The Payments Fairytale

Hansel and Gretel in the fairy story famously left a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way out of the forest – their plan was thwarted by hungry birds and then there was a nasty incident with a witch. In today’s ever complex environment with payments there are many parallels with the fairy story siblings.

In order to make the most attractive card product, invariably it needs extra features – and now and in the future these mean adding technology, partners or both to come up with a unique market leading proposition for consumers.  NFC? Which wallet? Which chip features? Which loyalty partner? Or, simply, which photo of a penguin to put on the front.

With shifting technologies, it is a complex web to decide which option to back – and the harsh reality is that not everyone will be a winner. These various alliances have a notorious short lifetime, so like our friends in the woods – successful card issuers will leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find the way out again. Technology and partnerships need to be agile, not only to build but to dismantle, efficient and cost effective exit strategies are as important as entrance strategies.

This is also important that in many cases there is not always going to be one technology, successful card issuers are unlikely to back just one option – in the NFC wallet wars for instance – do we know who will be the eventual winner? A successful issuer will have the ability to back multiple technologies at once – allowing them, when a winner becomes apparent, to bow out gracefully and efficiently from the defeated technology.

Obviously, the fairy story pair made a tactical error with the breadcrumbs, a bird ate the breadcrumbs and they ended up in the hands of a wicked witch – of course that would never happen in the payments world……would it?