With the increase of card and digital payment acceptance the role of acquirers and processors, the entities that set in motion the whole card industry is becoming pivotal. Acquirers and processors enable merchants to accept card payments by acting as a link between merchants, issuers, and payment networks—Providing authorization, clearing and settlement, dispute management, and information services to merchants and financial institutions.
CNP or not CNP?
With the evolvement of digitalization, the world started to transform from brick and mortar into online. It’s natural that with the change of customer behavior people also expect to implement all their banking and payment needs online utilizing CNP transactions. The increase in CNP coincides with the explosive growth in e-commerce sales. E-commerce is unbelievably flexible because it interacts with the last digitalization trends and in combination delivers an upgraded experience for the customers, and by introducing and interacting with various disrupting technologies such as voice search, AI, Internet of Things, E-commerce takes us a step towards securing its own place in the future market of innovations and promoting CNP transactions a big role in the payment industry.
However, despite the wide digitalization expansion that has fostered the evolvement of CNP transactions, the POS sector keeps up with the pace of rapid development.
POS on its traditional place
According to Grand View Research statistics, In 2020, the market size value of POS software reached $9.3 billion. The forecasts are $18.1 billion by 2027.
The shift from traditional POS acquiring to disruptive methods and innovations is logical and responds to the demands of the time.
These last years proved that the acquiring sector is flexible and actively reacts to the changes trying to comply with the drastically changing payment market. Innovations, new methods, and solutions in acquiring and processing navigate the challenges of ongoing transformation.
Let’s dive deeper into the innovation brought to acquiring sector!
Real-time secure transactions and convenient maintenance conditions are the key advantages of the POS system. Nowadays fast-evolving POS platforms combine a wide range of features and functionalities, and from being purely acquirer/processor it provides comprehensive services management providers that integrate marketing, inventory, accounting, and data reporting.
Today, the POS solutions acts as a card acceptance machine in addition to a device to manage revenue resulting to a healthy sales flow. The modular infrastructure of the latest POS solutions optimizes business payment processes alongside the business financial matters, enabling the merchant’s customer behavior and choosing the best tactics to satisfy customer experience.
With the evolvement of such disruptive technologies as AI, Cloud technologies the POS terminals acquired the features of hi-tech machines devices that secure transactions, simplicity, and boost sales by suggesting recommendations to shoppers.
As for statıstıcs, having AI integration, 15% of businesses in the US are already using AI-enabled POS in their stores (Adobe, 2018).
Mobility determines the usability
Mobility is one of the main drivers of the latest payment innovations. During the pandemic reasoned lockdowns, most retail stores managed to stay afloat purely due to online commerce. mPOS terminals improved payment acceptance in a more versatile way enabling out-of-store transactions and rescuing customer loyalty.
According to Statista, mobile POS payments are predicted to reach $4,650,556 million and will have about 1,890.33 million users by 2025. The usability of mPOS terminals isn’t limited to mobility. Implementing all features characteristic of POS terminals mPOS present an improved, mobile version of in-store POS terminals.
The deployment of mPOS terminals meets the social distance requirement by integrating contactless technologies such as NFC or RFID.
Contactless payments
COVID -19 favored the growth of contactless cards and e-wallets on the change of swipe cards having the same infrastructure as traditional cards. However, the NFC and RFID technologies have enabled them to connect with merchants as opposed to EMV chips and magnetic cards promoting contactless payment processing.
Recent contactless payments limitation rise up to 100 pound sterlings proves that this technology is going to dominate over 2022 year, bringing new features and enabling for more safe payments.
BNPL as a newcomer of 2021
Buy now, pay later arrangements are point-of-sale installment loans that allow consumers to make purchases and pay for them by small parts at certain future dates. This services provides customers with opprtunity to instantly purchase what they want and split the payment over predetermined period of time. The technology shakened the payment industry this year, changed the perception of money at whole, attracting dozens of cutomers to stores, especially dyring the holiday shopping season. However, experts predicts such drastic rush to this method will negatively impact to the risk of overspending as there is no fees for a time limit.
Rewards and loyalty programs
Reward and loyalty programs are one of the turning points in achieving an outstanding customer experience. For the previous year, given the effect of COVID consumers’ ability to earn rewards had been placed on hold.
However, most forward-looking credit card companies were obliged to show flexibility and navigate consumer expectations from their reward card into alternative reward spheres so that consumers can take advantage. For example, most companies successfully compensate unused travel rewards by replacing them with rewards on everyday essentials such as groceries, takeout, delivery, and gas. The flexibility of using, redeeming, and controlling the rewards is one of the main reasons why cardholders choose credit card companies.
The payment ecosystem undergoes drastic transformation nowadays. Innumerous innovations and ever-evolving technologies challenge the acquiring sector on efficiency and endurability, that’s why the incorporation of new technologies is a logical path for the acquiring space to foster development and business growth.
