The Rise of Modern Payment Methods for Businesses

Payment methods have changed an awful lot in recent decades. Plenty of people can remember going into a store and paying with a check. In the modern age, as many as 60% of people say that they rarely have cash on them and that their payments are almost always digital. 

People who haven’t been living in isolation will probably have also heard of crypto’s influence on payment methods. A lot of this has been driven by the need for people to be more secure and for payment methods to reach a high level of encryption.

People definitely still value options and would sometimes choose to pay for items in cash or a credit card, but options are precisely what we have in the modern age. However somebody wants to pay, they can usually make it work.

Crypto’s Growth as a Payment Method

Bitcoin has been around for 15 years now. It first became popular and was widely discussed in the years after being launched but it was not used for payments as much as the infrastructure was still being developed. The adoption of crypto eventually grew and people started to use it more in daily transactions. 

Industries looking for extra levels of security for their customers led the way and this included the gambling industry. Some studies suggest that the majority of Bitcoin transactions now involve the gambling industry as people use this method to move their funds around. Slot games are the most popular form of gaming at casinos and there are now options for crypto slots and people can use digital methods to keep payments on blockchain technology. The range of slot games that can be played using crypto is huge and there are lots of players turning to this option. Crypto users don’t have to convert their money if they plan to use it to play slot games!

Gambling brands as well as other commerce brands may have introduced this because of the fact that it is more secure as well as often being a quicker way to move funds around. Often, crypto has lower fees relating to moving money around for both the retailer and the customer and this is another of the potential advantages. Though some people still prefer to use other methods, it is not hard to see why cryptocurrency has become a more mainstream option. 

Contactless and Digital Wallets

In the 1990s if somebody had told you that waving a card in the general vicinity of a machine would complete payments then they might have been laughed at. 

This technology has helped in many ways and made it easier for people to protect cards and keep all of their details secure. It is also a help when it comes to “low contact” living. People are trying to avoid ways of touching surfaces that are shared and these high-contact areas like card machines may have historically spread germs.

There has been proof of concept for these kinds of payments since the 1990s, but it took well over a decade until the contactless payment method became popular. Digital wallets were introduced on a similar timescale too and people don’t even need a specific card if they store details on their phone. 

Digital wallets also help with the advantage of security. Payments are encrypted and data is less likely to be compromised compared to traditional magnetic stripe cards. Businesses benefit by gaining customer trust when they give these extra ways to pay.

Cards are still needed to set up Apple Pay or Google Pay in a lot of instances. However, cards themselves are evolving too with new technology and some are now credit and debit cards rolled into one.

A Changing World of Payments

Payment methods can come in lots of different forms and largely this is due to the fact that smartphones are so ubiquitous. QR codes have seen a resurgence, particularly in markets where contactless payments are already popular. Restaurants and other businesses may offer table service and use a QR code to order and then checkout and pay directly from their bank account or digital wallet. It’s a simple and quick method that requires minimal infrastructure to put into place. The QR code market is predicted to grow by more than 50% by 2028.

Direct bank transfers have also become more sophisticated, with services like Open Banking allowing real-time payments directly from one bank account to another. For businesses, this can mean faster access to funds and lower transaction fees compared to credit cards.

Conclusion

People used to come across businesses that only accepted cash pretty regularly but this is very rare now. Even market traders and tiny businesses are able to accept digital payments which is a way for everybody to feel more secure as the transactions take place.