Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was no such thing as a ‘payments’ industry.

There was a relatively long-established financial services industry that had begun developing technological methods of providing products to retail and commercial customers, which subsequently gave way to the entire modern financial world being dominated by ‘fintech’, an acronym for financial technology.

Even as long ago as the early part of this Millennium, many people were able to view their bank accounts online, take up insurance policies via the Internet and even use comparison websites as affiliates to insurance companies in order to check the best prices without having to make several telephone calls, and shortly after that, in the age of the smartphone, view their bank accounts online.

Despite all that advancement, there was no actual ‘payments’ industry. Ten years ago, it was common for people to be fully digital in terms of their travel, banking, and domestic bills, but once outside in the street, cash was king.

Supermarket purchases were either made with a debit card which had to be inserted into a point-of-sale machine, or with cold, hard cash.

This only recently began to change, and suddenly the move toward contactless payments has been exponential, even to the extent that the use of plastic cards is now increasingly less common because when a transaction can be made via contactless methodology, who needs a plastic card?

Virtual cards and e-wallets are now the order of the day, and mobile phone manufacturers have embraced this as more products of this nature are becoming available on smartphones.

Now, the smartphone manufacturers themselves are going one step further and investing more resources into digital payments, with Apple leading the charge this month with an interesting new development.

Apple announced this week that it is building more of a platform presence to grow its merchant services solutions.

We are now all familiar with Apple Pay and have been for some time, but Apple was only committed to providing consumer payment services – now the company is going down the merchant services route.

This is a clear sign that the way payment transactions are made now and, in the future, does not resemble that of the past few years.

If Apple is looking to build a full merchant platform, which is a costly and resource-hungry endeavour, this surely means that the company realises that there is no likelihood that most retail customers will use cash or even physical debit or credit cards in future.

This level of investment in providing merchant terminals to retailers in order that smartphone-hosted payment systems can be used more widely and conveniently is a definite indicator of the cashless and cardless way of things to come.

It is, therefore, essential that the right app is chosen, and Monevium is right up there at the front with virtual cards offering secure, two-factor authentication and a secure e-wallet solution which allows virtual cards to be set up within an e-wallet and operated from any smartphone.

Within the United Kingdom, some 83% of all adults use contactless payments, meaning that it would be very easy to simply use a mobile device for payment rather than carry separate cards or wallets, as the same accounts are accessible via e-wallets on smartphones.

Habit forms quickly, and just as the sudden rush toward contactless payments has taken place, the switch to using those via mobile-only is likely to be even easier and quicker, as no difference in user experience is required, yet it reduces the amount of paraphernalia needing to be carried when out.

Apple knows this market very well by now. In its home market of the United States, some 40 million people use Apple Pay, and the company saw this grow, but Apple Card growth dwindled between 2021 and 2022.

That is an important metric. This is the black-and-white metric which shows that mobile device usage for payments is now the de facto method.

For this reason, Apple is going all in, and therefore choosing a highly advanced non-bank fintech for your daily account activity, shopping and managing your funds is increasingly important, and Monevium is exactly that.

Monevium is the Trading Name of Advanced Wallet Solutions Limited, a company registered in the UK under company number 10251711 and is regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority under Firm Reference Number 766038.