No doubt. We are living in a world in rapid movement. Technological advances and especially the rise of the internet and mobile telephony have created a new digital culture that has changed the way we interact, consume and do business.

For example, a generation ago, a consumer typically visited department stores or shopping centers to meet all of their purchasing needs and undoubtedly paid in cash. The arrival of personal computers to homes and the launch of companies such as Amazon, Alibaba and eBay in the 90's familiarized consumers with the new concept of buying online. This change revolutionized several traditional industries. Businesses that have not adapted to the age of the internet are threatened.

The trend towards online shopping has much more to go through. Above all, the massification of smartphones in the last decade has allowed consumers to venture into the trade at any time and place.

The generation that most illustrates this trend is Generation Z (born between 1995 and 2009), which comes directly after the most well-known generation of Millennials (born between 1980 and 1994).

Millennials are very focused on online shopping and the use of smartphones, but these features are still much more marked in Generation Z, which is digital in nature.

They have never lived without Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. They are mobile geniuses. According to a Bank of America survey, 28% of Gen Z would sacrifice friends and money to keep their mobile phone. For them it is essential to make all kinds of financial transactions and purchases through their mobile phones. Your mentality is to see something and buy immediately. As users of Snapchat and Instagram, their attention span is only a few seconds.

Obviously, digital culture is not only transforming the way we consume, but also the way in which payments are made. Generation Z will probably be the first generation that will completely replace the leather wallet with the mobile wallet. The 'Gen Z' inspires other generations. According to an Accenture survey, 64% of US consumers plan to use their mobile wallet for all occasions after 2020. Examples are Apple Pay, Visa Checkout, Amazon Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.

The consequence is that the tendency to use less cash and more digital payments will accelerate even more in the coming years. According to a study by Goldman Sachs, the volumes of commissions for online payments reached US $ 200,000 million in 2016, an annual growth of 9.2%. This includes digital commerce, online services such as travel agencies and business-to-business (B2B) transactions.

The digital payment industry is not only growing but is transforming with a trend towards more comprehensive solutions creating new payment ecosystems.

The traditional model is very fragmented with different actors in the value chain, such as merchants, merchant acquirers, payment processors, card networks such as Visa and MasterCard and card issuing banks.

There will be winners and losers. The most important thing for the different payment service providers is to be able to please the new generations. The payments have to be instantaneous and safe from anywhere in the world, with an excellent experience for the consumer.

Probably, technological giants such as Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent will continue to participate very actively in the consolidation. Payment processors, merchant acquirers - and perhaps even banks are at risk of disintermediation.

For now, integrated digital payment platforms and mobile wallets will continue to work with major card networks (such as Visa and MasterCard) for their global dominance and wide acceptance.

The new Blockchain technology that has captured the imagination of Silicon Valley and Wall Street should not change this perspective. But payments based on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum do not represent a threat, given the connectivity, performance and efficiency of traditional payment networks and systems.

Card payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard are too cheap and convenient to be moved. Goldman Sachs estimates that Visa and MasterCard reach a breakeven point of approximately 2 basic transaction points when processing a transaction.

With Bitcoin, the required margin is around 450 to 500 bp, given how computationally demanding it is to process Bitcoin transactions. For convenience, Visa and MasterCard can authorize transactions in 20 milliseconds, compared to 18 hours of verification in the public Bitcoin block chain.

Therefore, Visa and MasterCard are still among the main beneficiaries of the structural growth of digital payments in the foreseeable future.