Ather Williams, managing director, head of global payments & foreign exchange, global treasury solutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch says:
"I expect to see acceleration in the acceptance of electronic payments, the migration from paper to electronic payments. Particularly in North America, and there continuing around the world.
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We are used to moving towards doing more things online than ever before, be that through a smartphone or a simple text message. So I think there’s been a leap in expectations, coupled with the fact that by 2013 the US will make social benefit payments, social security, medicare, medicaid, tax refunds all electronic.
That’s going to push a lot of people over the edge, the last pocket of resistance: now you have to get paid that way, in a direct deposit to an account, if you don’t have an account then I think that’s the last thing that is going to break down the walls.
Lots of people don’t know their account information and this is going to be the challenge both in the US and in Europe, as there’s a real reticence to giving that up.
We can route payments using just a cell phone number, an email address and a PIN but I think there will be a lot of friction in adoption. Because payments at its core is a two-sided market: when moving from cheque to electronic payment a consumer’s willingness to give up their information can conflict with the payer’s intention to store that information."
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