What to look for in the mobile payments sector over the next 12 months?

By Claire Maslen, Mobile Ecosystem Forum
The payment infrastructure in the telecoms industry is a multi-faceted system designed to handle various types of financial transactions efficiently and securely. It incorporates advanced technology, stringent security measures, and comprehensive support systems to meet the needs of both the telecom operators and their customers.
Changes coming to mobile payments
There's no question the payments horizon is interesting and evolving with more activity forecast. There are a few key areas to keep an eye on as we move ahead with the year.
Reliability
Let's start with the plumbing and the pipes that we seem to take for granted; infrastructure.
Irrespective of what demands are coming over the horizon, reliability and resilience in our payment infrastructure is a must. Many of the use cases and benefits we're about to experience are reliant on initiatives such as real-time payments (RTP). As soon as mobile became a thing, we became impatient. We want the immediacy that mobile has afforded us, all with a few clicks or swipes. We need a communications network with five 9's uptime, and we need a payment network to match.
It's becoming more common to hear of a retailer's payment network going down - and we've even seen card networks fall over … is that down to a software update or simply an overload now everyone is making more and more transactions digitally? Either way, perhaps the payment networks can reflect on how the mobile industry has always insisted on testing, testing, testing.
The UK Payment Services Regulator isn't ignoring these failures. Somewhat timely, they've announced an investigation into the performance and management. If everything goes digital, we need to know it will work.
Digital Currencies
Despite consumer concerns around privacy, security and resilience, this area is expanding and has the potential to transform the global financial system. 19 of the G20 countries are now in advanced pilot stages and The Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria have fully launched their Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
BIS Innovation Hub has successfully completed a trial exploring the cross-border implications, involving multiple markets. Be it consumer or wholesale use cases, the need for clear and transparent communications from all central banks will be essential in helping to encourage adoption and develop trust with consumers.
Social Commerce
The term Social Commerce has been creeping into our vocabulary over the past couple of years. Following my favourite influencers, I can see what my tribe is endorsing, and then with a click or a swipe, I can select an item and complete the purchase through whatever platform I'm on. Sounds great. But this is not without problems.
Unfortunately, one of the fastest growing areas for online fraud is driven through these social platforms. With fake accounts, fake reviews, fake products, it's hard to know who we're supposed to be buying from. This plays into the debate for online and physical identities. Maybe another argument for wallets.
Wallets
Finally, I want to expand the topic of Wallets. What we're seeing and using today, certainly in the west, is merely card emulation. It's nothing particularly smart (not taking away from the underlying tokenisation which makes for a more secure experience). But there's no major benefit to me and there's nothing particularly smart.
The COVID19 pandemic moved many people from cash to digital, and from cards to digital wallets. But what else should we look for in the evolution of wallets? Well of course a wallet should resemble our existing physical purse or wallet. And, of course, payments and money, are placed at the heart of that. However, why don't we start to think about wallets as personal vaults that hold all manner of information relating to me? Payment cards, loyalty cards, identity documents for sure.
But what about our vaults really being the entry point to our digital persona? I don't need to carry my p...