Tipalti Offers Up Insight on 2019’s Year to Come in Mobile Payments

It’s another corner heard from as the folks at Tipalti, by way of CEO Chen Amit, sent us their predictions for 2019 in the mobile payments space. Interestingly, Amit’s projections seem to dovetail nicely with some of the others we’ve heard from already.

First, Amit expects automation to ramp up in a big way. Not just in what we’ve seen so far, but also in new spaces like back-office processes. The concept of Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is likewise driving up, and is also stepping into the financial space as well. That’s just the start, though, as fintech itself is expanding outward to cover new fields like regtech, a new term meant to encompass technology meant to address regulations. Regtech is also seeing some service use as a way to protect against fraud.

There’s bad news afoot for anyone working in accounts payable, as Amit looks to see this field shrunk employment-wise in short order. Anyone working with manual, paper-based accounts will likely see these fields wiped out by 2025. What’s more, if the field isn’t completely automated, it will likely end up as a part-time job by then.

Just to top it off, early payments are now expected to be a much bigger part of the field as small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) get into the field. Originally, this was strictly the province of larger firms who could better handle it, but once SMBs realized that they could use their accounts payable as a revenue stream, and get their suppliers paid earlier besides, they got into the field.

We’ve heard before that automation was poised to expand. Even casual glances at the field show us how automated retail is on the rise. We’ve seen vending machines for everything from hot pizza to sweatshirts. Yet many of Chen’s predictions are unique; the rise of regtech, for example, and seeing it used as an anti-fraud mechanism is not something we’ve heard much. The idea that accounts payable could be completely automated within the next seven years is downright dazzling.

So in the end, we have one familiar prediction, two relatively new ones, and one that’s an absolute bombshell. There could indeed be some big changes ahead, and only time will tell just how big.