Digital Lifescapes

Online payment solution development continues to evolve. To date, blockchain has had a mixed impact across payments and banking, but the rise of Stablecoin and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will accelerate the impact. Fundamentally, Stablecoins and CBDCs are two ways of solving the same inherent problem -- how to offer a better and more trusted digital payments solution. To date, most existing payment types have been designed around traditional systems intended for in-person or telephone payments, such as credit cards, or even cash. Therefore, Stablecoins and CBDCs are providing a system that's a significant payment use case transformation. Digital Payment Market Development According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, the value of payments via CBDCs will reach $213 billion annually by 2030 -- that's up from just $100 million in 2023. However, this significant market growth opportunity of over 260,000 percent reflects the early stage of the sector,...

The emergence of Bitcoin and an array of alternative cryptocurrencies over the past 5 years has been one of the true phenomena of global eCommerce. Initially a purely person-to-person mechanism, cryptocurrencies are increasingly being offered by online retailers as purchasing options. According to the latest market study by Juniper Research, the number of active Bitcoin users worldwide will reach 4.7 million by the end of 2019 -- that's up from just over 1.3 million in 2014. However, the findings from the study also reveal that usage will continue to be dominated by exchange trading, with retail adoption largely restricted to relatively niche demographics. While a number of high profile retailers are enabling Bitcoin payment, activity levels from both online and offline deployments are extremely low. Of course, growth in new user adoption could change, over time. "While average daily transaction volumes have increased by around 50 percent since March 2014, the indicati...