There's been a series of announcements in the media recently, from big tech players revealing plans to open up access, to identity authentication services, and new ways to simply upload payment card details to the cloud through open APIs. Storing card details in the cloud (often referred to as ‘card-on-file’) is not a new technology of course – it’s a service that’s been around and in use for a number of years. What’s really interesting about these announcements is that any developer can now take advantage of these capabilities and integrate them into their own applications.

As smart devices become increasingly prevalent, we are seeing consumers use multiple devices to make purchases – for example, their mobile for more immediate, impulse purchases, and tablets, laptops and PCs for purchases that require more research. The requirement to re-enter card details – particularly on smaller screen sizes – each time they make a purchase is a real source of frustration to consumers.

In response, retailers and service providers are experimenting with ways to store payment card details securely in the cloud, so that they can be accessed easily and quickly without the need to re-enter card details each time consumers make a purchase.

What we’re seeing now is the advent of technology enablers (e.g. APIs) which will help card on file solutions become far easier to integrate into retailer apps. This could potentially lead to them becoming the preferred solution, since this kind of instant service minimises friction at the critical moment of purchase.

The addition of card scan technology – the ability to use a mobile device’s camera to ‘scan’ a card – also removes one of the key barriers for the customer: the need for card data entry at the time of enrolment and registration.

Biometric authentication – such as using your fingerprint to identify yourself – offers a further optimisation of the consumer payment experience on smart devices, providing an easy, quick and secure mechanism to access the card details stored within an app and initiate payment.

These evolutions will result in card-on-file solutions becoming far more prevalent, particularly as merchants develop more proprietary apps for online and face-to-face-payments.

These announcements serve as a great example of the speed of change in our industry and our need to adapt quickly. Visa's digital payments objective is to be top of any app, any wallet and any device, and this technology can be a fantastic enabler for us to achieve that goal. What we have to do is strive to ensure the payment experience facilitated by such technology is safe, secure and consistent for consumers.

We are witnessing the evolution of a new digital payment age. We need to develop new standards, processes and capabilities that help enable these technologies which will, potentially, help us achieve our ambitions to be the world’s most trusted currency and displace cash and cheques. For example, we will need to recognise other forms of authentication, such as thumbprint, in our process flows and evaluate its impact on the commercial framework. As well as driving card preference in digital payments, this will also create opportunities for our processing business and for us to extend our role as a trusted broker and facilitator in the payments to include new players such as Operating Systems.