ETA research finds voice commerce a top payments trend in 2018

Connected payments and connected devices

In the next 24 months, IDC forecasts 30 billion devices will be connected to the internet. 2018 may be dominated by discussions and research in how merchants and their vendors will react to the new channels – voice-enabled commerce through in-home devices, chatbots initiating payments on social networks, and connected devices managing purchasing decisions and payments. In 2018 alone, those connected devices will initiate $150 billion in transactions, ETA research finds.

The research concludes that financial institutions and payments providers must be prepared for IoT devices, which will be connected to individual accounts asserting a user’s identity.

Investments in POS hardware and software

Although new commerce channels become available, the study highlights a growing investment in POS hardware and software solutions. It is estimated that merchants will spend nearly USD 1.7 billion on POS hardware in each of the next two years.

The POS is becoming the main point of interaction between merchants and consumers, a fact which is growing demand for fast and reliable software. The IDC forecast says that US merchants will spend USD 2.2 billion in 2018, and USD 2.4 billion in 2019, on POS software alone. Additionally, spending on customer analytics and loyalty management solutions will hit USD 1.4 billion in 2018 and USD 1.6 billion in 2019, the report finds.

Banks upgrading payments infrastructure

To keep up with the accelerating volume of payments that will go through their networks, banks also plan significant investments into infrastructure. IDC predicts that banks in the US alone will spend nearly USD 5 billion on the effort, including hardware, software and IT services in the next two years.

The Market Spotlight provides specific insight into five trends in payments technology in 2018 that will drive the discussion at ETA’s TRANSACT, April 17-19, 2018.