The payments industry is entering an exciting, new era of innovation. The reason lies in how several established industry players are opening up their platforms to third party developers.
Some have likened this to the situation in the computer industry in 1979 when the development of the PC and emergence of a shared operating system allowed software providers to develop programmes for a shared platform. The PC revolution led to a massive number of developers around the world producing innovative software packages that spawned entire new industries.
Three payments providers that are enabling this development are Visa, IP Commerce and PayPal.
Visa is selectively entering partnerships and opening its platform for development. It is partnering with Monitise to develop a suite of mobile services, collaborating with DeviceFidelity for contactless payments and integrating it’s mobile solutions with ClairMail’s mobile banking platform. These partnerships enable Visa to tap into external technical expertise and significantly increase speed to market of its services in these areas.
IP Commerce has developed a platform that sits on top of the traditional payments infrastructure. The system are reminiscent of Windows in that it enables developers to write applications for the platform without having to worry about the complicated plumbing that supports it. They claim that this reduces time to market and development costs by a factor 3.5.
Moreover, through Commerce Marketplace they offer an online solution catalogue on which developers can publish applications. Potential customers can search and acquire applications from this catalogue that all leverage the IP Commerce architecture.
Similarly PayPal has opened its platform with PayPal X and Adaptive Payments. Developers can access X.com's development toolkits, technical documents and programming interfaces to produce integrated checkout solutions. Examples of pre-existing products using the Adaptive Payments API include:
· The Javastore's new drag-and-drop installation and frictionless payment system
· Instant storefronts for Facebook via Payvment's social network shopping cart system
· Cut-and-paste shopping solutions embedded in mobile applications, including instant purchases via ShopSavvy's barcode-enabled comparative shopping application for Android
There is little doubt that these developments will completely change the face of the payments industry. And, if experiences from elsewhere are anything to go, innovation will be rapid and the industry will soon converge on one platform.
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