Magazine: Paying in cash will soon be history…

According to PayPal president Dan Schulman, cash will be part of our everyday life for a long time.

Marcin Glogowski
general manager in Central Eastern Europe
PayPal

Marcin Glogowski, general manager of PayPal in Central Eastern Europe told: a survey that the conducted with Ipsos in 2018 revealed that when Hungarians are buying online from a domestic webshop, every second time they pay in cash when the goods arrive; 20 percent pay the same way when making a purchase in a foreign online shop.

The digitalisation of financial services – switching from cash to non-cash forms of payment – is happening all over the world.

Krisztián Balázs
managing director
Edenred Magyarország

Edenred Magyarország Kft. has been working in the field of non-salary benefits for 25 years in Hungary. Eight years ago the company introduced these to the Hungarian market in card format, and from 2014 they started offering Mastercard-based benefits – informed managing director Krisztián Balázs.

Kristóf Köles
senior product manager
Telenor Magyarország

Kristóf Köles, Telenor Magyarország Zrt.’s senior product manager has had the experience that partners are more and more open to SMS-based solutions such as mobile parking or the Telenor Wallet payment system. We learned from Bence Sármay, country sales manager of Ingenico Group that the large proportion of contactless payments in Hungary indicates that consumers are ready for using new technologies. Another good example of this is Vodafone ReadyPay, developed especially for retailers with a smaller turnover.

Telenor Magyarország Zrt.’s mobile payment solutions are united in the Telenor Wallet smartphone app – this solution can be used by anyone, no matter which provider’s mobile service they subscribe to. Several forms of payment are possible, in a secure and comfortable fashion. The MasterPass and Telenor MobilPass functions, plus the Wallet bracelet are also available to customers. Ingenico Group plans to launch the PinOnGlass solution next year: this will make it possible to retailers to offer contactless payment at a low cost. Recently the company has announced the debut of the first Android open source POS terminal. In the last two years Edenred Magyarország Kft. introduced the ‘transaction notice’ service in the Edenred Pro application, plus they came out with a fingerprint identification solution for the mobile app, with the help of which card owners can use various bank card functions without having to provide identity verification data.

In the last few years PayPal introduced many new services, e.g. their website has been made available in many markets – including Hungary – in the language of the given country. Another popular PayPal service is return shipping refund. Mr Köles told Trade magazin that it is becoming increasingly important for enterprises to measure their business processes, and to have access to the solutions they use no matter where they are. Thanks to this they are open to trying new technologies, although many still only see the relatively high cost of introducing these. It is a general trend that people would like to spend less time with sending or receiving money, and they want to shop no matter where they are or which part of the day it is. Mr Glogowski revealed that their survey had found: most Hungarian still buy online from desktop computers or laptops, but 44 percent also use their smartphone for this and this proportion keeps growing.

Bence Sármay
country sales manager of Hungary
Ingenico Group

Mr Sármay’s experience is that cooperation is strengthening between online cash registers and POS terminals. It only takes one more step for the two to merge and become a single device. These new tools will be characterised by cloud-based operation and the latest software will run on them. Mr Balázs talked to us about innovations that will turn their cards into Y-generation models, with functions such as mobile and contactless payment. Systems like the parent company’s Edenred Pay are available to them, but Apple Pay has also been introduced in many countries. The company is busy developing a paypass system too. At the moment they can already fully customise non-salary benefit cards to partner needs. //