Opportunities abound for payments industry participants but will require unprecedented cooperation, according to Mercator Advisory Group, a leading payments research and consulting firm in a complimentary report on trends shaping the payments industry in 2018

1. 2018 Outlook: U.S. Payments
January 2018

2.  2018 Mercator Advisory Group
After years of development, four key technologies are maturing and reaching
convergence — mobile platforms, open application development interfaces
(APIs), machine learning, and faster payments systems — but all require an
unprecedented level of cooperation between payments industry participants.
Technology-oriented financial firms, or “fintechs,” are driving many of these
changes, and traditional financial services providers are challenged to find ways
to collaborate with these disrupters in order to obtain the benefits of new
technology without being left behind.
Download this and all of Mercator Advisory Group’s 2018 Payments and
Banking Outlooks for free Here.
Payments research and consulting firm offers complimentary
outlook on trends shaping the payments industry in 2018.

3.  2018 Mercator Advisory Group
The free 2018 Outlook: U.S. Payments is the last in a series of eight 2018
Outlook reports by Mercator Advisory Group that provide insights into trends and
new themes on the horizon that will have a significant impact on the payments
and banking industry, consumers, and the ways companies do business in 2018
and beyond. The subjects of these Outlooks set the foundation for Mercator
Advisory Group’s research agenda for the coming year and provide a framework
for key points of engagement that Mercator Advisory Group will have with its
clients in 2018.
The Outlooks for 2018 are presented by each of Mercator Advisory Group’s
advisory services—Credit (including Merchant Services), Debit and Alternative
Products, Prepaid, Customer Interaction, Commercial and Enterprise Payments,
and Emerging Technologies—and can be downloaded without charge.
Opportunities abound for payments industry participants but will
require unprecedented cooperation.

4.  2018 Mercator Advisory Group
“Fintechs should still be considered disrupters, but it has become clear that
fintechs still need traditional financial institutions in order to reach scale. Even in
the absence of regulatory mandates like the European Union’s revised Payment
Services Directive (PSD2), traditional financial institutions will need to improve the
way they partner with each other and with fintechs in order to be successful,”
commented Aaron McPherson, Mercator Advisory Group’s VP of Research
Operations and author of this overview Outlook for 2018.
Aaron McPherson
VP, Research Operations
amcpherson@mercatoradvisorygroup.com
781-419-1717

5.  2018 Mercator Advisory Group
Highlights of 2018 Outlook: U.S. Payments:
The 2018 Outlook: Payments summarizes the major findings from the
separate outlooks of each of Mercator’s Advisory Services, including:
• Challenging business fundamentals in credit card issuing despite a favorable
economic environment
• Greater pressure on debit card issuers as the market has reached saturation and
merchants grow more sophisticated at routing transactions over lower-cost
networks
• Inflection point in faster payments in the U.S., with several good options from
which to choose, the key issue being financial institutions’ willingness and ability
to market these services and enroll customers
• Regulatory uncertainty for prepaid cards with turnover at the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau (CFPB) and continued delay of important prepaid rules
• Increasing collaboration between financial institutions and fintechs, facilitated by
open APIs

6.  2018 Mercator Advisory Group
More highlights of 2018 Outlook: U.S. Payments:
• Growing use of tokenization, particularly to payment-enable the internet of things
(IOT)
• Increased use of biometrics to secure payments on the front end, coupled with
more robust back-end fraud detection processes based on machine learning
• Greater investments in automation of commercial payments, leveraging key
technologies like open APIs and faster payments
• Mobile platforms becoming more important to retailers, both on the front end with
technologies like mobile order-and-pay, and on the back end with Internet-
connected terminals
• Consolidation in the merchant services market

7. About this Outlook report:
 2018 Mercator Advisory Group
This research report is 17 pages long.
Keywords: faster payments, wallets, regulations, mobile, tokenization, debit cards,
credit cards, prepaid cards, fintech, API, fraud, machine learning, biometrics,
blockchain, merchant services
Companies mentioned in this document include: Acculynk, Amazon, ANZ, Apple,
BBVA, BluePay, Capital One, CardConnect, Cayan, Citi, The Clearing House,
Evernym, First Data, Google, Hyperledger, Mastercard, Microsoft, PayPal, PNC,
Sovrin, TSYS, USAA, Vantiv, Venmo, Visa, Wells Fargo, Worldpay, and Zelle.
For more information and media inquiries, please call Mercator Advisory Group's main
line: 1-781-419-1700; send email to media@mercatoradvisorygroup.com.
For free industry news, opinions, research, company information and more, visit us at
www.PaymentsJournal.com.
Follow us on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/MercatorAdvisor.

8. About Mercator Advisory Group
Mercator Advisory Group is the leading independent research and advisory
services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We
deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients
uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and
contain costs.
Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers,
processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and
investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments
and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.
 2018 Mercator Advisory Group