2024 Trends & Predictions: Emerging Payments Technology

2024 is the year when three broad emerging technologies will bring change to consumers. Although the pandemic pulled forward digital and touchless payments to many transaction types all at once, this was the adoption of technologies that had been plodding along, only slowly changing consumer behavior. What we’ll see in 2024 is the emergence of beneath-the-surface changes that will finally have an impact on how consumers experience payments and their broader interactions with financial institutions. Generative AI will start to make its impact felt in the back office and customer service applications, with at least some of the results being mixed. Digital ID will continue to arrive—edging toward, but not yet reaching, a tipping point of widespread availability and adoption. Digital ID removes one of the barriers to the full adoption of digital wallets and creates demands on businesses that are not able to connect, reward, and transact with their customers through this channel. Lastly, a panoply of emerging payments options circle for consumer and merchant adoption, finally making a meaningful dent in the “default to card” attitude that many U.S. consumers have had and creating an imperative to rethink how “card” products are conceptualized and marketed even to those consumers who have been loyal carriers.