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2017: Three predictions So what product announcements are
likely to pop up in our newsfeeds in
and a little advice 2017? Here are a couple of possible
headline candidates:

By Evi Triantafyllides • Your child can now order his
favorite Disney products with
PAAY the Mickey Pay bear!

t the start of a new year, a writer cannot help but engage in one of • Get stuff done literally on the
two activities: provide an account of the primary topics of interest go. Talk to your headphones
over the past year or offer predictions on what the new year has in and place orders while walk-
A store. In an effort to engage in the more forward-looking endeavor ing and listening to music at
of the two, here's my take on what will happen this year. the same time.
Pay anywhere, everywhere with anything However, room for new companies
to infiltrate the market will eventu-
We might have thought payment options and opportunities had reached a ally reach its peak, and we will start
saturation point, slowly receding and settling toward fewer, more rigidly experiencing a "what's whose" game.
defined systems, but we were wrong. Or, at least, we're not ready to be proven Meaning? With smaller fintech start-
right just yet. ups finding it difficult to scale, they
will start reshuffling in an "acquisi-
Payment methods and formats are bound to become more before they become tion and fade away" rush: tech and
less. With options ranging from wearable payment devices, scannable quick payment giants alike will shop for
response codes and social media's proliferating "purchase now" buttons, to their favorite innovations and add
peer-to-peer payments, wallets and prepaid cards, companies are realizing the them under their canopy of products.
power of payment platform data and are rushing to capitalize on it – a trend
that probably will continue in the coming year. Mobile wallets: rebranded,
rethought, more convincing
In recent years, considerable industry
focus has been on mobile wallets. I be-
lieve this will continue in 2017 – with
rebranded, rethought and more con-
vincing versions. Yes, we know. Some
major players tried so hard and failed
even miserably harder. Will this hap-
pen again? I think so. Whether it's in
a couple of months or a little further
into the year, big tech giants and card
brands alike are going to aim for a
mobile wallet war comeback.

Why revisit a failed plan? Well, for
the simple reason that the plan has
been too overly invested in, engi-
neered and marketed to just give it all
up. At the end of the day, the extent
to which consumers can really resist
a change whose fate has been prede-
termined by the big corporations is
always short-lived.

The mandate to migrate to EMV (Eu-
ropay, Mastercard and Visa) chip-en-
abled terminals and heightened em-
phasis on technologies focused strict-
ly on security were both instrumental
in shifting the spotlight away from

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