If you think consumers want brands to be neutral on social issues, you would be wrong. Belief-driven buyers—consumers who choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on its stand on societal issues—are the majority in 2018.

Impersonal or practical, gift cards are integral to the holiday season. Purchases of gift cards also keep rising every year. In 2017, US internet users purchased an average of 6.5 gift cards and 6.1 digital cards, up from 5.9 and 4.0 in 2016, according to First Data.

Personalized messages, geolocated notifications, loyalty programs—all are available via mobile passes in wallets.

Adoption of proximity mobile payments in the US continues to grow, but at an increasingly tepid pace. They’ve yet to unseat credit cards as the payment option of choice. Meanwhile, peer-to-peer (P2P) payment adoption is driven by platforms like Venmo and Zelle.

The news that Starbucks was among the companies working on a platform called Bakkt that will allow consumers to "buy, sell, store and spend digital assets on a seamless global network" was widely interpreted as a sign that the coffee giant was set to accept cryptocurrency payments. Not exactly.