Generation Alpha has arrived, with money to spend

The ritual will be familiar to anyone over 30: squirreling away our allowance for that perfect pair of designer jeans, coveted video game, or must-have accessory. We’d count our savings daily, and when falling just short of our goal, make impassioned pleas to our parents to help bridge the gap. The eventual acquisition of these prized gifts made the anticipation worthwhile, particularly when showcasing them in front of our envious friends.

For Generation Alpha – those born between 2010 and 2025 – this rite of passage is fading into obscurity. Born at a rate of 2.5 million per week globally, the new cohort of young adults is projected to wield $5.46 trillion in spending power by 2029, rivaling the combined economic might of Millennials and Gen Z. While my generation relied largely on allowances, they have embraced entrepreneurship, finding different ways to earn money that no longer depends on washing the dishes or vaccuming.

Before even starting high school, Generation Alpha has already reached a level of digital proficiency that puts my 9-year-old self to shame. Especially when I thought turning off my computer by pressing the power button was perfectly fine. By age seven, they’re developing financial habits; by fourteen, physical cash is largely alien to them, with nearly two-thirds already generating income through digital platforms. Research shows that three-quarters of their earning activities take place through social media and online marketplaces.

Traditional education hasn’t kept pace with this evolution. Financial literacy still remains as peripheral in current curricula as it was in my day. While my parents struggled to explain budgeting and taxes, nearly a third of Generation Alpha now gets their financial education directly via finance apps. They’re breaking free from the hierarchical structures – parents, teachers, traditional institutions – that guided previous generations, emerging more independent and with a wealth of knowledge that’s always just a few taps away.

We can already observe this shift in Slovenia, where 77% of children aged 8-14 now see themselves as future entrepreneurs – not wage-earners or professionals in the traditional sense, but commanding multiple revenue streams.

The very notion of a “career” – that 20th-century construct of stable, linear progression – is becoming antiquated, with just 9% expressing interest in traditional employment in a country where self-employment currently hovers at 11%.

Generation Alpha will want jobs in sectors like cyber-security, app development and more nascent fields like crypto and artificial intelligence. Unlike their parents who might have stayed in one industry for life, they’ll be lifelong learners, moving between multiple sectors. Their success will depend on their ability to constantly adapt, upskill, and retrain to remain relevant in an ever-evolving workplace.

Growing up with a fount of technology at their beck and call has set the bar for what they’ll expect from digital services in the future. Their early adoption of technology has enabled them unprecedented access to answering whichever query at any given moment. Were a company’s authentication process lagging or its chatbot hallucinating, it’s unlikely Alpha would have the patience to bear the haphazardly implemented digital solutions that were foisted on us. There will be many unknown unknowns businesses will have to contend with as their customers will come to expect proactive solutions that respond to their needs before they even arise.

Visa executives like Alenka Mejač Krassnig see an inevitable upheaval coming in financial services. After implementing contactless payments on Ljubljana’s bus system, she’s witnessed firsthand how readily young people embrace digital solutions. “We’re going to see these changes happen faster than anyone expects,” she says. “Companies that want to stay competitive need to understand what this generation wants – seamless, frictionless experiences in everything they do.”

This means addressing what the company calls “payment pain points” – the friction in digital transactions that Alpha consumers will neither experience nor tolerate.

The company has launched over 250 products and services, from enhanced security measures to seamless payment integrations. More significantly, two-thirds of these initiatives focus on helping traditional financial institutions expand into digital territories, meeting young consumers where they already are.

But Generation Alpha’s expectations extend even further. “A bank card, written to my fingerprint,” reads one of the responses from several children that Visa interviewed about their expectations of future innovations. Increasingly, when in stores, we pull out our phones rather than our wallets. We bring them close to the devices at the checkout, press it against the screen and wait for that green checkmark. Visa is embracing this evolution by testing palm recognition technology in select markets.

The path to this point hasn’t been straightforward. Over the past decade, various biometric authentication methods have been integrated into payment systems, with fingerprint and facial recognition becoming essential features of mobile wallet solutions like Google Wallet and Apple Pay. While other methods like iris and voice scanning have been explored but gained less adoption, biometric authentication has become a cornerstone of secure mobile payments. Palm recognition now shows promise in further enhancing this landscape with its seamless user experience.

While many consumers might approach this technology with initial skepticism – much as they did with mobile wallets – Generation Alpha will likely view it differently. For them, swiping their palm across a terminal will come as naturally as breathing.