15 Dec 2009: Payments, security and loyalty specialists The Logic Group is today revealing findings from a survey of 100 attendees of the Cartes & IDentification 2009 conference, held in France in mid-November and attended by thousands of digital security and card technology professionals. The Logic Group asked attendees how much importance they attribute to several key industry areas now and over the next few years.

Unsurprisingly for a survey of card and security professionals most important to the Paris visitors was encryption with 53% of respondents considering this to be of high or very high importance to the card security industry over the next year.

The next big thing for Cartes attendees was ‘Mobile Technologies’ – confirming that for many the future of payments is on the mobile phone: 47% of those surveyed considered that it will be of high or very high importance over the next year. However the majority were also aware that there is more to come in this area, with a huge 83% stating that ‘Mobile Technologies’ will be at the forefront of industry innovation over the next five years.

Third most important was ‘Customer Behaviour Analytics & Insight’; 45% of respondents thought this was a crucial issue. This figure increased to 69% over the next five years, demonstrating that garnering insight on customers via multiple sources will be a fundamental practice for the industry.

International Cross-Border Acquiring’, which, despite being a significant issue at the show for some years now, remains relatively high on the radars’ of 37% of Cartes professionals.
Just behind was the ‘Convergence of Payments & Loyalty’ (35%) – a more recent trend compared to others, making it one to watch in years to come. This is a sentiment mirrored by respondents, 65% of whom thought it would increase in importance over the next 5 years.

“Our recent client research identified that 88% believe PCI compliance brings real business benefits and it is reassuring that encryption to support achievement of PCI compliance is uppermost in the minds of the industry professionals” comments Mark Kusionowicz, Marketing Director at The Logic Group “Looking to the future however it is clear that mobile provides the most promising area for technology innovation but that understanding customer behaviour must also be a key focus for businesses going forward”.