Future Payment Systems: Data, Technology and Privacy after Covid.

This project has been generated by the participation to the SPRITE+ Virtual Sandpit on Trust, Identity, Privacy, and Security in the post-Covid Digital Economy. The project has been admitted to funding of a 4-month feasibility study, pending final approval (17th Aug).

https://spritehub.org/2020/05/28/call-for-participants-for-the-sprite-virtual-sandpit/

SPRITE+ is a NetworkPlus that will deliver a step change in engagement between people involved in research, practice, and policy relevant to trust, identity, privacy, and security (TIPS) with a focus on digital contexts. SPRITE+ will deliver a coherent, coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach, with strong stakeholder relationships at the centre. Collectively, we will identify and address key research challenges.

PROJECT SUMMARY

Payments are critically important for everyone, as interaction with the economy is an essential part of life. SARS-CoV-2 might be viewed as a catalyst that has fundamentally changed the way in which people interact and, by extension, the way in which they transact as consumers.

Any systemic change to the nature of payments will impact every one of us. In the world of the coronavirus, it would seem that people have fewer options to use cash. We hypothesise this is for at least two reasons: (1) Brick-and-mortar retail services are more difficult to access, so people are making more of their ordinary transactions online (2) More businesses are refusing to accept cash, following a perception of risk of transmitting disease with cash transactions. This has been refuted by studies including by BIS and financial regulators around the world, but the perception persists and is amplified by campaigns to convince people to use contactless payments. We propose to test this hypothesis and plan to explore a set of related questions that will help us understand the nature of the shift in payment infrastructure and payment options.