The Future of Money
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CONTENTS The Big Question Alipay’s Financial Revolution BUSINESS REPORT A Weekend in Bitcoin City Q&A with Stripe’s Patrick Collison Starbucks’s Mobile Bet The Future M-Pesa Tries to Branch Out of Money From Apple Pay to Bitcoin, payment technology is changing. Some of the big winners in this “revolution” may be the old guard. DANIEL ZENDER PLUS Hacking Payments | Identity Technology | Economist Simon Johnson | Apple Pay | Dwolla’s Battle | Security | Upcoming Events MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM THE FUTURE OF MONEY mobile wallets Apple Pay and LoopPay, card terminal. Venture capitalists invested The Big Question run on top of the existing payment net- over $2 billion in payment technology works owned and operated by banks and firms between January 2013 and June credit card companies. The new technolo- 2014, according to the data tracking firm Technology gies are designed to make those estab- CB Insights. lished systems faster, more convenient, However, established players, espe- Repaints or more secure, and to convert transac- cially the banks and credit card companies tions now being done in cash. A diferent that handle most noncash payments today, the Payment group of technologies would replace the have, if anything, seen their positions established systems with new ones, fun- strengthened by recent developments. A Landscape damentally challenging the vast industry good example is the high-profile launch that executes, guarantees, and tracks pay- of Apple Pay. Unlike earlier technologies As technology-driven payment ideas ments. Among them: Venmo, a person-to- like Google Wallet and PayPal, Apple Pay give cash a run for its money, the big person payment app and social network makes no attempt to supplant the Visas winners could be established banks and that processes $3 billion of payments a and Bank of Americas of the world. Look credit card companies. year, and Dwolla, an upstart in Iowa look- at your digital wallet in Apple Pay and ing to cut the payment-processing rev- you see a version of exactly the same card ● In developed economies, money has enue enjoyed by Visa and other networks. that’s in the wallet in your pocket. The been digitizing for decades. Few Western- As technology drives a shift in how we ers touch a paycheck anymore. Through buy things, the revenue that the payments direct deposit, digital money is trans- industry extracts could grow to more ferred electronically from our employer than $2 trillion a year by 2023, double $2 billion VC investment in payment tech to our bank account every pay period. A the 2013 figure, the Boston Consulting similar process moves contributions into Group predicts. Much of that increase our 401(k) accounts or zaps money over will come from a reduction in cash pay- digital wallet LoopPay, which can be used to pay the rent, the utility bill, a student ments in developing countries. But across in many more terminals than Apple Pay loan, or any other expense. the globe, BCG predicts a time of “disrup- because it uses a simple, widely compat- Yet it remains a cash-based world, tion and opportunity” driven by digital ible copper loop technology to simulate with 85 percent of consumer trans- technologies that will require the existing the coding in your credit card’s magnetic actions worldwide done with bills and credit card system to prove that it’s better strip, similarly relies on the existing credit coins. While some countries, like Singa- than its new competition. card system. pore and the Netherlands, now use cash “The smartphone is the catalyst for a “Think about the infrastructure and in a minority of payments, consumers in lot of change in this industry,” says Dana how long it took to create that,” says such diverse economies as India, Mex- Stalder, a venture capitalist with Matrix LoopPay CEO Will Wang Graylin. “It’s ico, Italy, and Taiwan still execute more Partners and a former eBay and PayPal very difcult to change merchant behavior.” than 90 percent of transactions with cash, executive now on the board of Poynt, Innovation in payments might be according to research by MasterCard which recently introduced a smart credit especially likely to take hold in the devel- Advisors. Even in the United States, they find, cash accounts for 55 percent of pay- ments. New technologies, including digi- The Surprising Persistence of Cash tal wallets, cryptocurrencies, and mobile Estimated percentage of consumer payment transactions done with noncash peer-to-peer payments, aim to tip that methods, including credit cards, checks, and electronic payments. balance. They’re accelerating the move SINGAPORE 61% away from cash in countries where alter- NETHERLANDS 60% natives to banks and credit cards are well established, and they’re doing the same in UNITED STATES 45% developing economies. GERMANY 33% Which technologies and companies JAPAN 14% are likely to lead this transformation is CHINA 10% the big question for this Business Report. ITALY 6% One way to look at these new tech- RUSSIA 4% nologies is through their relationship with the long-established payment ser- INDIA 2% SAUDI ARABIA 1% vices. Some technologies, including the ADVISORS MASTERCARD SOURCE: 2 THE FUTURE OF MONEY TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW oping world, where cash is still king. with a stack of 100-yuan notes. To pay company, which unlike Amazon doesn’t Leapfrogging ATMs and checks the her utilities—water, electricity, and home actually stock and sell the merchandise same way they have skipped over land- Internet—she went to three separate on its sites, held its initial public ofer- lines and cable, whole chunks of popu- banks, where she handed cash to a teller. ing on the New York Stock Exchange in lation are moving straight from cash to The process was “very time-consuming September, raising $25 billion, the larg- mobile money. M-Pesa, which has become and irritating,” she remembers. Even as est debut ever. a force in Kenya and Tanzania, has turned money into a cellular currency that can be converted into airtime or used to pay for things. Today, some 60 percent of Kenyan “[Alibaba and Alipay] are integral to each other’s success. But I adults have used a mobile phone to receive wouldn’t be surprised if, in the long term, Alipay turns out to be the or send payments. more important business.” What could derail the boom in pay- —Ben Cavender, China Market Research Group ment technologies? Security concerns. The consulting firm Accenture recently surveyed 4,000 con- skyscrapers and gleaming shopping malls Alibaba and Alipay, which has been sumers in North America and found that cropped up around China’s capital, most incorporated as a separate company since while more people expect to use mobile middle-class residents had never seen or 2011, helped drive the very rapid expan- payments, 57 percent of respondents used a simple checkbook. sion of online sales in China—now the were concerned about the security of such Today she uses the Alipay app, Chi- world’s second-largest “e-tail” market. transactions. That’s up from 45 percent na’s most popular online payment ser- McKinsey Global Institute estimates that two years ago. vice, on her smartphone to transfer by 2020, Chinese e-tailing could generate New approaches could help. Apple money directly to her landlord’s account. as much as $650 billion in sales, and Chi- Pay, Google Wallet, and others utilize a She pays for her utilities and her mobile- na’s market “will equal that of the United system that creates a one-time digital phone account through Alipay as well. States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Ger- token for each transaction and sends that, Yang even keeps savings in her Alipay many, and France combined today.” rather than a customer’s credit card infor- Yu’ebao money market account, where As much as Alibaba has driven China’s mation, through the system. money accrues higher interest than it booming e-commerce market, it’s possible Innovations like this show that mobile does in a traditional bank account. Yang that Alipay will ultimately have the bigger payments—even if they don’t lead to a hadn’t set out to deliberately overhaul her impact on the Chinese economy. Alibaba radical shake-up—are improving a global financial habits, but new mobile technol- and Alipay “are integral to each other’s payment ecosystem that’s long been due ogy, she says, “made so it easy.” success,” says Ben Cavender, principal at for an upgrade. —Nanette Byrnes As of October 2014, Alipay had more China Market Research Group in Shang- than 300 million registered users in China hai. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the (and 17 million overseas), according to long term, Alipay turns out to be the more Case Study the most recent figures the company has important business—it’s so flexible and made public. Many, like Yang, originally has so many potential uses.” set up accounts in order to shop at parent Alipay debuted as a simple e-payment Alipay Leads a company Alibaba’s wildly popular retail system, but it’s now a destination app sites Taobao.com and Tmall.com, where (and website) in its own right. In addition Digital Finance everything from designer clothes to pet to easing consumers into online shopping, food is for sale. The Alipay payment sys- Alipay, with its huge built-in user base, Revolution in tem works much like PayPal, except that has recently made a range of financial funds are held in escrow and are released services available to people who previ- China when the goods arrive in satisfactory fash- ously lacked easy access to money market ion.