Strategy&: Top 4 trends for the credit card industry

The payments industry has gained prominence in the past years and to continue on this path of success, credit card companies should adjust to four arising trends that are expected to reshape the industry, says consulting firm Strategy&. Companies that are able adapt through innovation, increased rewarding systems and mobile wallet offerings, are expected to gain the most success in the coming years.

Strategy consulting firm Strategy& recently released its ‘2015 Payments Industry Trends’ as part of its ‘Industry Perspectives’. In this perspective, the firm identifies opportunities and challenges that lie ahead of the payments industry in 2015. This industry, also known as the credit card industry, includes organisations that store, process, and transmit cardholder data.

Strategy& states that in the coming year the prominence and usage of credit cards will continue to grow as payments firms will reach millions of new customers in emerging regions. In order to thrive, payments firms should “be responsive to customer preferences, prepared to develop valuable new features, and sufficiently nimble to anticipate and counteract competitive.” The firm has identified four key trends that could reshape the payments industry in the coming years, trends credit card facilitators should adjust to.

Branding battles
More and more e-commerce sites, such as iTunes, Amazon and Uber, are storing consumer credit card information. This speeds up purchases as the consumer does not need to re-enter his data with every visit. For credit card providers that have their cards listed as a primary card at the most popular e-commerce sites this stored data provides a competitive edge. According to Strategy&, it would be wise for credit card issuers to create aggressive incentives for merchants to promote their card as a primary choice through cross promotion deals.

Innovation in underwriting
Innovation in credit card scoring will provide opportunities for card issuers as the traditional credit card scoring forms an imperfect measure of borrower risk as it can keep many consumers out of the marketplace. People with high student loan debt, for instance, might not be eligible for a credit card even though they might be a worthwhile risk for a creditor. Strategy& highlights examples of innovative credit scoring for instance using rental records, cell phone payments, and behaviour on social media sites. Crowdfunding is also predicted to make great gains in the coming year, with crowdfunding technology providers increasing their transaction volume.

Rewards 2.0
A third opportunity for companies in the payments industry, as seen by the researchers, arises from the use of consumer data to create sophisticated merchant-funded rewards programs. In an era of ‘big data’, these rewards programs are becoming more and more pervasive as they integrate the consumer’s path to purchase and as such become more relevant to the individual consumers. As a result, sales per customer are expected to increase.

Mobile wallets
The adoption of mobile wallets will allow for an easier and more comfortable shopping process as they will speed up the checkout process and make a consumer’s life easier. For credit card companies to gain significant traction in the marketplace, the researchers emphasis the need for more collaboration on open technology platforms.

These four challenges should be addressed by the payments industry for the industry to continue its growth process. In conclusion the researchers say: “As the payments sector deals with these potentially disruptive changes, the issue of protecting individual data will only grow in importance. For this reason, the industry must work together to earn the confidence of the consumer. But those companies that innovate best around branding, rewards, underwriting, and mobile usage are bound to realise the greatest profit and market share gains.”