Despite its simplicity, the topic of gateways is far more complex and interesting than it appears. Payment gateways have been steadily improving over the years, however, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Considering how important payment gateways are to industries ranging from FinTech to Logistics to Education, these topics require further consideration. As outlined below, it covers a few of the current trends in the payment processing industry, how payment gateways can evolve in the future, and the future of the payment system.
Table of Contents
The Current State Of A Payment Gateway
A payment gateway acts as a middleman between an individual and a bank. Payment information is transmitted via the gateway between a portal from which a payment is made (an online marketplace, a subscription-based app, etc) and a bank that can process it.
Gateways provide all the means as well as established processes to ensure secure transactions of large quantities of payment data. The seamless and smooth processing of payments in different currencies, on a large scale, and in compliance with local regulations is a challenging task, and there are gateways available to make it happen.
Technologies For The Future Of Payments
P2P Payments
A decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) payment network would be one of the most sought-after frameworks. Legacy legislation has no place on this platform, just simple and private transactions between two parties. The future payment system will lower merchant and customer costs and simplify the payment process.
Cryptocurrency Transactions
Given that we have touched the blockchain nerve, we might as well explore cryptocurrency-based transactions. The implementation of such a payment technology in the future is incredibly difficult to predict, as well as what laws will govern it on a global scale (there are crypto payment options available today, for example, but they are very regional in nature).
However, it appears quite likely that new regulations will have to be developed to monitor crypto transactions, which would offer a great opportunity for innovations. The use of cryptos as a form of transferring money can be cheaper and safer than other ways.
Micropayments
It is theoretically feasible to transfer money in extremely small amounts if the transaction cost is reduced to a negligible quantity. Thus, the transaction services could be billed accurately.
A sufficiently low transaction fee has made micro and nano payments economically viable so far. Some service providers offer micropayments, but only for a limited number of services.
To Conclude
Considering the future of an online payment system based on micropayments, it is difficult to predict what its potential will be. A global system like this is ambitious and not 100% practical. The improvement of technologies and money transfer “logistics” can, however, lead to such a paradigm shift.
