If only updates to financial technology were adopted as fast as updates to the iPhone. In reality, though, the dynamics for new technology and its place in the market are quite different. There are a number of reasons that accepting credit cards for small business, and other new forms of payment don’t move as quickly as, say, new features get adopted in smartphones.
First, regulatory environments play a key factor. The largest example of regulations setting the pace of tech adoption can be found in the difference between EMV adoption in Europe and other markets far ahead of the United States. The US dragged its feet, and as a result experienced far higher credit card fraud, until regulators stepped in to speed the process, spearheaded by President Obama’s signing of a 2014 executive order to speed things up. Overall, if lawmakers are warm to new technologies, things can move very fast. If there is confusion or opposition to the tech, it may take longer.
Small business owners are huge stakeholders in the process of adopting new technologies; after all, they hold an outsized responsibility in footing the bill of implementing these new technologies. Still, the cornerstone, in a sense, to all changes, is public opinion of the technology. If there is an undue burden on the consumer, in the form of time, effort, or inconvenience (and of course, cost), there will be a lot going against the adoption of the new tech. This is often the least of the problems, though, as generally speaking, though, novel payment technology is designed to reduce, not increase the burden.
One such example of new technology is biometric authentication (which is already pretty well established in the phone sector). This is most commonly a fingerprint or facial recognition. To show just how different perception of new tech can be on either end of the cash register, a recent survey conducted by Visa found that a strong majority of consumers, 86%, showed interest in using biometric technology for payments. Retailers, on the other hand, are far slower to adopt these technologies. That is likely because of the uncertain perception of safety that this novel technology still has. Another factor is almost certainly the cost associated with transitioning. This is especially true for retailers in the US, who have just recently paid money to upgrade to the new EMV technology. This very concern shows the downside to “siloed,” or proprietary approaches to payment tech. The name of the game for the current generation of payments is interoperability. That’s why Moolah works to make accepting credit card for small business a thing of beauty and simplicity—and most importantly, we seek to bridge the gap between the wants of consumers and business owners, and making you ready for what’s coming next in payments.