2016 May Be the Year of Mobile Payments

It’s a strange proposition, I know; how could 2016 be the year of mobile payments given what all we’ve seen in 2015? Worse yet, there’s still more than three months left in 2015 and anything could happen in those three months. How could anyone be projecting that 2016 will be the big year for mobile payments already?

Well, that’s the report out of no less than Forbes, and the word of the day is that 2016 is likely to “explode” in terms of mobile payments.

The reasoning behind this powerful statement, meanwhile, will likely be shocking, but no less impressive for the shock value. The biggest reason 2016 is likely to be huge for mobile payments is that all of the big three will be up and active by then.

While Apple Pay has been in play for almost a year already, Android Pay is still getting cranked up, and Samsung Pay is still a bit far off. Throw in the likely appearance of CurrentC and plenty more to come—ranging from Facebook’s payment feature to PayPal’s Paydiant-driven system—and you’re looking at a year that could be packed full of both new and returning users.

The second point revolves around a critical point of business: go where the customers are. Since increasing amounts of customers will be on mobile devices, so too will the businesses follow. Eager to get a slice of that action, businesses will increasingly offer deals, discounts, and loyalty program options to those ready to use this platform.

Given that the Millennial generation is nearing its lifetime peak of spending, offering digital deals to the digital savvy should offer up some substantial benefit to the businesses putting it to use.

A clear deadline is also an issue. The move to upgrade systems by October 1 so as to be ready for the Europay / MasterCard / Visa (EMV) chip-based standard is also going to give mobile payments a shot in the arm.

While many small businesses are ignoring the EMV standard, there are many making the move, and major stores have in many cases already made the conversions necessary. Many of these systems will be able to help in terms of mobile payment acceptance, too, so next year will likely see a lot of new places ready to take mobile payments.

Finally, there’s the issue of trust and security. It’s been a rocky road, but here, Apple Pay will likely be some help. After all, potentially interested customers can say, Apple Pay went pretty much a year without any serious breaches, so maybe this mobile payments “thing” is safe after all.

Further new developments from tokenization to biometric security have been coming into play, and between a major payment system with a safe track record and several new security measures in place, it might well be safe to trust the new systems.

Mobile payments have already come a long way and made a lot of strides in 2015, not to mention beforehand, but indeed 2016 might be the year when all of these separate systems come together and really start making inroads. After all, we’ve been seeing them come out in dribs and drabs for the last couple years, but in 2016, everyone should be in play, and that should make this quite the game to watch.