Payments industry, gird your loins for a challenging 2016.

Yuval Ziv, chief operating officer of SafeCharge, said the past year saw the increasing prominence of Bitcoin as well as the growth of mobile payments, not to mention the continued implementation of 3D Secure, the rush towards globalization of online transactions, and most notably, the severe risk of data breaches and fraud.

This year, Ziv said new authentication technologies will reduce the risk of fraud, but the industry will still have to increase user acceptance.

“The widespread adoption of new authentication methods needs to be ensured to enable a more secured payment environment. Risk will be reduced with new authentication technologies such as Apple Pay. It will be harder to commit fraud. The industry’s challenge will be to adopt new technologies and increase user acceptance. More of these authentication technologies will be introduced. It will be important to make this happen without reducing conversion rates,” Ziv told CalvinAyre.com. “The continued rise of mobile commerce will assist in the reduction of online payment risks. Mobile technology continues to provide more ways to authenticate end users, for example, by giving them better device ID.”