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The age of the internet has ushered in a time of new business development opportunities for companies and entrepreneurs across the world. The coming of the World Wide Web has led to the opening up of an untapped pool of global prospective customers for them, and this is what sparked up a lot of new and bustling online enterprises. Many historians believe the coming of the internet to be the greatest event in human history, since the industrial revolution in the early eighteenth century. If there is any other trend or phenomenon which can match the World Wide Web revolution in terms of its reach and popularity, it has to be the mobile technology.

According to a recent research report prepared for the payment statutory body in the UK, mobile technology is going to pace rapid development across business dimensions in the coming five years. The research report provides a detailed account of the various aiding technological developments, which are paving through efficient storage, transfer and handling of information and payments data. Let’s look at some of the major ones here.

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1. Tokenization

In its most basic sense, tokenization refers to substantiating a sensitive element or piece of data (payment or number) with a jargon, or an element which has negligible exploitative value. In this sense, the approach enables sensitive data encryption, which can ensure the safe transfer of the data between media. Such has been the popularity of this data security approach that two of the biggest data giants – Visa and MasterCard decided to go ahead with implementing these for their respective mobile wallets – MasterCard and Visa Checkout. Recent statistics put past year’s data security infringement losses at $400 million, which has brought in tokenization in the focus of solution hunters.

2. Host Card Emulation

With the recent announcement from Google about the inclusion of support for HCE in Android KitKat, Host Card Emulation is the next big thing. This technology enables always online, handheld devices to securely read payment means and cards saved over the cloud. This is yet another area where financial technology companies need to gear up in research and development, to provide seamless solutions, as they would be the biggest requirement of their clients in the coming decade – the financial organizations across the world.

3. Wearables and IoT

MasterCard has led the way in this stream of work, as Internet of Things starts to finally be understood, and become a mainstay. The payment giant announced a huge transformation project last year wherein it would be deploying wearable such as clothing, rings, and accessories such as electronic entry fobs, which can contain and add payment credentials. This is the part of the wave project of work the company is running and is bound to set in a revolution in the arena of con tactless payments across the world.

4. Secure Element Storage Capabilities in Mobiles

For banks or financial services companies across the world, the most pressing issue will be about making their customers confident that their personal, financial data is in secure hands. The Secure element platform which is a tamper-proof architecture of crystallographic data storage is the way to go in this regard, and also the direction in which these companies should focus in the coming decades.

5. New Banking entrants

As per the mandate in many emerging countries such as India, the governments have given a nod to the inception of a host of low scale banking and financial institutions, which do not have the ability to lend, but to accept limited amount of borrowings. For such institutions, the most crucial way to make business will be through transactions support for their customers. Metro Bank in the UK has been making considerable upgrades and additions to its infrastructures, to reach its target of having 150 stores across the UK by 2020.

6. The Unbanked Masses

Perhaps another reason why mobile technology is something to look forward to for most financial and technology companies is the vast population base which is unbaked at the moment in the emerging markets. In India alone, there is a 56% increase in customer penetration waiting for an opportunity. The rural and semi-rural population which does not work for the organized sector at the moment presents itself as the next pool to be tapped for these companies. This is again a question of new customer acquisition and on boarding, which needs to be tackled by the infrastructure.

THE QUALITY ASSURANCE ASPECT

Having talked about the various technological trends which will help make mobile technology a way of living by 2030, there is also a need to look at some of the quality aspects. As more and more payment gateways, mobile applications and platforms are developed based upon the mobile technology for fin-tech companies, there is a dire need to focus on end-customer experience. It is, in fact, the end customer experience, which would eventually decide the success of these technological innovations. Quality assurance and effective testing of these applications hence gain center stage.

There are various characteristics of the quality assurance and testing process. For starts, pay attention to the end to end experience of the customers. A functionality which staggers while working would either irritate or bore the user and make him or her switch to alternatives. Make sure a seamless flow is tested for and incorporated in your application.

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