In 2015, marketing tech investments will embrace digital commerce. In fact, 2015 will be the year of digital commerce where will see companies transition away from single-point transactions with customers into deeper, longer-term relationships. This is all according to Michael Ni, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President Marketing and Products at Avangate, a digital commerce solution for online service providers.

Ni’s predictions about emerging technologies are all part of our second annual Technology Predictions series in which industry experts share their predictions with us about the hot tech trends that they think will take center stage in 2015. We’ll be sharing all of their predictions with you over the next several days. Read on for more from Ni.

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Prediction No. 1: 2015 will be the year of commerce automation

Modern marketing has created multiple points of engagement for customers to interact and exchange value with you on their schedule and on their terms. There is also the growing complexity of managing these new engagement touch points and wiring it back to your legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This is all causing a “Commerce Hairball” of complexity to manage.

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Prediction No. 2: Marketing tech investments will embrace digital commerce

Digital disruption, particularly on mobile, has given people incredibly easy access to all the information and tools they need to make smart purchasing decisions. By 2020, more than seven billion people and businesses and at least 30 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, according to Gartner, Inc. With people, businesses and things communicating, transacting and even negotiating with each other, a new world comes into being—the world of digital business.

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Prediction No. 3: Mobile payments will still have a long way to go

According to a recent survey by Avangate, consumers are not quite ready to say “I do” to mobile payments. Almost half of consumers have not used their mobile phones to make a purchase and one in five don’t feel secure making mobile payments. While more investments are going into mobile payments (such as Apple Pay), businesses can’t ignore consumer preferences for how they want to pay. In 2015, we will see payments, including mobile, become subsumed by commerce. In fact, it will be the year of digital commerce where will see companies transition away from single-point transactions with customers into deeper, longer-term relationships.

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2015 Technology Predictions graphic courtesy of SiliconANGLE