Banking in a Post-COVID Age: What’s New in Store?

Remember the time when you had to wait for endless hours in the queue to transfer money into your accounts. Or, when making payments meant touching a lot of things including the swiping machine and more. Well, the COVID 19 pandemic has made us realize more than a few things in our life. And owing to it, the world is ready to make little changes in several processes that ultimately contribute to the big changes in life. 

The pandemic has truly reformed the world in a lot of ways. We can no longer go about doing things the way we used to do. Be it helping someone with their luggage or swiping our cards at retail stores, more than a few things have changed.

Blinking at the New Normal

In fact, the way we used to look at the world has changed significantly. And this new change has to accommodate elements that are the impending demands of the post COVID world.

For example, social distancing, hand sanitiser, and contactless options must make space in everyday life, even as we head back to normalcy. This would directly mean different things for different industries. For example, in the industry of eCommerce, this would mean, no more getting deliveries signed by customers and instead of leaving the parcels at their doorsteps.

Similarly, when it comes to retail, one of the things that will have drastically changed is the payments. As customers, we are quite a lot drawn towards swiping our cards in return for the purchases we make at the stores. While this has been normal for us, in spite of new technologies emerging, the point is that it will no longer be the same.

Banks are coming up with more intelligent options for payments, where customers don’t have to pay using their traditional methods- all because they involve touch. Needless to say, that necessity is the mother of invention. And finally, financial institutions around the world are leveraging payment options developed by software application outsourcing India to support the post COVID status quo.

Adapting to Contactless

Among other things, the plexiglass barrier between the customer and the person processing a payment will remain constant. In other words, while customers will be easy to look at, any attempt of direct contact will be strictly restricted. 

Even though the buzzword contactless had struck the banking industry long before the coronavirus, people weren’t the ones to accept them as quickly. In other words, they still continued to use cash and coins that would have been touched and handled by hundreds of people before them.

 The point is that the coronavirus pandemic spreads by physical contact and any industry that continues to move forward with their traditional approaches will no longer exist in the business.

Statistics suggest that in the year 2018, only 3% of the cards used in the US were truly contactless in their sense. This number was strikingly less than what the UK and North Korean people were using back in that year. However, as the world gets reinfected with the second wave of coronavirus, people will soon realize the importance of every little thing. 

What are the All-New Contactless Payments?

Just like the names, contactless payments provide customers with an option to pay without touching anything in their way. This means cards that were earlier swiped don’t have to be anymore. If you ever wonder what this looks like, here’s an example. Have you ever walked into the store and watched someone tap onto the counter and walk away with their purchase? 

If you have seen this, you know what contactless payments look like. And if you haven’t this is what they will look like in the future. The idea behind contactless payments is that customers increasingly want expedited services and with the new normal, they would not want to have physical contact to pay for their services. 

The contactless payments will help customers enjoy the tap to pay feature and walk away without any issues. Even though there are concerns around this mode of payment, it seems like it will become the new normal faster than expected. 

Statistics by BI Analytics Services back up this fact. Contactless payments have grown as much as 150% since the last year, making people realize the importance of such options. And now several companies are jumping in the pool to leverage the best of technology for contactless payments.

Be it Mastercard or Amazon payments, all card companies and banking institutions find the tap to pay option as their lighthouse amidst the distress in the world.  As customers adapt themselves to this mode of payment, there will be several other factors to worry about.  No doubt, that contactless payments bring unprecedented convenience to the customers, but they also raise a few security concerns that need to be addressed as soon as possible. 

After all, it is only time that hackers and cyber-attack specialists find contactless payments as an opportunity to steal customers’ money and leverage the gaps in technology. Nonetheless, the world will continue to make this the new normal.