I recently attended a great industry-specific payments summit which had the theme – “Are you bold enough to survive in the brave new world”. I was expecting big things, and a significant amount of the content delivered.
With that theme in mind, one presentation still stands-out to me above all others, but for completely the wrong reasons! The presentation, given by an executive from a global payments network (not one of the top 5), was addressing the challenges businesses face in accepting non-card payments, typically labelled Alternative Payment Methods (APMs).
His view was simple– the number one priority when considering APMs should be ease of integration! Since when was following the path of least resistance being bold? I mean, I understand his sentiment – Integrations are costly and time-consuming, often running into £Ms and years, and with so much choice – how do you prioritize?
These complexities typically force companies to focus on internal priorities, heavily weighing their decisions toward what is optimal from a resourcing and cost perspective, and not focused around how customers want to pay in each of the markets and channels they sell. This approach carries significant cost with potentially little or no upside – You end up with a costly integration to a payment method none of your customers wants to use!
We believe it should be much more cost effective – and easier – than this. A simple, one-off, connection to APEXX would provide a single point of connectivity to any payment method needed, encouraging businesses to consider the most appropriate payment methods from their customers’ perspective, ones that will actually contribute to your top line!
