MOBILE PAYMENTS AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Considering the fact that in China, in 2016 solely, the mobile payment volume was around $5 trillion – half of its gross domestic product, carried out through two main competitors – Alipay and Wechat Pay, it is becoming clearer that companies will invest piles of money in order to process the payments of the millions of potential users. With the banking industry shaken by the different modifications of rules and regulations and consumers addicted to the latest gadgets, the tech companies may have the pole position in this race. Apple is charging each Apple Pay user with 0.15% per transaction which may not seem a lot, but taking into account that in 2015 iPhone users traded over $10.9 billion we can see why tech companies are eager to develop payment applications. In this paper are presented briefly the newest means of payment and how are those influenced or not by the emerging technologies. The most important piece in the puzzle – end-user – has to keep up with all the novelties in this sector and, as consequence, some behavioural patterns occur. With the appearance in the landscape of emerging technologies like 5G, augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain etc. new waves are expected to redefine mobile payments. Those are presented further in the text altogether with some trends in financial services that may influence the mobile payments market as we know it.