Companies that specialize in financial technology, or fintech, have transformed many aspects of our financial lives in recent years, including banking, investing, and budgeting. Numerous new businesses have emerged, focusing primarily on developing apps that upend entire financial sectors and attract millions of customers by providing services that make financial management simpler and better.
The same is true for sending money. Not so long ago, you had to use a debit or credit card and go through a time-consuming and often difficult process to enter your card information, add your pin, etc. in order to purchase items, whether online or in a physical store.
However, in recent years, numerous new logos have started to appear in store cash registers and check-out areas on websites. Many new forms of payment are now accepted, so the Visa and Mastercard logos are no longer the only ones that are prominently displayed. Here are a few of the most popular new payment methods available today.
ApplePay:
It was only a matter of time before the tech juggernaut figured out a way to let their users pay with their smartphones, and ApplePay launched in the USA in 2014, followed by the UK in 2015, China in 2016, and is now one of the biggest payment systems in the world. Applepay had more than 500 million users in 2020.
In the USA, other Applepay rivals include Venmo and Zelle. GooglePay is an option for Android phone users and functions similarly to Applepay.
Klarna:
The UK payment landscape has been completely taken over by Klarna, which was established in 2005 in Sweden and entered the market in 2017. They adhere to the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) philosophy, which enables customers to pay a small portion (or even nothing at all) of an item’s price at the time of purchase and then pay in a number of additional instalments.
Zilch:
Zilch, a native BNPL competitor of Klarna, has begun to steadily gain market share and has emerged as the go-to payment option for many UK consumers. Click here to read the full Zilch reviews. Zilch lets customers pay for purchases over a period of four installments, with the first installment, which represents 25% of the total cost, due at the time of purchase and the remaining three installments falling due over the following 42 days.
Paypal:
Due to its 1998 founding—long before the fintech revolution gained traction—PayPal could be considered the first fintech company. Nowadays, Paypal is almost always a choice during the checkout process of any online store. This success is evidenced by the $25 billion in revenue that Paypal generated in 2021.
Only a small portion of the new options are listed above, and who knows how many more creative and practical payment options will emerge over the coming few years. There is no doubt that this increase in options will benefit both consumers and businesses.
