Connecting the world through payments

FIRST WORD

Our vision is to make it easier to do this, by enabling any company to integrate with a single, integrated payments platform that incorporates the latest advances. Achieving this will not only be a game-changer for payments, it will transform the entire experience for our clients and their customers.  

We have observed and believe that a modern payments platform, in order to successfully do so, needs strength across several areas. 

One of them is security. Newer methods of payment require strong protection standards. Take biometric payments, as an example. Customers are increasingly able to pay for goods and services with a scan of their face, finger, or palm. It is therefore important to manage who owns the data, who tracks the data, who gets access to it, and how that data is protected and encrypted. These are complex challenges, and as innovation accelerates, next-gen approaches to security and privacy will be required. 

Another area is regulatory awareness and understanding. As businesses grow to accept payments from anywhere, there is an obvious need to stay informed on regulatory requirements. Countries around the world all have different requirements when it comes to payments. Even within countries, regulations can vary by state or region, which is complex for businesses of any size to navigate. New payment solutions can only work when they are in line with both domestic and international rules, especially solutions that involve conducting transactions across borders and in multiple currencies. 

An additional part of the equation involves supporting new and evolving use cases. This could include helping the payments and product teams in an organization to collaborate, or it could be enabling gamers to buy digital items while they are playing, or it may involve supporting new customer journeys, such as paying for services via a connected car or smart TV.  

Finally, it’s important for a payments platform to help make the user experience easy and seamless. Merchants want fast, low-cost payments and easy reconciliation. Research and experience show that consumers want the payments process to be intuitive and invisible, safe and secure, across any channel, offline and online. This is only possible when a platform is designed to accommodate security, regulation, and use-case innovation.  

A critical step for us in evolving our payments platform has been creating and growing a network of partner companies that help us cover every aspect of the payments landscape. Combined with our infrastructure and unique breadth and scale, this makes our client offerings hard to match. These strategic partnerships let us find synergies. For example, fintechs are often experts in specific technologies or aspects of consumer experience but may not have the scale and expertise to navigate the intricacies and requirements of regulatory bodies around the world, or the financial viability to withstand economic swings.  

As a global bank, we are strong in all of these areas and can help fintech partners strengthen their own capabilities—what we like to call “fintech with foundation”. That means our clients and their customers using our platforms can have the best of both worlds when using our services.   

We believe that when these capabilities and partnerships work in harmony, payments technology not only improves business outcomes and consumer experiences, but that the work we are doing can also help drive positive change.  

How? Well, in this volume of Payments Unbound we take a look at those unexpected connections and explore how they are changing the world: From helping to tackle inequality to enabling new forms of carbon capture. Enjoy the magazine, and may it inspire you to make connections of your own.  

By J.P. Morgan

SOURCES: WWW.JPMORGAN.COM/PAYMENTS-UNBOUND/SOURCES

ILLUSTRATION: ADI GILBERT