask for it.”

And with that integration has come some unexpected early results. “We have some merchants in the U.S. doing big volume, several big mall retailers are seeing 60 percent of transactions coming in chip, which is more than we expected,” Cameron says. “We didn’t know there were that many cards in market, but that’s what the data is telling us; people are showing up with chip cards and expecting to use them.”

The second trend Cameron points to is integrated solutions, saying “Today if you look at our portfolio of 250,000 small to medium sized businesses in North America, about one-third of them are integrated in that small-medium category, which means their point of sale directly connects with whatever payment or cash register solution their using. Another two thirds are using a standalone terminal where they have to key in the amount and at the end of the day they have to add them all up.” But that’s changing quickly, says Cameron, “What we’re seeing now is as many as two-thirds are going integrated. Historically it was the exception, now it’s the rule.”

Lastly, Cameron points to “the move toward mobility, the move toward tablet-based solutions, solutions connected to an iPhone or Android phone.” “In 2014,” he says, “we started to push and market


those solutions and in 2015, 40 percent of the new customers we board are coming in integrated to a tablet or mobile device, up from 5 percent the year before. It’s just a huge change, everyone expected it to happen and now we’re seeing the demand. People want a tablet, they want something that looks cool sitting on the counter.”


“The three trends will continue. The piece that I add to it is now that we have the three different options to load cards into your phone — call it 80 percent of customers being able to load cards if they want to — I think it will become much more ubiquitous. As much as 2015 was supposed to be the year of a lot of these things, I think 2016 will see a lot of momentum.”

“The other thing you’ll see,” continues Cameron, “is other people will start to put in other values like loyalty point collection or other things. From a consumer standpoint, it’s pretty easy to take my card out and tap it versus taking your phone out and tap it. But if I can take my phone out and tap it, the way Starbucks does for example, and earn a few extra points toward a coffee, I’m going to do it.” He adds, “So we’ll start to see mobile payments become more mainstream. Today, it’s still pretty niche.


PETER OHSER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT-U.S. & CANADA OPERATIONS OF MONEYGRAM

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS THAT YOU SAW IN 2015?

PO: The dialogue has shifted and you’re seeing a lot more willingness and openness to collaboration amongst all the parties. The banks are realizing they can’t do it themselves and they need partnerships. That’s really for me is the biggest trend that’s been building up and really came to a head this year as they look at all of the innovation that’s going around them and recognizing they can’t ignore it and they have to partner.


PO: I think, broadly as much as we think things are moving fast, they are not moving as fast as one imagines.

From a consumer perspective, I think, you are going to see some really interesting partnerships and collaborations. Some are going to fail miserably and some others are gonna come out and really be actually really good. It’s going to be hard to sit on the sideline and pick which ones are going to actually work today.

I do think that in things like cross-border you are going to see more collaboration between the banks and the non-bank financial institutions because the banks can’t or won’t serve these customers — they have too many problems and they need partners to do those. I think you are gonna see some of that evolve so they can reach and provide the customers services versus letting them go off and be fragmented across other fintech companies. I think they are going to


embrace collaboration with some restrictions just about how they can manage those pieces.

Moving forward, I believe, customer behavior is going to evolve development of payment methods. Customers don’t necessarily want to be disrupted.


MARCELO BELLINI GARCIA, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF SALES AT MORPHO CARDS USA, AND PHILIPPE LE PAPE, VP OF SALES AT MORPHO


MB: EMV migration will go on for a year or two because of the amount of cards that still need to be issued. There is a lot of work even on the acquiring side. Biometrics has become a huge topic in payments. We are seeing biometric application everywhere in the world, from countries big to small.

PP: There were a lot of payment solutions in the market already, but I think the revolution came from ApplePay. Another big trend is the how mainstream biometrics is becoming not just for security, but also for convenience. Biometrics will make it possible to purchase a car on your phone, in the future.


MB: EMV migration is still going to be all over. Meanwhile, fraud will migrate to other channels like mobile purchases. It’s all about convenience for the customer with more security enhanced with biometrics.


LEVI KING, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF NAV

BIGGEST TRENDS

Our vertical focus is financial technology and really where payments impacts us is where we accept payments from our customers. They are all small business owners and so some of the re-issuance of cards around chip technology has caused challenges, said Nav’s King. “I think, it’s a challenging time for merchants where there is a card-not-present transaction and I think that is going to drive a lot more merchants to push their payments demands or just encourage their customers to use just mobile wallets.” In security technologies, for instance, King said, it might get more difficult for merchants to rely on recurring transactions and things like that at the same time we have mobile wallets getting lot more popularity.


“I think, credit cards in the U.S. would be difficult to replace for a long time,” King said. “So, I think, where mobile wallets become more ubiquitous is in online transactions. After mobile wallets are ubiquitous in both mobile and desktop, I think, that’s where we will see plastic slip. Until then, I don’t think it’s gonna happen.” Also, the traction Apple and other digital wallets got in 2015 will accelerate a lot more quickly, he added.


RICK YANG, PARTNER AT NEA

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST TRENDS YOU’VE BEEN TRACKING IN 2015?

RY: There’s a huge portion of the demographic, globally, but mostly in the U.S., that does not view their bank as a financial service provider. They view banks as a place to store their money, and then they get their financial services from all other sorts of places. Robinhood, Venmo — these are the things that people think “Hey, these are the applications that help me do things with my money.” Paying friends, investing in stocks and bonds — but they don’t really think of a bank as doing that.

So we continue to think about the areas where banks and traditional services can continue to be disrupted by new technologies, this whole idea of catering to the millennials. I think consumers, especially the younger demographic, are looking for a different kind of financial services brand — one that is much more transparent, one that is much more aligned with the consumer, versus feeling like a customer that is to be monetized as much as possible in different ways.

WHAT TRENDS IN PARTICULAR ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2016 AND BEYOND?

RY: Along the lines of this transparency piece, I think consumers don’t think enough about what it means to them for a merchant to bare the cost of credit cards, or to bare the cost of fraud. They think, “That’s the merchant’s problem.” At the end of the day, that gets passed back to the consumer in the way of increasing prices, fees, or things like that.


I think people are starting to understand that, so I think you’re starting to see really innovative companies like Jet build that into the flow in a way that’s transparent, but doesn’t really change the user experience — it actually improves it because consumers like to make these kinds of choices.

I think the second thing is how you tie much more data into payments and transactions. So you’ll end up with a lot more technology providers that will help merchants and payment providers gather and analyze that data in a way that’s digestible and actionable, and it will translate into higher customer satisfaction, better consumer experience, and better loyalty.


ROY BANKS, CEO OF NMI

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE TOP TRENDS IN THE PAYMENTS INDUSTRY?

RB: The EMV deadline has been a big theme. Everybody has been working at fever’s pace to support the compliance. Payment facilitation and EMV has defined our work and the work of a lot of other players.


RB: EMV and compliance will continue to be a bumpy ride. We also expect payment facilitation to grow. There is a need to combine payment facilitation with a gateway for one offering. I don’t think that mobile will homogenize the way people hope. It underscores that there are a lot of changes in mobile. There is still a lot of fragmentation, and we will see that continue.


MARC GARDNER, CEO OF NORTH AMERICAN BANCARD

BIGGEST OPPORTUNITIES OF THE YEAR

“I think the biggest opportunities are in the conversion and the evolution of traditional countertop terminals migrating to cloud-based tablet solutions,” Gardner said. “It’s a richer experience and the opportunity to continue that feature with pushing new software releases from the cloud will make the opportunities for acquisition much better, as well as make the opportunities for retention much stickier.”

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2016

“If you’re not the largest payments business in the world, and you’re smaller and looking to grow, what are the products that are going to accelerate your growth? I think the two products that really offer organizations the opportunity to grab market share have a really wonderful semi-integrated solution and a cloud-based tablet POS solution. Now price is always going to be important, but I think the days of just selling price are behind us, and I think the days of selling product with value are ahead of us.”


ALEXANDER LOPATINE, PRESIDENT AND CO-CEO AT NYMBUS

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS YOU SAW IN 2015?

AL: We are the only modern core processing platform in the cloud-built-for-the-internet age and a true SaaS product so I think, in a way we are setting the trend as so far we are the only ones with a SaaS core. So our approach is one turnkey SaaS product with pre-integrated services and we are the only channel as core, which means the channels are built in such as online banking, mobile banking. So it’s a one platform-one app. We are going to see a lot more companies converting to a SaaS core.

So I think this is the trend. The financial institutions especially the smaller ones need new IT infrastructure because otherwise they will not be able to compete with larger banks. With new revising financial technology, we will not only connect the traditional FIs, but also community banks and credit unions to the fintech ecosystem who are unable to compete with larger banks and all those Fintech companies.

PYMNTS: TAKING THAT AS YOU THINK AS AN EMERGING THEME OF THESE FIS UPGRADING THEIR INFRASTRUCTURE, WHAT DO YOU THINK A MAJOR THEME WOULD BE IN 2016?

AL: Of course, blockchain is very interesting in the space. All those fintech startups will continue to come up with interesting solutions for different points and so it’s interesting for us to see what will happen to blockchain technology. Will it become regulated or not — that’s quiet important. We are thinking of using this technology as well. If


we built a network of banks in the cloud, it’s natural that we would connect them. Blockchain might actually be a good fit as our goal is to build a solid network.


TOBIAS SCHWEIGER, CFO AND COO AT PAY.ON AG

TOP 3 TRENDS IN PAYMENTS INDUSTRY

1.Mobile payments will mostly drive the payments industry in the future, fueled by a rise in the number of transactions — more specifically in the U.S. than in Europe, Schweiger predicted.

2.Apple Pay: From the European side, the industry has expected a little bit more, but the card in the mobile setup will certainly be one of the things moving the industry into the future.

3.APMs from the European side of things — Alternative payments is one of the drivers for the European businesses and even for the American market. We see a lot of demand for equipping players with APM capabilities to expand into the Europe using APMs. “Credit cards can only get you so far,” he said.

PREDICTIONS FOR 2016

For companies like PAY.ON, it will be increasingly necessary to make available a choice in terms of different fraud protection and risk management to all kinds of businesses out there. The drive for EMV will make sure that platforms not only provide connectivity for payment methods; on top of that, we will be extending our reach in terms of risk management and fraud management, globally, as an answer to challenge.


SCOTT GALIT, CEO AND DIRECTOR AT PAYONEER INC.

BIGGEST TRENDS

Overall, Galit thinks 2015 has been about global connectivity and empowerment.

“There’s some incredible things that are changing how the world works,” he says. “What we see is this wave of technology, a wave of connectivity creating new opportunities for a wider range of professionals and small businesses from all over the world to participate in the global economy that weren’t possible before.”


Looking at Payoneer specifically, Galit says, “We’re rapidly expanding our tools to localize cross-border business trade for buyers and sellers, both parties.” He continues, “If you’re selling into the United States, we’ll give you a U.S. bank account you can actually invoice with. So you have a presence that feels more global, your customers can buy locally — they’re making an international payment but they don’t know it, they are paying locally in their local currency.” In summation he adds, “We deal with all the complexity. We’ve launched that in the U.S., in Europe, the U.K. and have Japan coming on soon.

Overall, Galit says “We have been very global and now we’re getting much more local in many more places around the world — that’s an important next step for us.” Payoneer, says Galit “ [is] working really closely with these local merchants and helping them understand how to grow their businesses. We’ve been making significant investments in countries around the world and building out a presence in India. In the next few months we’ll really build out that local presence.”


This trend of taking their global business local means they’ll be able to better service their customers, Galit said. “We have customers in all those markets, but now we’ll actually be much closer to them.” Raj Kamal, head of strategy at PayU.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE TOP 3 TRENDS IN THE PAYMENTS INDUSTRY?

RK: eCommerce has been growing twice as fast in the emerging markets than in the developed world. To give you an example, growth rates in India and China are over 30 percent, mostly attributed to the rapid growth on the back of smartphones. These markets are leapfrogging to smartphones, skipping broadband due to the easy access to low-end mobile phones. While eCommerce is going global, we notice that the more local you are, you are able to serve merchants and customers better. We see reinforcement of local players providing much better outcome. Biometrics for authentication will become mainstream.


RK: Omnichannel will be visible. We will see online retailers doing more brick and mortar to enrich the shopping experience. We will see a massive growth in big data analysis in services like merchant lending. The difference between FinTech and payments will blur because transactions and data will power a lot of things we do.


PETER READ, PRESIDENT OF PEOPLES CARD SERVICES AT PEOPLES TRUST


PR: One of our focuses is to make sure that every card that we issue can be accepted into any open wallet, so of course the Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android pay — we want to align ourselves with all of them as they launch. That’s the current trend that’s going on. Is it there yet? No, it’s only just launching right now. Rather than having a dedicated closed channel or closed loop, we’re moving into the open loop where your prepaid can be used anywhere in the world.

PYMNTS: WHAT WILL BE THE MAIN THEMES OF 2016?

PR: Into 2016, I think it’s all technology and millennials because they’re very tech savvy, they want everything instantly and now — and it needs to flow smoothly. If you introduce an app and it’s not successful, I think you’ll have quite an uphill battle getting back in with them, so you need to get it right the first time. Make it simple, hit their needs on the nose, and don’t mess it up, because you won’t get them back again for a second try.


SIMON BLACK, CEO OF PPRO

PYMNTS: WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME OF THE BIG TRENDS IN 2015?

SB: We are really seeing a maturing of key processors and acquirers in the eCommerce space. There have been more resources of players focusing on payment processing, card acquiring and omnichannel, but I think the biggest impact will be on eCommerce companies taking a more global view in how they support merchants cross-border with eCommerce.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS LOOKING FORWARD TO 2016?

SB: I think cross-border eCommerce will be one of the hot topics of 2016. Merchants are going to become increasingly less tolerant of patched together solutions. What they don’t want is friction when they work with a processor or PSP; they want to be able to get the payment methods that their customers want quickly and instantly into their gateway. The bar is being raised by the bigger eCommerce merchants that want to trade globally and that’s putting pressure on the payments service providers and acquirers. One of the big trends in 2016 is that they will need to offer a more comprehensive service covering payment methods way beyond the core methods that are prevalent in the U.S., Canada and U.K. I think 2016 will be the year of alternative payment methods, and those with ambitions to be payments service providers and acquirers on a global basis need to offer more comprehensive portfolio for payments.


JAMES BERGMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PROCESSING.COM

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE BIG TRENDS YOU’RE SEEING IN THE FINTECH SPACE IN 2015?

JB: “As an international and domestic PSP, we’re seeing a big trend in merchants seeking in-region acquiring solutions for traffic, as well as a growing demand for off-shore acquiring as merchants seek to grow their volume in line with their corporate strategies. There is a big lack of obvious natural acquiring solutions. We believe we’ve seen a trend of merchants on a global basis finding it hard to locate a partner who is able to offer them a complete menu in terms of acquiring solutions both here in the U.S. … as well as for merchants who are located in Europe, Australia, Asia, etc.”

PYMNTS: LOOKING AHEAD TO NEXT YEAR, WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS YOU’RE SEEING FOR PAYMENTS FOR NEXT YEAR? AND HOW ARE YOU KEEPING UP WITH THE TRENDS?

JB: “In the issuing space, as well as in the cardholder present space, the move to EMV and also to chip has been huge. From an acquiring standpoint, we’re seeing some interesting trends more on the off-shore basis. From a domestic acquiring piece, we’re seeing a lot of merchants who are based domestically, seeking to expand their businesses on a global basis and looking for more regional and global partners who have an understanding in what they are doing.”


MIKE COTTRELL, DIRECTOR OF SALES & MARKETING AT PROPAY

BIGGEST TRENDS

“Mobile. I don’t think that’s any surprise,” Cottrell said. “On the mobile side one of the things we’ve seen this year are products and services for the consumers to use on their mobile devices. That is changing how merchants are interacting with those folks and there’s a lot of excitement for it.

“We’re seeing a lot of innovation around mobile, and I don’t want to say mobile acceptance necessarily, but the use of mobile for making purchases. Whether that’s in-app or otherwise, we’re working with so many different companies in that arena.”

Cottrell went on to note that “a lot of these technologies are going after millennials.” Cottrell specifically offered the example of wearables being enabled with NFC, a trend he said is “going to be fun to watch.”


Looking forward, Cottrell said he is most excited about the speed of innovation in payments.

“You’ve got the FinTech startups, they are seeing it as data, but it’s moving money,” he said. “The other thing that I’m excited about is I still think that large card brands are going to play a big role in driving out and supporting innovation in the marketplace.

“I see card brands continuing to grow stronger,” he continued. “They are becoming more nimble and some of the things that I see Visa, MasterCard and Discover doing are going to drive innovation in the


FinTech sector and I think it’s going to make them stronger partners. Some of the things that they’re working on with Samsung and Apple Pay among other companies, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”


JEREMY BORNSTEIN, HEAD OF PAYMENTS INNOVATION AT RBC

PYMNTS: WHAT HAVE BEEN SOME BIG TRENDS, SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES YOU’VE BEEN FOLLOWING IN 2015?

JB: We’ve been plotting this transition of commerce and the way consumers buy from this “Imagine Commerce 1.0” in the 50s, when it was all about newspapers and television guiding people to buy, to this “Commerce 2.0,” where it’s about loyalty and going to a store to explore and research a project. For the last few years, we’ve been talking about “Commerce 3.0” since the early 2010s – a melding together of the various steps in the commercial transaction. We’re even seeing signs of the emergence of a “Commerce 4.0,” and the change from each of these generations is happening faster than ever.

PYMNTS: ARE THERE ANY TRENDS YOU EXPECT TO CHANGE AND GROW NEXT YEAR?

JB: Social payments are going to be enormous next year. Over time, you might see the disappearance of the point of sale – getting that Apple Store experience where there isn’t that traditional checkout location. We’ll see more of that, but it won’t happen overnight. I can imagine walking into a Costco and showing my mobile phone to the checker on the way out. It could increase the use of in-app payments, which makes more problems for us. Wherever our customers want to use their RBC accounts, we need to be ready for it.


TIM WALSH, VP CORPORATE BOX OFFICE & RGCA CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT THE BROADER PAYMENTS INDUSTRY AND GIFT CARDS IN PARTICULAR HAVE FACED THROUGHOUT 2015?

TW: Specifically in the gift card industry, the technology is changing so quickly, and trying to get set up internally for that change has been a particular challenge. Every company is strapped for IT resources, and it can seem like gift cards don’t get the immediate attention among bigger projects like changes to POS systems and credit card processing. From an industry standpoint, the obstacle lies in communicating how safe gift cards are for consumers; they don’t have to give any personal information, which makes them very safe gifting options.

PYMNTS: HOW ABOUT SOME OVERARCHING THEMES IN THE INDUSTRY?

TW: Going digital. People are asking for it, but it’s not growing rapidly for the gift card world. I think for the most part, people like giving a physical card as a gift and wrapping that up. Sending one electronically without putting all the digital bells and whistles like a video or music to it doesn’t quite have that personal touch of handing someone something.


CHRIS LARSEN, CEO OF RIPPLE

PYMNTS: WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST TRENDS IN PAYMENTS AND FINTECH IN 2015?

CL: There have been a number of storylines for payments this year – Apple Pay and the growth of mobile payments or wallets, the issues of identity and security in payments, and the worldwide push for faster, more global payments. We view faster cross-border payments as the biggest opportunity. All of these trends have staying power and will continue to become key pillars of the payments world, but it all tracks back to faster payments infrastructure. Ultimately, every payment relies on banks’ back-end infrastructure, and the modern payments ecosystem cannot continue to rely on an antiquated infrastructure that fosters slow, expensive and uncertain settlement.

Thankfully, many public and private initiatives are focused on accelerating payments. Even the U.S. Federal Reserve is exploring ways to make payments faster

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR PAYMENTS IN 2016?

CL: At Ripple, we are committed to delivering bank-grade software solutions that solve for the settlement challenges in cross-border transactions. The problems in cross-border payments are especially pressing, because in addition to the slow, expensive, and uncertain nature of payments, you have a problem of access with less than 10 banks globally possessing the liquidity required to settle these transactions. Ripple solves for these problems by making it possible for all banks, both the largest and the smallest players, to directly settle funds with full visibility and certainty.


In 2016, we see the use of distributed financial technology being adopted at scale. Ripple is already being tested or piloted at banks around the world, and will soon turn the corner as the only distributed ledger technology being used at commercial scale. Once that happens, we believe there will be a succession of banks embracing this approach in 2016 and beyond.


ANDY FREEDMAN, HEAD OF MARKETING AT RISKIFIED

PYMNTS: WHAT WERE YOUR BIG TAKEAWAYS FROM 2015?

AF: The first is regardless of the channel, offline or online, fraud is real and it is here to stay. While EMV will certainly support some of the merchant pain points in the card present environment, fraudsters have always been active and they are not going away. What we see in the data is that fraud rates continue to escalate across vertical globalization of eCommerce, with cross-border growth only accelerating that need, and merchants are starting to really pay attention. We’ve done research on the topic of turning away good customers and found that the amount of false declines in the U.S. alone is about $118 billion and that’s a huge number of legitimate customers who are being declined at the point of sale, either in a store or through an online purchase. Correcting for that is really the biggest challenge that merchants face.

PYMNTS: WHAT DO YOU SEE AS BEING LARGER ISSUES OR THEMES LOOKING FORWARD TO 2016?

AF: I think what’s exciting about the opportunity is that the payments industry as a whole is going to be counted on for growth in ways it hasn’t before. In a lot of ways, payments is meant to be invisible, it’s meant to be something that lives behind the scenes and I think what will be new is that the payments industry as a whole, specifically security and fraud companies, will help unlock new growth opportunities and be counted on that by companies who are dealing with all sorts of competition. The other side is looking at reducing those false decline numbers as a way for growth. A lot of customers we meet with today that have high decline rates are being conservative, they don’t want to bear that hard cost of chargebacks so what they are doing is just saying “no” a lot. I think payments as an industry and the solution providers are going to be looked at to


show that top line growth and help the payments teams be counted on for opening up new markets and reducing the amount of good customers who are being declined.


BAIJU BHATT, CO-FOUNDER OF ROBINHOOD


BB: The biggest trend that we have seen is that design is important for financial products. Not only do they have to look nice, but they also have to work well and how they work has to be well thought out. Two and half years ago, it didn’t matter at all but I have seen 25 different apps that are focusing on design and finance.

PYMNTS: WHAT ABOUT PREDICTIONS IN 2016?

BB: International expansion will be a definitive trend. As a true financial company, being international is really hard because regulation makes it tricky. There are a lot of new financial technology companies that have popped out in the U.S. which were started by people who know they can scale using the Internet.


DAN KRAMER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF SHAZAM, INC.

PYMNTS: WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES OF 2015?

DK: Some of the challenges have been purely the disruption in the market. There’s a significant amount of capital investment being placed into this industry, or what I call the Kessler effect of payments. Kessler was a scientist with NASA in the early 1970s, and he was doing some research on basically the amount of junk that’s out in space, and what he discovered was that when these satellites collide into each other, they create fragments. And as those fragments hit each other, they collide again.

Payments is really similar right now — there’s a lot of fragmentation. The reasons it’s important is because it’s expensive to get into this business, and unless you’ve got a big rocket, you better be good at what you do.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR THE INDUSTRY IN 2016?

DK: I think for 2016, it is imperative that the financial institutions continue to develop fast technologies that are easy to use and secondary to what the consumer experience is.

At the end of the day, it’s about building a customer experience and anybody who can capture and make that easier, faster and better for the consumer will be successful.


NORM MERRITT, PRESIDENT & CEO OF SHOPKEEP

BIGGEST TRENDS

“2015 has been a year of transition. We’re still in the early adopter phase in terms of merchants who are adopting new technology; a very large percentage of merchants are still on electronic cash registers with the mag stripe terminal — and a lot of them are waking up,” Merritt said. “Whether it’s the EMV liability shift or consumer preference for things like Apple Pay, these are the types of things that are creating disruption in the marketplace and are going to drive a lot of merchants to adopt the newest technology. Once they do, then they realize the power they’ve been missing out on.”


“I think what you’re going to see in 2016 is an increase in technology adoption. The EMV liability shift has come and gone, but there’s a long tail of merchants that don’t even know about it yet, or if they do know, they don’t know why they would make the change. It will take time for people to do that.”

“While they are, we’re going ahead and ‘future-proofing’ their whole business. Not only getting merchants on an EMV-capable reader, but one that has an NFC antenna — so they can take Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay, and Android Pay — and replace the ECR with an iPad that allows them to access the data and information about their business from anywhere.”


ALON FEIT, CEO OF SPLITIT

PYMNTS: IN 2015, WHAT HAVE SOME OF THE BIGGEST TRENDS AND CHALLENGES BEEN FOR SPLITIT?

AF: We launched in the U.S. in 2015, so it’s always a challenge to create awareness of your product in a new market and become a relevant provider for clients. We actually rebranded ourselves for Money 20/20 and changed our name from “PayItSimple” to eliminate some confusion with other companies already on the market. We can trademark our new name for success in the long-run, and we did a lot of success to ensure there aren’t any similar names out there at the moment.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE KEY ISSUES YOU’RE FOCUSING ON FOR 2016?

AF: The big challenge is really to attract more users, increase market share and build name recognition among merchants. We work with channels to distribute our service, too, but we also approach clients directly. Revenues are getting flatter and profits are becoming pressed, so all those companies are looking for new innovative services that will help them create new systems of revenue, and this is exactly what Splitit is doing.


https://www.splitit.com/

TABLESAFE CTO MICHAEL WEAVER AND COO STEVE MCKEAN


SM: The fact that everyone is considering mobile platforms is an interesting dilemma, but it’s not that easy. I think there’s a path to the movement to mobile, but currently I think it’s going to be difficult to take a device away from the table.

MW: When you look at the adoption rate of mobile, nobody has a higher adoption rate in hospitality than Starbucks. Yet, a huge percentage of people don’t use it. But if they were to say, “From now on, we’re only taking mobile” today, they’d serve fewer than half of their customers. And that’s still an amazing adoption rate. Mobile is great. It makes it a great opportunity, whether it’s for the millennials or anyone else who wants to use that really flexible and quick functionality with your smartphone. But you still can’t leave the rest of them stranded.


SM: I still consider mobile to be at the forefront of all the technologies. We’re going to see point-of-sale-systems going online so that there’s only an interface from the restaurant to those things. It’s sort of the hospitality industry catching up to the rest of the world that’s adopting technology so quickly.

The migration of EMV has a huge impact on refocusing everyone toward safety and security. Because everyone loves technology, they want speed and the ability to essentially lower the hassle factor or friction.


MW: Hospitality is running last as far as the adoption of the new EMV rails. I think you will see it trail retail — specifically big box retail. I think the end of 2016 is when you’ll see hospitality really engaging with meeting these new requirements for EMV.


LISA SHIPLEY, EVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR AT TRANSACTION NETWORK SERVICES (TNS)


LS: There has been a huge expansion in the number of players coming in and accelerating change in the payments industry. With mobility, EMV and the new value-added apps, these agile players are bringing solutions to the forefront sooner than they would have going the traditional paths.


LS: Consumers will drive solutions. Earlier, this was done by merchants and acquirers. The pendulum has shifted from the merchants to consumers, and the needs of the market are coming bottom up and companies are responding to those changes. Companies are also thinking more global, trying to find relationships that are cross-border.


MAARTEN BRON, UL‘S DIRECTOR OF INNOVATIONS


MB: If you look at 2015, mobile payments have taken off in a way that the whole industry has been anticipating for quite awhile now. If you simple take a look at the ever-growing list payment systems, Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, Chase Pay, and other kinds of payments systems, you can see it is definitely becoming mainstream.


MB: There’s only so much space in a crowded market space, yet we see more and more payment systems. Payment in itself is not a valued proposition. If you really want to give purpose to a payment instrument you have to place it in a commercial environment.

Consumers may be compelled by the convenience if you offer frictionless payment and you will have an audience, there are many countries that can serve as an example. But if you really want to look forward to 2016 those payment technologies that manage to invent themselves seamlessly in a certain commerce environment could potentially be more successful than others. A nice example is Uber. People do not like Uber because of the payment function, but because of the commerce experience of hailing the cab, getting in, seeing what your ETA is going to be, and by the time you get out you just paid without seeing it. I expect to see more situations where payments get embed in a certain commerce experience.


PYMNTS: WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL PAYMENTS SYSTEM LOOK LIKE?

MB: I think there is no one answer to that solution, but I’m a strong believer in that the killer app of mobile phones is convenience. Whichever payment system that is frictionless for the consumer to do whatever they want to do is going to be the winner. The ideal payment systems is a payment system that can be used anywhere and based on a mobile phone. It’s all about mobile, local, and personal; those have been the buzzwords for the past few years.


JOHN MCLEOD, VERSAPAY’S VP OF MARKETING


JM: I’d say there are lots of different things in play. First and foremost, it’s probably the fact that there’s so much focus on the importance and growth of payments. There are many different pockets of real goodness where there’s energy being put place on innovation. You’ve got organizations encouraging FinTech companies to get started, and helping their growth over time.

The fact that there’s attention on this [industry] is just great, because it’s just changing the game across the board. There’s a recognition by many of the bigger players in the financial sector that change is coming. They need to get on with understanding it, capitalizing on it, and help driving the direction of it. Or, some of the smaller players — the innovative companies — are coming in and they are going to change the game. I think that will cause some challenges for the big guys that are well-established.


JM: One of the big things will be the adoption by businesses. So in the world of B2B to look more to the consumer side. Often, though, in the business environment the same thing is not applied. There’s going to be more companies looking to have that kind of convenience in a B2B application as they do on the consumer side.

This whole notion as self service, where I — as the consumer — want to be in control, whether I’m doing work from a business perspective or operating as an individual. I don’t want to have to be reliant on some other place, I want to be able to have that facilitated


for me so I can take the actions that I want, when I want, where I want and how I want. That’s one of the biggest things.


SERGE ELKINER, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF YELLOWPEPPER

BIGGEST TRENDS

This year was all about the tokenization of the transaction, according to Elkiner.

“I think that the industry started to realize that more and more security is needed in the transaction as it evolves outside of its current point of sale,” Elkiner explained.

“We’re migrating towards this tokenization type of transaction so it can be on any device, regardless of whether the device was built for payments or not,” he added.

2016 AND BEYOND

“Because this year built the infrastructure for all these transactions,” Elkiner began, “I think that next year is going to be the year of implementation.”

The big players — Chase, Apple, Samsung, Android, China’s Alipay and India’s Paytm — and those who follow suit are “now going to build the value of the services on top of that infrastructure, whether it’s in the U.S. or more globally.” Now that the infrastructure is built, he says, “let’s build services that people want.”


JAY BHATTACHARYA, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO AT ZIPMARK

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE THE BIG TRENDS YOU’RE SEEING IN PAYMENTS IN 2015? HOW HAVE THEY CHALLENGED YOUR BUSINESS?

JB: Our company focuses on payments that would typically be handled with a wire transfer and ACH or paper check and so we are a very specific kind of payments platform. We are not card payments platform; we are consumer payments platform. We specifically work with businesses that have those needs.

What we found in the last 18-24 months is that the need for disbursements to bank accounts – that’s commonly known as direct deposit has exploded. It used to be the domain of payroll companies and large procurement type platforms and now there are companies with two employees that suddenly need to make payments out because they are platform for on-demand work of some kind or another or they might run a merchandise ecommerce site where people can sell their goods and so this need to disburse funds has exploded.

And its largely because of two things that we see this. One is that what used to be 101 transactions like in MyPay and myDriver that have become intermediated transactions, where I pay another organization and that organization then goes and pays the person that actually delivered the service so this on-demand labor services is a huge-huge category for us. And what’s interesting about these companies is that they are new to making payments. There’s lots of solutions for them to take payments. There’s lots of companies that have blazed the trail from PayPal to Braintree to Stripe where if you run an online platform and accept credit cards probably in like 5-10 minutes – you get up and running.


But there’s not anything like that to go and make bank payments. Bank payments are complex, they are archaic and what we try to do is bring them upto a standard where people can actually implement them without having to take on all of the owners’ task of implementing the task of compliance and KYC.

The other area that we are focusing on right now and is growing in volume enormously is around online lenders. What we found was that there are lots and lots of online lenders now of different kinds mostly in business lending and these guys need are full service payment platform so they can go to their bank and get standard bank services.

They can submit a file until 5 PM ET, but these are online lenders. The idea is that a business owner will go work the day and then in the evening when he has had dinner with his family will go and apply for a loan. But the traditional banking hours don’t really work for these guys. So what we try to do is we work with banks across the country and we are able to process payments late into the evening. So someone who is approved for a loan as late as 8PM/9PM ET will get funds into their bank account, the following day. And so we are offering these guys the ability to extend their business day to match up with their market demands. If you get approved for a loan on Thursday night today, its very possible that as a business owner you won’t see that money until Monday. Which is not really an acceptable user experience from our perspective. And its the case with a lot of our clients. They don’t want bad user experience.

PYMNTS: WHAT ARE TRENDS YOU EXPECT TO EMERGE IN 2016? HOW WILL PAYMENTS TECHNOLOGY CHANGE?

JB: Our service is built on the banking infrastructure. One of the big things that is happening in 2016 is that we are really excited about is the advent of same day ACH that all of our clients would be able to take advantage of that as we work with banks that are on the ACH rails and processor transactions as ACH credits. What that means is


that not only will we be able to provide next day funding for our clients, but many of them that submit files, that submit payments through the day – they will be able to get their client their money on their bank accounts on that same day which is a huge-hUge difference. When you look at the freelance and online labor platforms, they are competing for the best service provider.

If you are a driver, you are gonna work with the platform that pays you the quickest and always has the most reliable payments. We believe, that as a competitive advantage that’s gonna continue to grow in value and people will need services like that and we are excited about it.

In terms of online lending, I think, that area is going to continue to grow dramatically — different types of loans, different types of structures for those loans and see the volume of those loans increasing exponentially over the course of 2016. I think, there’s going to be a shift towards low value loans where you can quickly get a bridge to the next week or something like that. There’s a lot of receivables financing type options that are coming in. We are applying our product to those platforms as well.


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