Digital payments acceptance for small payments is becoming a norm

2017 will be marked as the year of leapfrogging in digital payments and Fintech. In hindsight, it’s almost as if the stars were getting aligned for decades for such a huge shift. One year is too short a time for gauging the adoption and effect of new technology. The single biggest achievement would be the change in MINDSET of the whole country.

* Fintech startups have started filing a lot of gaps which were left open by the banks due to their large-scale operations. The scale of Fintech startups crossed a minimum threshold this year for the banks to take notice and finally open their arms to partnerships, which was never heard of just 5 years ago.

* Digital payments acceptance for small payments is becoming a norm. The merchants who used to do everything possible to accept only cash payments are now doing the opposite.

* At Happay, we are pleasantly surprised to see queries for travel and expense re-imbursement automation from customers who were not ready for the same just 2 years ago. There has been a 25 percent increase in inbound queries in this year.

The year ahead:
* The true power of GST will start unleashing by the end of 2018 and will continue to grow in the next 3 years. It has the power to single-handedly change the way business is done in India.

* Such transparency in B2B transactions will completely remove the incentive for cash transactions and Businesses will completely start focussing on growing Business.  

* Banks have identified the areas of partnerships and will focus on a smaller number of partnerships and make them successful.

* UPI has democratised money movement from one account to another. It will pose a serious threat to any business model based on transactional revenue, e.g: the interchange revenue from card transactions will continue to deplete.

Cloud and SaaS adoption in SMEs and enterprises
* SMEs using on-premise, in-built solutions will move towards more flexible and affordable cloud solutions as they scale up in 2018.

* Enterprises are expected to drive organisation-wide digital transformation and will implement that strategy as the new IT core for competing in today’s digital economy

* From our experience with customers, we are seeing enterprises having dedicated budgets for business process improvement across the organisation. Enterprises will do so more aggressively in 2018.

* In 2018, digital transformation and business process improvements are expected to be driven not just from the top but also from the bottom and middle of the pyramid. With more millennials entering into the corporate set up, demand for better user experience and mobility and flexibility in business related tasks will increase thus, pushing the management

Travel trends
* Innovation to pick up pace as organisations scale up and expand globally

* Greater focus on visibility and control over organisation-wide T&E spends and improvement in efficiency across the travel claims and re-imbursement process

* Greater focus on employee travel experience and satisfaction from search and booking of travel to trip approvals and re-imbursements

* Use of AI for analysing travel and spend data of business travelers and giving personalised search result thus improving booking and travel experience

* Cost reduction and compliance with company travel policies will be another area of focus: Companies will be more actively looking for solution that automate policy compliance thus reducing fraudulent spends and leakages

* Technological innovation in T&E will require a mindset/culture change at every level of the organisation - making sure everyone is comfortable using digital solutions and are able to see the benefits of it. This would require support and training that can be led by the management. They can also incentivise compliance and usage of digital solutions - this will lead to increased productivity and efficiency.

Enterprise tech trends
* Mobility is expected to be one of the key priorities for 2018. Enterprises will look for mobile-driven expense management solutions that can give their employees the freedom and convenience to manage their business expenses from any device, from any location, at any time.

* Real-time business intelligence will be another focus for Enterprises. Finance Heads will think beyond rows and columns. With new age expense management  softwares offering robust analytical dashboards and data filters, decision makers will move on from spreadsheet-driven data crunching. Data management and insights will be live and real-time with digital platforms.

* Automation will replace the heavy lifting in expense management. Slow approvals, rigid processes, anomalies in policy compliance that hamper efficiency and productivity will be eliminated by digital softwares. With such solutions, CIOs will have the power to make systems fast and frictionless for employees and administrators.

-- Anshul Rai, CEO and Co-Founder, Happay.