This post was originally published on The FinTech Times
From shells to cards and from coins to crypto – the way we transact has always evolved alongside the way we exchange value. History shows that payment innovations only take hold when two essential ingredients align: need and trust.
New technologies regularly promise to transform payments, yet too often they can feel like solutions in search of a problem. We have seen false dawns before with Open Banking (although here, arguably, early promise may soon start to bear fruit), and today we are seeing much excitement around agentic payments and the apparent rise of stablecoins.
So, do we really want a payments revolution? Or is one happening whether we want it or not?
Perhaps a better question is this: why do we think we need new ways to pay at all? Starting with the “why” helps make more sense of the “what” and the “how”. For all their promise, innovations such as agentic payments and stablecoins have not yet crossed the tipping point into the mainstream. Nor are they likely to until purpose aligns with capability and trust, with regulation playing a central role in creating that trust.
The real revolution is technology itself. And above all, the biggest game-changer
— Read the rest of this post, which was originally published on The FinTech Times.
