Interview

The future of Tap-to-Pay payments

Friday 8 December 2023 10:48 CET | Editor: Irina Ionescu | Interview

Stephane Pilloy, Chief Executive Officer, myPOS Limited, discusses the future of Tap-to-Pay payments, their broader global acceptance, and the benefits this type of contactless payment can bring to merchants and customers alike.

With the widespread availability of NFC and a 68% smartphone penetration rate globally, contactless payments experience steady growth. What does this mean to SMEs, and how can this trend further impact the global digital payments market?

The evolution of near-field communication (NFC) has opened up contactless payments to a wide range of merchants – however small they may be. Thanks to NFC, SMEs have the freedom to take payments via their own devices, earn more, and improve competitiveness. 

The surge of micro and small businesses means that for many merchants this is the first time they’ve been in business – and the learning curve is steep. Many small businesses are hesitant to adopt new digital solutions in fear of costs or lack of knowledge about complicated systems. The high smartphone penetration and the availability of NFC address these concerns.

The fact that no additional equipment is needed with Tap-to-Pay technology means that merchants can take payments at festivals, local markets, and any other distant location where their trade is based. Additionally, the benefits of Tap-to-Pay go beyond accepting payments. With a SoftPOS solution, merchants get access to digital tools such as reporting, invoicing, inventory management, receipts by text message, payments by link, and more. They can also receive the funds from card payments in seconds.

So, smartphone penetration and NFC technology mean that SMEs have access to more tools that can help grow their business, without sacrificing security for convenience. Additionally, paying on a phone is easy and fast, and the easier it is for customers to make a purchase, the more likely they are to buy. Thus, SMEs benefit from better customer service, more impulse purchases, and higher sales. Overall, the technology is convenient, efficient, and secure – and it means the SMEs can save time and money.

As far as how this trend will shape the global digital payments market – the expansion of NFC technology and its implementation in smartphones will continue to spur market growth. The digital horizon keeps expanding, so merchants must ask themselves how they are keeping up with the digital transformation. Are they making the most of innovative technology and giving consumers the secure and convenient experience they expect? At myPOS, we stay at the forefront of payment innovation on behalf of our merchants and their customers.

There is a lot of potential for Tap-to-Pay (TTP) technology, especially on the merchants’ side. Is this payment method perceived as secure, and what is the adoption rate you see?

NFC payments are secure, and we aim to educate business owners of the advantages of TTP technology. What’s more, over the years, myPOS has been working to integrate software security solutions into its myPOS Glass application and the payment core. These solutions prevent all known methods for compromising an Android app – protection against emulators, application integrity checks, protection of C++ code in all libraries, and so on. We built an exceptional server system, ensuring the secure transport and storage of keys and sensitive information.

As a result, with myPOS Glass, our merchants can securely accept all kinds of EMV-based cards by Visa and Mastercard and all digital wallets. Moreover, they can accept QR-code payments and receive all the accepted funds in seconds, in a free myPOS account. 

Overall, as global smartphone penetration is growing, our role is to create new payment-acceptance opportunities for business owners by leveraging innovative technology. In the last 3 years, we’ve been able to not only roll out new acceptance solutions for the merchants, but also show thousands of cardholders that SoftPOS is a legitimate and trustworthy technology. Additionally, our strategic partnership with Samsung has been a key enabler for the adoption of SoftPOS across Europe.

Can you further address your partnership with Samsung and share some valuable insights from it? 

Our success stories with myPOS Glass span across a wide range of industries. In the transportation sector, we partnered with Samsung to deliver maximum convenience to passengers because they are turned off by complex payment methods and prefer to use wearable and mobile devices instead of pulling out their wallets when traveling. 

As a result, myPOS Glass is now part of Austria’s national railway and FMS, Europe’s leading taxi dispatching system. The FMS platform is used by more than 200,000 drivers in 11 countries. The taxi drivers are using Samsung devices, which have a preinstalled myPOS Glass app, to accept contactless payments from their dispatch terminals, which are typically used for navigation and communication. In the past, accepting payments was done through separate hardware.

In the case of the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), Samsung and myPOS enabled conductors to sell tickets directly on the trains. ÖBB staff are now equipped with a Samsung X-Cover smartphone that has myPOS Glass. This initiative includes trains traveling across eight countries: Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, France, and Croatia.

How do you see the adoption and development of TTP technology in the future?

TTP acceptance is growing. The NFC contactless payment method saw a boost from the COVID-19 pandemic when even cash-centred countries became enthusiastic adopters of touchless purchases. Now, ongoing innovation in secure payment technologies is strengthening the market growth and so is the demand from merchants and consumers for speed. 

As a result, the future of payments will involve a greater emphasis on digital and mobile, and myPOS will continue to drive change by responding to consumer demands with tech innovations. Thanks to myPOS Glass, now even the smallest merchants can easily accept digital payments, and larger merchants can create new experiences valued by their customers. Our goal is to present business owners with new possibilities and expand payment access one tap at a time.

 

This editorial piece was first published in the Payment Methods Report 2023, which provides an in-depth overview of the latest worldwide developments in how people pay, the payment methods space, the innovative technologies that these methods work upon, and the best strategies on how to win at conversion and retention.


About Stephane Pilloy

Stephane leads myPOS in Ireland, where recently the company secured authorisation as an EMI. He boasts an extensive banking career, including a number of payment and card providers such as Vocalink, Nexi, Cofinoga, John Lewis Financial Services, and M&S Money. Stephane joined myPOS in 2018 to oversee the regulated entities within the group.

 


About myPOS

myPOS is a cross-border payments and business platform trusted by merchants in more than 30 countries. Apart from being the first to offer instant settlement at no added cost, myPOS was among the pioneers in the Tap-to-Pay field. The company launched its SoftPOS solution three years ago, bringing unique technology to all European merchants.


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Keywords: Tap-to-Pay, online payments, cashless, ecommerce, digitalisation, contactless payments, EMV, partnership, POS, SoftPOS, NFC, e-invoicing, mobile payments
Categories: Payments & Commerce
Companies: myPOS
Countries: World
This article is part of category

Payments & Commerce

myPOS

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