Well, ladies and gentlemen, 2015 is finally upon us. We hope that you all had a fabulous time during the holidays and can begin to slowly readjust to your work schedules. We here at BlueSnap have begun the new year by projecting a couple ideas for what we think we may see in the payments world this year. Fun fact: Back To The Future Part II was set in 2015, and we see an uncanny relation to payments and the innovative spirit that has taken over our industry. While we are not Doc Brown or Marty McFly, and we cannot actually time travel, we came up with some pretty good ideas for what you can expect in 2015.
As we saw in 2014, new checkout methods (especially mobile payment technology) are becoming increasingly popular. Even though it may not be as cool as a flying car, as payment nerds we rushed to try out Apple Pay the minute it was 
released, and we don’t doubt that we will continue to try out other new methods that follow suit. New and upcoming technologies include PayPal in-store, Google Wallet, Coin, and CurrentC. With the success of Apple Pay, we are eager to see how these other payment types fare or revamp themselves. According to a study by ITG Investment Research, Apple Pay customers used the service roughly 1.4 times per week and used Apple Pay at the same merchant for future transactions roughly 66% of the time. These advancements are clearly gaining customer loyalty and making headway in the payment space, and we can’t wait to see what will transpire 2015.
However, these new mobile and card technologies are not the only ones projected to form in 2015; social media payment systems are beginning to establish themselves as well. In 2014, we saw Snapcash (the peer to peer payment system on the notorious picture sharing app, Snapchat) open the doors to this social payment world. Following close behind are Twitter and Facebook, which are in the process of launching payment services as 
well. A study done by Accenture shows that 92% of millennials are active users of social media, and 72% would be likely to bank with non-financial services companies; as such, we are seeing a big opportunity for these social media payment systems, especially with younger generations. As for right now, these services are likely going to be serving the peer-to-peer networks, however, we are hoping that these platforms will slowly open up to begin serving merchants. Customers could use these social media platforms to make payments to merchants through company pages, posts, tweets, etc. which would allow these social media sites to take a cut of each transaction, giving them a stronghold on the ecommerce market. Hey, Nike, maybe you could try this platform to sell those cool auto-lacing sneakers that Marty McFly adorned in the movie (they really are coming, by the way)!
Additionally, in 2014 we saw subscription services explode. From Birchbox to BarkBox, you can pretty much get anything you can think of in a subscription format. In fact, nearly 50% of U.S. businesses have either adopted or are planning to adopt this recurring revenue model. Understanding the Customer Lifetime Value is becoming increasingly important in the subscription boom of 2014, and we project that this will continue to grow in 2015, with many more companies adopting subscription services.
We still have until October 21st to see if Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s predictions will come true – in the meantime, were hoping the payment space can keep up with Back To The Future! What do you think we will see in 2015?
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