AnalystXpress

For the past 10 years, the automotive industry has been undergoing a most significant technological transformation. Car manufacturers are focusing on more eco-friendly and technologically advanced solutions, in order to sustain sales levels. The driving factors for automotive sales have been passenger comfort, vehicle safety features, improved emissions, fuel efficiency and car infotainment for some time.

Blockchain came to prominence through its role in cryptocurrencies, but its use has now broadened beyond cryptocurrency transaction data. Blockchain is now being utilised as a way of storing and verifying other types of data in other spheres of finance, as well as areas such as human resources, supply chain, land registry and food safety. In Forbes’ 2020 list of the top 50 blockchain companies, financial services were found to be the leading solution area by a large margin (39%), focused mainly on cross-border payments, digital asset trading, and digital/cryptocurrency.

Open Banking is driving the largest disruptors in the digital banking market, BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service) and embedded finance, first and foremost, by acting as an enabler for delivery of these concepts. While the idea of Open Banking may not be entirely new, its rise to prominence has been mostly fuelled by adoption of PSD2 and big tech initiatives in recent years. This has helped shape interaction patterns between traditional and emerging actors in the marketplace. As such, Open Banking is a game changer for business model innovation in the face of customer demands for seamless and ubiquitous financial products and services.

The healthcare sector prides itself to be at the forefront of technological innovation. However, the fragmentary way in which many hospitals acquire technical solutions introduces cost, time, and resource inefficiencies that, overall, hinder care delivery and hospitals’ ability to meet their strategic objectives.

Despite ubiquitous cellular connectivity in many contexts through public cellular networks, this is unsuitable for the needs of many enterprises’ use cases, most typically those with specific requirements for cellular service reach, security, availability, latency or any combination of these.

Bricks-and-mortar retailers are under pressure to offer increasingly frictionless shopping experiences. Consumers are coming to expect fast, secure and frictionless payments outside the retail sphere too; such as for travel. The line between physical and digital commerce is becoming increasingly blurred and channels are becoming increasingly converged. With the strong emphasis on contactless payments as a result of the pandemic (and before the pandemic in markets where contactless payments were already well-established), the in-store purchasing experience has moved much closer to the online one. The concept of touch-free payments and/or biometric authentication is creeping increasingly closer to the online purchasing experience.

The needs of the energy distribution market have become increasingly complex, with the advent of alternative energy generation, an ageing infrastructure, significant increase in demand, and questions around environmental sustainability in terms of carbon emissions and how to distribute energy efficiently, continuously, and safely at lower costs. In response, the modernisation of energy management systems commenced with the transformation of the most crucial element of the energy infrastructure, namely, the electric grid. 

The art of robocalling has become far more sophisticated and prevalent in the last 30 years, as technological advances and device ownership have grown at an alarming rate. Indeed, there are several ways in which fraud is accomplished via robocalling.

Instant payments have drastically transformed the payments landscape, not only through speed, but also by shifting expectations by creating unprecedented connectivity among stakeholders in the ecosystem. Such connectivity also translated into intertwined acceleration of digital infrastructure upgrades, as well as business model innovation. Also known as real-time payments or faster payments, these schemes have evolved extensively from P2P solutions to C2B and B2B spheres over the years; disrupting domains of traditional financial actors.

Mobile channels are becoming increasingly important for brands and enterprises to connect with customers, with service providers emerging that look to offer a comprehensive platform that enables the management of this communication. These are CPaaS platforms.