Tomorrow’s payment mechanism is judged to be more fertile compared to tech-based solutions that will empower a complete end-to-end digital payment ecosystem. A full-fledged end-to-end ecosystem will focus majorly on the convenience and more direct payment straight from the wallets of the consumers to the merchants or the suppliers through the effective medium of mobile and web. An example of this in action has been implemented in the Nigerian payments ecosystem by VERICASH, which has enabled on its digital payments platform a complete mature ecosystem onboarding thousands of merchants, retailers, and agents through many of the payment service providers in the country, that additionally combines banks with their ATM’s, microfinance institutions and other credit bureaus, NGO’s, money transfer operators (MTO’s), and other financial players in the market creating this complete collaborative financial ecosystem that could easily facilitate a real end to end digital payments without the need to actually make one single cash payment. This payment could be via any mobile means whether digital wallet, NFC, QR payments, or by registering any prepaid or bank cards onto a digital account.
The concept of digital payments is to move around cash-free. The cycle of payment between people to people or business to business aka B2B doesn’t involve cash. For example, a technician who has come to fix an electrical switch can now easily be paid from wallet to wallet without the use of cash. The same concept can be used to send money or make transactions to your child studying abroad.
The key players of the digital payments ecosystem today are integrated by Fintech companies. The digital payment platform not only enables banks and other financial institutions, customers, merchants to make online transactions but also adds value-added financial services to customers enabling them to add credit cards, debit cards, and other prepaid cards to make direct payments.
In the current digital era, more significance to contactless and more convenient and direct payment mechanisms will rise. The government is taking an effective move to have more digitized engagements not just through the digital players of Debit, Credit, or Prepaid cards, but as a whole by integrating it completely through digital QR codes, NFC payments, mobile wallet transactions, and a lot more feasible options.

What does tomorrow’s ideal digital payments system look like?
There are many retail shops and merchandisers who accept credit or debit cards at their stores, however this doesn’t fill the gap between cash payment and digital payment. While the prime contributors of digital payments are NEFT and RTGS as of now, the main aim is to make wallet transactions and instant payments the new form of exchange of funds.
A Digital Payment ecosystem should promote a complete end-to-end payments platform where the consumers are able to make payments for any goods and services they are looking to avail of. Not just a connection with the fintech companies or Financial Institutions, but also with the merchants and other service providers to complete the whole cycle creating a collaborative network. Now having said that, a key element that has been a subject of controversy in many financial markets is the verification of identity process that has been tested in many forms, but yet to derive the most effective mechanism. A big part of the problem could be resolved by establishing a nationwide digital identity that serves as the unique identifier for any individual performing any kind of financial transaction. With that, the pre-verification process using a set of demographic and biometric data would immensely fill in a large hole in the entire secure steps needed to comply with to enable further transactions to be safely conducted with ease of use.
While the components of financial markets include bankers, issuers, non-banking financial institutions, and other components that offer length of financing and trading of assets like commodity markets, insurance markets, foreign exchange markets, money markets, capital markets, and mortgage markets. The implementation of digital payments promotes transparency in financing based on these components. So in layman’s terms, if the technology does not work, it cannot be trusted, and hence no one will want to use it even if the whole cycle is complete and the ecosystem exists. Empowered on VERICASH digital payments platform, there are clear successful use cases across different African markets to enabling efficient, reliable, and instant payments in real-time to include all kinds of everyday payments any person would typically do, that is also secure, and most of all a pleasant experience for the user.
A complete digital payment platform will not only add convenience to payment mechanisms but will also help companies from a customer relationship management point of view. Through the digitized medium, companies would be able to understand and interpret their customer’s payment patterns and trends. Thus, allowing a flow of integration to acquire important data on their consumption patterns with the help of efficient technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Data Scraping. This will ultimately help companies to engage with a bigger audience with useful insights in hand.

How will all fintech players benefit from the cycle of value?
Digitally backed financial services are considered to be the new core of the financial sector. With the universal presence of mobile phones and increasing websites worldwide, digital payments through mobile wallets will be the new normal where mobile phones will make electronic transactions more feasible. This was seen in a report by eMarketer that close to 1 billion people are predicted to use at least one mobile wallet app in 2020.
Here, a mature full-fledged digital payment platform ceases to be tomorrow’s vision of optimum digital mode not just for startups but medical insurance companies, laboratories, pharmacies, and other e-commerce platforms. Making payments using a fintech platform will complete the cycle of value integrating all fintech players by enabling them to easily accept payments, making transactions easy.

Digital payments also offer various opportunities, which makes it the latest global trend:

• Value-added services
• Advancement in technology
• Contactless payments gain acceptance
• Banks and Fintech initiate to transform cross-border payments
• Data-privacy law is implemented
• Payment gateways run smoothly and integrate with other payment intermediaries