In the past five years, there have been many innovations in the merchant account industry. As the world becomes increasingly connected through wireless networks, these networks are proving vital to the development of several industries. A few industries that are directly benefiting from the development of the wireless grid are obviously mobile phones and credit card processing. There are also companies making the transition from retail to wireless and ecommerce. At the opposite end, a company that has traditionally been an online credit card payment provider is moving into the brick and mortar sector. You might have heard of them: PayPal.
What if I was to tell you that mobile phone and merchant account providers are teaming up to allow you to accept payments on your iphone? What if I told that this is already happening? You shouldn’t be surprised, because it has been a long time coming for this service to be available. The next development that the founder from Twitter, Jack Dorsey, is working on is a system where you can touch two phones together, resulting in a credit card transaction. This will certainly speed up the amount of time spent on transactions and create a better shopping experience.
As the internet grows, companies have to adapt to the innovation by providing what their customers expect. For example, North American Bancard, which traditionally provided credit card processing for brick and mortar businesses, has been accommodating more and more e-commerce businesses every year. It will be interesting to see how much business shifts to the internet in the coming decades. Paypal has teamed up with MasterCard to develop a credit card that can be used online and off. I believe this is Paypal’s first move toward the brick and mortar market. Keep your eye out on how this plays out.
As you can see, there are exciting times ahead for the merchant account services industry. My prediction is that they will be able to scan eyes for credit card transactions by the year 2030. What is your prediction for the future?
