Nearly two years into the global pandemic, many of us have made considerable changes in our lives. For some, these have been aesthetic — new wardrobes (athleisure), hairstyles (Zoom-optimized), and diets (or lack thereof). For others, it’s more fundamental — new addresses, new family members, new passions and reasons for being.

Payments are also undergoing a makeover, with some of the changes more cosmetic (wood debit cards, adoption of contactless payments in the United States) and some more fundamental. In this issue, available on Oliver Wyman's website, they highlight recent work at the fundamental, infrastructure level. What happens here, below the surface, enables nimbler payment experiences above the surface, from banking-as-a-service and integrated payments to consumer bill pay and employer payroll offerings. QR codes bridge the aesthetic and the fundamental, as they are both a form factor change and often a shift in the linked underlying account.

Oliver Wyman also puts forward a framework for evaluating climate impacts that can be tailored to payment companies. The connections may not be obvious, but they are there. Among the topics we explore: payment operations functions housed in climate-impacted locations, the best mechanisms to provide immediate relief payments in the aftermath of a disaster, what happens to gas and convenience-store transaction volumes as electric vehicles gain share, and how insurance will evolve to cover new risks — and how payments can be part of that transformation. Check it out on oliverwyman.com!

Payments Plus is a quarterly update from Oliver Wyman and includes a sample of perspectives drawn from client work across the payments industry.