NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, August 21, 2014

The U.S. lags the rest of the world in one significant technological area: payments. One reason we’ve fallen behind is the inertia of our legacy payments infrastructure, and the fact that it is more difficult to replace a working system than build one from scratch. Yet, while many Americans consider alternative payments non-essential, the rest of the world is silently surpassing us. They’re building simpler, more secure commerce networks — and perhaps constructing the rails to leapfrog the U.S. economically in the process.

Ingenious workarounds in areas with major political and infrastructural challenges can serve as a model for the U.S. to advance our payment system, prevent security breaches and conduct business in untapped markets.