The Future of Exchanging Value Cryptocurrencies and the trust economy 7
In 2012, we published a report entitled The future of whether they were interacting with an established
exchanging value – uncovering new ways of
merchant or simply standing on the kerb splitting a bill spending1 which broadly examined how money is
with friends after an evening meal. The solutions
used rather than focusing on individual elements such
needed to be ubiquitous, allowing customer and
as payments, currency, and so on. Our view was that
merchant to transact at the far end of the store or
only by looking at the whole system could we
deep in the aisles just as easily as if they were both understand how the financial system might evolve.
standing next to the till. And finally, these solutions needed to be open, both in their implementation and
Our findings in that report centred on the realisation that governance, so consumers could understand and
we were reaching the end of the initial build-out of a digital develop trust in these new ways of exchanging value.
payments infrastructure. The task of provisioning the
The next generation of finance solutions should be
infrastructure merchants require to accept real-time digital seen as tools to improve engagement with customers
payments, or for two individuals to settle a debt, was rather than as service delivery platforms.
largely complete. Consequently, our focus had shifted to streamlining the buying journey – from the pieces and
parts to the whole.
As it turns out, the first report was published at the leading edge of an explosion in the use of new
The rush to implement near-field communication (NFC)
payments technologies and complementary
technology such as payWave and PayPass and the then
currencies. Many of the predictions we made in
recent emergence of Bitcoin and other complementary
the first report came true.
digital currencies were part of this shift. The business case for NFC has been built around streamlining the
We saw NFC as an interesting technology but the
checkout experience and reducing fraud rather than
business case was not as strong as the technology’s
providing a distinctly new capability. Bitcoin was
proponents claimed. Most of the wasted time and
proposed as a cheaper, more efficient mechanism for
effort in the buying journey was in taking the goods to peer-to-peer payments and currency transfers.
the till and tallying them, not in the final transaction, which would lead many merchants to view NFC as an
In the first report, we reasoned that the future of
excuse for the card providers to increase fees at the
exchanging value would stem from how consumer
expense of the merchant’s margins. Since then, some
behaviour changed. Like many areas of society,
retailers in the US have banded together to create
consumers rather than businesses or governments
an alternative payments platform, called CurrenC™,
are setting the technological ground rules. We
intended as a lower-cost alternative to the solutions
suggested that organisations needed to look beyond
from the entrenched payments providers. There is also
traditional payment platforms, narrowly defined in
anecdotal evidence of many merchants adding a
terms of features and functions, and consider their
surcharge for using a card, or providing incentives
customers a broader ‘job to be done’.
such as prize draws for customers who pay cash.
Apple also introduced Apple Pay, which showed the
What was needed was a customer-centric approach
industry how to build a payments solution using
– one focused on simplifying the buying journey by
existing standards and deliver a much higher-quality
ensuring the right payment solution was available in the and more compelling user experience.
right place at the right time. Payment solutions needed to to invest in cryptocurrencies and access to the latest be perceived as instantaneous by their users, allowing information and research click here:
users to exchange value and move on with their day,
https://bit.ly/3r05JMs
