'Buy buttons' and push provisioning are meeting consumers' new concerns

Only two short years ago, less than half of consumers reported making a transaction using a digital wallet, according to the Independent Community Bankers of America.

Today, nearly a quarter of consumers use digital wallets daily, with 40% using them on a weekly basis. Accenture predicts that by the end of 2020, 64% of consumers will have used a mobile wallet at least once.

As consumers embrace digital forms of payments, financial services organizations and retailers continue to push new developments. Click to pay and push provisioning are among the evolving trends that meet consumer demand for fast, simple and secure digital payments.

Click to pay has recently taken center stage in the payments world, with payments giants Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover announcing their intentions for global expansion and continued development toward making payments easier and more secure for consumers. Click to pay is an online checkout method based on the Secure Remote Commerce industry standard that features one-click buying when shoppers make a purchase on a website, mobile app or any other digital channel with the major credit card networks.

By allowing consumers to complete a transaction without logging into an account, click to pay mirrors the consistent checkout experience involving one terminal and payment method that consumers are familiar with in brick-and-mortar stores. With click to pay, consumers can complete a fast and seamless checkout process.

The other evolving trend, push provisioning, makes it easier for consumers to add cards to their digital wallets in a true contactless environment. Push provisioning enables users to add cards into digital wallets directly from their mobile banking apps. While Apple and Google have long allowed cardholders to manually add their cards into wallets, push provisioning adds cards to a wallet from the issuer’s app while minimizing friction.

This turns the mobile device into a full-fledged wallet, allowing a user to add and remove multiple cards for quick and seamless digital payments—all without requiring physical cards. Push provisioning also removes the tangible aspect of having to make a payment at a time when most consumers are taking precautions to prevent the spread of illness. Many prefer to utilize their own device during a transaction rather than touching multiple surfaces in high-traffic areas.

While the idea of push provisioning sounds promising, few financial institutions currently offer this capability. Last year, the research firm Celent surveyed 160 North American financial institutions to assess how ready they are to meet specific payment imperatives, including how to remain relevant in the world of consumer payments.

In the survey, few financial institutions indicated any plans for incorporating push provisioning, which seems surprising considering the many advantages this technology could provide to financial institutions and their customers.

In this rapidly evolving landscape of digital payments, innovation is not slowing down. As demand for secure and seamless digital payments increases, financial institutions must prioritize a digital-first payments strategy that incorporates the latest trends.