McKinsey’s has published a list of the top 15 tech trends to follow. Chris Skinner, an independent commentator on the financial markets and an author, highlighted this recently in his blog, TheFinanser.com.
The trends are:
But how many of these are directly or tangentially relevant to the Cash, Payment & CBDC audience? Perhaps more than you think.
For payments almost all of these apply since they should enable digital payments to evolve and advance. While some focus on payment efficiency, security and resilience, others open up the possibility for new forms of payment.
Generative AI describes algorithms (such as ChatGPT) that take unstructured data as input (including images) to create new content.
Applied AI uses models trained through machine learning to solve classification, prediction, and control problems to automate activities, add or augment capabilities and offerings, and improve decision making.
This, along with Industrialising machine learning, must have benefits both for central bank forecasting, cash management and cash in transit companies.
Immersive-reality technologies enable fully computer-generated space in virtual reality (VR), to mixed reality (MR), all the way to augmented reality (AR), where computer- generated objects are superimposed on the real world. While a long way from mainstream day-to-day life, it is possible that ‘banknotes’ and ‘coins’ will be needed in these worlds, perhaps linking to the physical objects.
Robotics are already widely used in manufacturing, and this can only increase in the future.
Electrification and renewables will enable the decarbonisation of cash manufacturing and circulation.
