January is often a month of more frugal living after the excesses of the festive December period, but we’re still spending. How we do this continues to change. Talk to any major business in the payments ecosystem, and their mantra is all about reducing friction, making it as easy and secure as possible to pay. Your author was privileged to visit Mastercard’s experience centres in both London and New York last year (the former profiled here) to see innovation in action. Below are three trends we think are important to watch in 2025.
All of us will likely be familiar with contactless payments. These already account for two out of three in-person payments. But there’s more to the tech than a shopper simply tapping their card or phone in store. Imagine the potential if any device could become a payment acceptance terminal. This would democratise acceptance for merchants, especially smaller ones, reducing the need for complex checkout infrastructure and shortening waiting times. With innovations such as Mastercard’s Tap on Phone technology, it’s already possible. Expect more use cases to emerge.Â
2025 may be the year when blockchain and digital asset come of age. Beyond the abundant support from the new White House incumbent, the reality is that cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and other tokenised assets have already moved from concept to commercialisation. Over $1bn of transactions were processed by JPMorgan Chase over its Kinexys real-time settlement blockchain platform in 2024. This year should technological innovation to accelerate the speed, security and efficiency of digital currency payments.
No Blog piece would be complete without reference to AI. In the world of payments, its clearest application could be in outsmarting fraudsters. Cybercrime costs will likely top $10tr in 2025, a greater than 3x increase relative to a decade prior. The good news is that tools such as Mastercard’s Decision Intelligence Pro are using generative AI to scan 1 trillion data points to predict in less than 50 milliseconds to assess how genuine a transaction may be. This can boost fraud protection rates by an average of 20%, and by as much as 300%, in some instances. Spend more, then, and feel safer too.
* In case you missed it, this week’s title is an ironic acknowledgement to Anthony Trollope’s 1875 novel, The Way We Live Now, which satirises the financial scandals of the 1870s. The world, hopefully, is a much less scandal-prone place today.
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Originally Posted January 22, 2025 – The way we spend now*
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