For over a year, we have been building a platform for benchmarking and analyzing the Payments landscape through the eyes of the Consumer.

Throughout March, a month that has re-shaped the global economy, we have used our platform to identify emerging trends faster than any traditional method that we have seen in our careers.

By combining three data sources at scale:

1. feature / benefit-level product intelligence on all core and fintech products
2. innovation intelligence on product concepts that have not yet entered the market, and
3. structured product feedback from thousands of consumers

our platform is consistently delivering leading indicator insights on consumers’ rapidly evolving needs and the practical “so what do I do now?” product actions that can preserve payments volume.

Prior to COVID-19, we identified two key trends in Payments:

1. Rewards have peaked. In preparation for a market downturn, our data showed that providers can no longer compete with a Rewards-only strategy
2. Benefit marketing is the next frontier. We showed that there are significant differences across consumer segments in the types of benefits that they desire, and the relative importance of each benefit category in impacting product acquisition and usage.

In March, we were the first to note emerging trends in:

1. A shift in consumers’ Benefit priorities that can preserve payments volume
2. Credit Card seeking behavior
3. Increasing appetite for Contactless Payments

In case you missed any of these important insights, here they are again: