The future of payments isn’t cards or crypto – it’s invisible, writes Payment Expert Editor Rachael Kennedy. This article first appeared in the September 2025 editor of SBC Leaders.
The best payments are the ones we forget.
Think about the last time you took an Uber. You got in, got out, and went on with your day. No fumbling with cards, no tapping, no face ID. That is what invisible payments look like; no friction, no fanfare, just function.
Amazon and Klarna are pushing in the same direction. In Amazon Go stores, there are no tills. You walk in, pick up your items, and leave. Computer vision tracks your selections while sensors monitor your movements, creating an experience that feels almost like something out of a sci-fi film. Klarna lets users delay payment with a single tap, altering the traditional checkout anxiety into a moment of relief. In both cases, the payment becomes a background task – something that happens to you rather than something you actively perform.
So should invisibility for payments be the goal?
Shailesh Kotwal, vice chair at US Bank, recently said, “The next great evolution will see payments fully disappear into simplified, holistic commerce platforms.” When payments become invisible, experiences improve and conversion increases.
Roughly 9 in 10 consumers in both the US and Europe report having made some form of digital payment over the past year, with the US reaching a new high at 92%, so the demand for digital is there.
But creating this kind of flow takes more than user design. The technical architecture required for invisible payments is complex, involving real-time fraud detection, instant settlement networks, and predictive authorisation systems.
Stripe’s success has come from giving developers a way to build payments into products without rebuilding the engine every time. But Klarna’s CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, has called most open banking APIs “broken” because they add steps instead of removing them.
Then there’s regulation which demands strong authentication, and users want confirmation for high-value purchases. The EU’s PSD2 directive requires explicit consent for transactions over €30, creating inevitable friction points. Not to mention when something goes wrong, a payment that was too invisible can become a problem to trace.
There’s also the issue of cultural fit. Biometric payments might be normalised in parts of Asia, but adoption varies significantly elsewhere.
Nevertheless, there are clear signs momentum behind these payments is building. Expedia now embeds payments within its travel booking process. So instead of booking a hotel, you get flexible deposits, instant refunds, and a single source of truth. All of it is built in whereas before it felt bolted on.
Right now, invisible payments work best for low-friction moments: rides, snacks, subscriptions. The challenge is extending this same ease to more complex interactions, like deposits, withdrawals, refunds, instalments. These are the moments which still trigger cognitive friction, where users want control and clarity.
Invisible payments are already here, just not everywhere. So the question then becomes whether we can build for invisibility without losing visibility where it matters.
What happens when the payment process becomes so seamless that we forget it’s even there? And what might we risk losing in the name of convenience?
