Cash is down and cards are up

During the Swedish Tax Agency's information day (4/2-2015) on developments in the payment market, the focus was on the new requirements imposed on cash registers and the challenges facing the trade in terms of which payment methods to support and the costs incurred by merchants to accept the growing share of card payments.

Niklas Arvidsson, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Industrial Economics and Organization (KTH), showed in his presentation that the development of the so-called retail payment market is moving towards increased fragmentation, that is, the range of different services will increase and that the lack of uniformity in the industry means that no single player can control this development. Niklas Arvidsson believes that fragmentation will gradually enter a phase of increased concentration, as players with economies of scale and strong network effects grow while other smaller ones are eliminated. Arvidsson noted that merchants, banks and card companies will be the big winners in a cashless society.

Per Mandorf, Sales Director at Visma, presented the results of a study that shows that consumers are moving across more and more channels/platforms and are placing great demands on mobile shopping solutions where they can shop on their own terms. A major challenge for retailers will be to meet consumer demands.

During the day, it also emerged that the Swedish Tax Agency is now open to discussing cloud-based storage of control data. Daniel Akenine, Technology and Security Manager Microsoft, discussed in his presentation the issue of the regulatory requirements that arise when it comes to secure storage in the cloud.