Venmo, Loop Pay, Apple Pay—been there, done that, right? But most people haven’t yet. I used Apple Pay the other night at Kohl’s. Certainly I could not be the first person to do that, yet the cashier was surprised. She claimed to never have seen it used before. And that is what surprised me.
We attend and make presentations at various conferences around the country. One question asked during many of these meetings is “When will mass adoption of FinTech payment technology take place?” When you hear people say, “I have never seen that used before”, it makes it tough to claim this new technology has become mainstream.
That leads us to look at the stages of adoption. The first stage is made up of innovators; they are always out in front and love the cutting edge, even if that cutting edge doesn’t always work as intended.
Then you have the early adopter stage. That is where we are with many of the exciting payment applications that exist today. Many in the younger generation have moved in and are happy to use the latest technology.
The next group of people will be in the early majority. It takes time to get to this stage because it’s hard for people to change the way they’ve always done things. Research shows people trust a brick and mortar bank. People trust checks, even though the highest fraud still occurs with checks. These same people fear electronic payment solutions are more vulnerable to hackers.
Nevertheless, those who track FinTech usage say the move from early adopters to the early majority has already begun. More and more people are asking themselves “Why didn’t I try this sooner?” If you have tried Apple Pay, Loop Pay, Venmo, or any of the other options out there, you will never want to go back to chip and whatever—it just takes way to long and my signature looks terrible on the small screen!
What does all this mean for your organization?
Once again we ask if you are prepared to take electronic payments from people in the format they’d prefer to use? Will you require them to make a payment in an inefficient and more expensive way because your organization falls further and further behind the times? What efficiencies will you gain by becoming fully and exclusively capable to make and receive payments electronically?
Bottom line, as the transition from early adopters to early majority begins, you need to prepare your organization to be in the new mainstream.
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We Hope to See You at our Upcoming Presentation:
GFOA of SC – October 16 – 19
North Country NY GFOA – October 20th
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