Innovative: When Your Innovation Becomes the Industry Norm
In my last blog post, I covered the early history of Mastercard’s PayPass contactless solution.
When PayPass launched in Canada, it was an innovation too far ahead for the public to accept. It was introduced into the Canadian market at a time when cardholders were already overwhelmed with the transition from magstripe to EMV contact chip on their payment cards.
PayPass shouldn’t have succeeded. . . but it did.
PayPass became wildly successful - especially in the Canadian market. It became so successful that all the other networks wanted to use it, too.
So, what do you do when everyone wants to participate in your innovation?
You celebrate. They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. How much more when everyone wants to license and use your innovation – that is superlative flattery!
You grieve. I wonder if most of us forget that each victory also contains a loss:
My kid graduates from university – they gain the degree, but I lose the child that was.
We compete as a team and win the championship – we celebrate, but we also just lost that specific “mountain to conquer”.
Your innovative product or service: now everyone wants it – what a victory! But you are also letting go of the trophy that made you unique in the market.
You look deep into your heart.
Why did you develop this innovation? Was it to be unique or to transform normal?
How much of your identity is wrapped up in this innovation?
Do you have the courage to share your innovation so that it can belonging to everyone?
You brainstorm like crazy. Your innovation made you unique – for a short time. Now it is industry table stakes. Brainstorm:
Is this now a new normal that can birth even more innovative solutions?
Or is it time to move your innovation drive in a different direction to gain new uniqueness in the marketplace?
You keep growing. Don’t just keep going; keep growing. Innovation doesn’t just grow new products and services – it grows new qualities in you, too. Keep growing and stretching. This has been one triumph. You have enjoyed it. You have celebrated it. You have grieved the loss it brought you. Now you can brainstorm for new innovations. Keep growing. Life is a long-distance race. Each time around the track is another conquest, but victory comes to the one who makes it to the end of the race!
When PayPass Became Contactless / Tap
It was about five years after the Mastercard PayPass launch in Canada. Almost all Mastercard cards in Canada were contactless EMV enabled cards. Merchant adoption rates for contactless were growing exponentially. Then we started hearing about Visa PayWave. . . and Interac Flash. . .
About that same time, Mastercard announced the retirement of the PayPass name. The technology would now be known as “Contactless”. Our fancy colourful PayPass logo was being replaced with a generic black and white grouping of right brackets – the new Contactless indicator.
Our innovation had become table stakes. Every network would be sharing the same innovation.
We celebrated – this innovation that should have never succeeded had just redefined card to terminal interaction!
We grieved – For 5 years, PayPass had been OUR unique innovation – something that made us different from the “other networks”. Now, due to its success, it would no longer be unique. I have to be honest. It took me a long time to transition and drop my partisan contactless vocabulary.
We all, corporately and individually, had to look deep in our hearts. Did we just want to win this innovation game, or were we committed to bringing material transformation to the payments industry? Were we afraid that sharing this innovation with our competitors might leave us behind in the dust?
Then the brainstorming started. It was therapeutic. If contactless was the new normal, how could we leverage it to do what we could never do before? What new horizons could we see? What other innovations could be made better with Contactless?
15 years have passed since those questions were first asked. The payments industry has seen what has happened since Contactless moved from innovation to industry norm:
In some markets, like Canada, over half of all transactions are tapped.
Payment cards are on phones, smart watches, and other smart devices. Tap gave these devices the ability to interact with payment terminals.
Contactless limits have been raised so that almost all daily purchases can be done with a tap.
Payment terminal apps are available for smartphones and tablets. The contactless interfaces on these devices allow them to become point-of-sale terminals - accepting contactless payments from phones, watches, and contactless-enabled payment cards.
Person-to-person payment apps now exist allowing individuals to do person-to-person funds transfer via the phone contactless interface.
And we are just “getting growing”!
There may be many more applications for contactless – and some of those innovations may obsolete payment cards or contactless itself.