The participants of IIM Indore Mumbai Campus had with them Mr. Ramachandran T.R., Group Country Manager - India & South Asia, VISA will on Saturday, 24th October 2015 to interact on the trending topic “Trends shaping the payments industry: From payment-cards to mobile payments.”
Mr. Ramachandran began by talking about the scope in the field of digital payments by substantiating it with statistical figures. Only 4% of the transactions presently are digital that creates a lot of scope. India is the 9
th largest market in the world. Government’s smart city vision, growth in fintech and the change in consumer behavior due to growth of economy and increased penetration and usage of Debit Cards are all signaling towards an increase of users in digital payments.
But in reality, the payment landscape is dynamic and confusing. Mr. Ramachandran talked about the traditional four party model consisting of a chain of Cardholder, Merchant, Acquirer, Network and Issuer which has now been transformed with the insertion of new players like mPOS Providers, Gateways, PSPs, Platforms etc. Digital leaders like Google, Apple, Samsung are expanding into payments and inserting themselves across the ecosystem.
Further, he talked about the trends that are taking place which consisted of evolution, expansion and enablement. Under evolution, he talked about e-commerce shifting to smart phones, introduction of contactless payments and push payments on mobile. It is predicted that by 2019, there will be 651 mn smartphones in India. Digital commerce will grow as the growth drivers converge. Over 80% of Internet users in India will access Internet through smart phones by 2020. Talking about expansion, which is the growth of non-traditional acceptance models that lead to creation of new electronic payment opportunities for consumers, Mr. Ramachandran enunciated the three steps in it- creation of differentiated banks, acceptance of growth through non-traditional models and transit. Lastly, he spoke about enablement which is the development of digital issuance through payment solutions built for connected devices and interoperable environments. It includes migration from plastic to digital, growth of closed-loop wallets and APIs and SDK led approach to product development.
He concluded by saying that the challenge is to put a buy button in a secure, cheap and less clunky fashion. Visa has to be made as easy to use and acceptable in the digital world tomorrow as it is in the physical world today.
The enthusiastic participants asked questions related to Near Field Communication, Bitcoin, Visa experimenting with biometrics, success rates related to payments and a variety of other questions. Their queries were patiently dealt with by Mr. Ramachandran.