Blog

Out with the old and, eventually, in with the new: self-service and the changing payments landscape

Is there a way to strike a balance – a way to effectively utilize new technology and enhance the consumer experience, all the while blazing a technological trail?

January 12, 2015

By Paul Burden

In the past year, the payments industry has shown such rapid change that it has been difficult for other sectors to respond swiftly to the advancements. From hardware to software, there seems to be an unending flow of new technology into the marketplace.

With Apple Pay growing exponentially and credit-card companies getting set to roll out integrated circuit (IC) cards next year, it's becoming increasingly difficult for companies to stay on top of these new trends and effectively provide a seamless experience for their customers

Many companies rapidly react to these changes by implementing new technologies as quickly as possible. This requires drastic infrastructure overhauls along with major capital expenditures. More often than not, these reactionary measures can cause headaches for both the consumer and the seller.

This begs the question: Is it worth being the first to implement a technology if consumer experience suffers? Is there a way to strike a balance – a way to effectively utilize new technology and enhance the consumer experience, all the while blazing a technological trail?

Most would agree that being first is not worth sacrificing your target customer’s overall experience. Retaining customers, after all, is hard enough without giving them an explicit reason to jump ship. So, how do we reconcile this dilemma? Enter patience and deliberation.

It's true that responding quickly to market trends can attract a consumer’s attention in today's crowded media landscape. It's also true, however, that without ease-of-use and seamlessness, the consumer will abandon a solution and move on to the next best option. There are simply too many companies vying for their business.

For many, it's difficult to find the perfect time to update or release a new technology that has the goal of effectively improving an experience. For others, it's challenging to decide what new technology they need to utilize that will efficiently solve the problem they're attempting to fix.

Consumers want the latest and greatest technology, but it's critical to fully develop a solution before implementing it in real-world situations. While dozens of new technologies debut each year, it's sometimes difficult to immediately determine just which trends will catch on. And to determine which technologies to let go of (and when).

Outgoing magnetic-stripe technology is one such example. Magnetic-stripe technology will be around until at least October 2015 in the United States. After that, non-EMV-compliant merchants and issuers will assume liability for any fraudulent activity.

Until then, though, many customers will not have made the change. And merchants – never wanting to turn away a customer, of course – will want to offer those end users who are slow to adopt a way to ease into the new payment technology -- all the while complying with new regulations and protecting those customers.

Allowing consumers to use any form of payment, regardless of the location, increases sales opportunities and boosts the possibility of repeat customers. Therefore, streamlining the payment process across various platforms is paramount in designing solutions for the evolving payment industry. It's why we at Meridian, for example, have developed MzeroPay -- so that, in conjunction with our technology partners, we can assemble the appropriate software and hardware solutions to negotiate the complex playing field of payment. MzeroPay supports both old and new forms of payment; by supporting outgoing magnetic-stripe technology, it will be able to communicate with any necessary components until the point at which they exit the marketplace (it also offers the ability to traverse multiple payment options; whether Apple Pay, chip-based credit cards, PayPal, Google Wallet, or others).

For any technology – payments-related or not -- merchants typically don't want to have to choose between old and new solutions in this rapidly changing environment. Even more, they don't want to have to choose between customers who are using one technology or another.

About the author: Paul Burden is the Senior Vice President of Software at Meridian. He has more than 15 years' experience and an extensive background in self-service, with unique insights addressing the needs of clients within the industry. He graduated from Georgian College in Ontario, Canada, as a programmer/analyst in 1999.