The Future of Payments Is Already Here. Are We Ready?

By: Neha Sarraf

From checkout-free stores to save-first startups, fintech expert Dr. Milad Armani Dehghani’s recent AIT School of Management (SOM) workshop on the 14th March 2026 offered a clear-eyed look at the technologies quietly reshaping how we spend, save, and think about money.

What if your next grocery run ended the moment you walked out the door — no line, no card taps, no receipt? That question anchored a recent guest lecture at SOM, where Dr. Dehghani, a fintech researcher and founder of LeyewayGo’s Digital Payment initiative in Scotland, joined students for a conversation that felt less like a class and more like a look into the near future.

Shopping without stopping

IoT-based payments are already being tested in the real world. Tesco is already experimenting with smart trolleys in the UK, Starbucks lets you pay straight from your Apple Watch, and Amazon's Just Walk Out technology quietly logs everything you pick up using AI, cameras, and sensors — no checkout required. Amazon did pull back from its own Go and Fresh stores in early 2026, shifting focus to online delivery, but the technology itself hasn't slowed down. It is now licensed in over 360 locations around the world stadiums, airports, hospitals, campuses and growing. For merchants, it means less overhead and real-time visibility in inventory. That reduces overhead for the merchants and gives them real time inventory visibility. For the merchants it means overhead is reduced and they have visibility of inventory in real time. For Customers: They Get In and Out, And They Can Earn Those Loyalty Points While They're Standing in Line.

AR and the invisible checkout

Augmented reality is edging into finance too. Imagine pointing your phone at a busy Bangkok street and seeing an overlay guiding you to the nearest ATM — or a BTS exit — while suggesting a coffee shop and letting you pay instantly. The Pokémon GO–McDonald’s Japan partnership already showed how AR-driven gamification can subtly shape where people go and what they buy, blending digital rewards with real- world commerce.

“Traditional banking is a Word document one institution controls. Blockchain is a Google Doc everyone can see updating in real time.”

Blockchain, at human scale

Dr. Dehghani’s analogy made blockchain click for the room. Although Bitcoin only processes 4 to 7 transactions per second and is more fit for a store-of-value role, Solana can process up to 50,000 — which is the reason why Visa began USDC stablecoin settlements on the Solana chain as of late 2025, with wider expansion planned out through 2026. Fast and cheap global transfers are no longer a thought experiment. The regulatory challenge, as Dr. Dehghani acknowledged, is the anonymity that makes crypto appealing to some but raises concerns for governments around money laundering and financial crime.

Spend now or save first?

The session’s sharpest contrast was between Buy Now, Pay Later and its quieter counterpart. BNPL platforms like Klarna and After pay have won over younger consumers with frictionless installments — Klarna reports 118 million active users — but UK data shows 38% occasionally miss payments. Dr. Dehgani’s own startup, LayawayGo, takes the opposite route: save toward a goal first, then unlock a 10–15% discount, supported by an AI Matchbuy for product discovery across jewelry, travel, and local small businesses.

Cultural preferences surface here too — Thai consumers lean toward saving-first models, while UK and German shoppers often prefer BNPL’s immediacy. Neither is universally better; they reflect different relationships with money and delayed gratification.

Fintech isn’t a distant industry. It’s the infrastructure underneath everyday decisions. As that infrastructure grows faster, cheaper, and more invisible, one question lingers: when payments become truly frictionless, will we even notice we’re spending?