Powering the payments process will be fintechs such as Australian start-up Assembly Payments, which provides a single payment platform that is compatible with various disbursement channels, with clients so far including Gumtree, Airtasker and carsales.com.au.

Online innovations such as Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa are already enabling customers to shop via voice-activated transactions, while messenger apps and social media heavyweights such as Facebook are making forays into the banking and payments space.

Fintech digital payments are forecast to be worth $1.8 billion by 2020 in Australia alone, and are proving to be a major disruptor of the banking sector. With increased convenience, flexibility and low-to-zero fees, could traditional banking be on the slide?

Cameron Dart, founder and chief executive of Australian FinTech, which provides news and networking for the sector, says mobile payments present the greatest opportunity for innovation, predicting that only a minority will use credit cards within a few years. “The people who don’t use internet banking today will be the people who don’t use mobile payments tomorrow,” he says.

While ApplePay and Android Pay are the market leaders, smaller players are starting to claim a share.

For more on this story visit the following link: Australian cashless future finding favour

Source: Australian Fintech