The Recent Visa Payments Forum Showcases The Future of Visa FinTech

The Visa Payments Forum was recently held in Dublin’s convention centre for Visa’s European clients and business partners, and I got a sneak peek at their current and upcoming finTech products. It was interesting to see the diverse range of Fintech products and solutions on offer.

Visa have noticed that biometric payment methods are being used a lot more than one-time SMS Passcodes. They also noticed biometric payment methods is harder to sell to the consumer when it’s at the terminal end i.e. each shop you buy in has its own system. It’s easier if it’s on one device such as your iPhone, as you know you are not openly sharing your biometric data. When Apple introduced their fingerprint scanner, they brought biometric mainstream and that’s what you need if you are to get mass adoption.

One of Visa’s big successes overseas especially in London is their contactless payments for mass transit, and it is being used more than the Oyster card, London’s Leap card. But will this ever come to Ireland? According to Maciej Mironiuk the Senior Manager, Transit implementation CEE & Core Products with Visa, it will come to Ireland if they can get a partner. This year it has already launched in Madrid, Rio de Janerio, Prague and New York. So surely it’s only a matter of time before it coexists alongside the Leap card and maybe even replace it.

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is a new European regulatory requirement to reduce fraud and make online payments more secure. SCA which comes into force on September 14^th2019 is designed to reduce fraud and make online payments more secure and banks will decline payments that require SCA and don’t meet the required criteria. Visa are taking SCA the regulatory requirements very seriously as you can see below.

EV’s are becoming more popular and Visa have partnered with Allego who have developed smart chargers, that can charge 80% of a car battery in 20 minutes. Visa is providing the payment system for the fast charger pictured below.

As you can see Visa is preparing for the future and they have anticipated how important biometrics are, why contactless payments for mass transit, will take off, and that EV’s have a bright future. They are also fully prepared for the new SCA regulations and with Visa stating that that 99.9% of transactions are fraudless, mass adoption should not be an issue.