PSPs are shaping the finance industry and are here to stay
Bertold Brecht once said: “Don’t start with the good old things but with the bad new things,” and we honestly think he meant fintech. The world of financial services is forever changing with strict regulations and security pitfalls. Institutions and companies (banks, insurance companies, payment providers, and more) faced more challenges in the last five years than in the previous 20 years. As some experts put it, “the world became a marketplace itself because of globalisation and digitalisation”. In just a few years, we will probably drop the fintech and finance industry division. As Chris Skinner from Thefinanser said, “We will just talk about finance delivered by technology.” Check out a few major areas of improvement payment service providers’ work on that are shaping out the finance industry.
Real-time processing
Remember when a lot of products and services were annual because it was hard for financial institutions to service them more regularly? Digital distribution programme for literally everything that PSP currently use are changing the shopping experience no matter what the ‘item’ is in the shopping cart: physical goods, software or entertainment services. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, open banking, PSD2 are not just buzzwords but points of focus for many merchants and, therefore, for payment service providers too.
Cashless societies
The next step after contactless is coming. Most of the European developed markets, as well as emerging ones (Mexico, Brazil, China, India, South Africa, South Korea, etc.), show staggering cashless payment growth in 2018. We can use Sweden as a blueprint of a cashless society. Their national digital currency e-Krona is up for public usage by the next year and the whole country plans to become fully cashless in about four years. And PSPs are on the head of the race to address this market acquisition opportunity. Payment providers and gateway services invested in digital transformation programmes early on, so they can provide new financial solutions faster, guaranteeing the security of transactions and protection of sensitive data.
Better customer experience
According to B2B Business Community research, 57% of consumers say that a fast response to an enquiry or complaint is the key element to ideal customer experience. They also agree that payments should be transparent, seamless, integrated, and highly convenient. As the industry often says: it’s not always about new technologies and artificial intelligence in fintech. Sometimes it’s all about customer intelligence. And PSPs are constantly developing in better CRMs for merchants.
Custom solutions
By developing tailored solutions for merchants, a payment provider has the near-term opportunity of surveying a business’s value chain end-to-end as it services payments to its clients as well as consumers. For example, at Maxpay we’ve developed a “merchant portal” with custom tracking reports. Advanced analytics allows businesses to improve their customer journey. Fifteen years ago, an average consumer would typically use two touch points when purchasing an item. Now it’s about eight.
Constant innovation
It’s amazing how quick the adoption of new fintech solutions is, especially in emerging markets. Now everyone can be a merchant and accept payments within weeks or even days. Payment service providers process billions in online transactions per year and in ways that might surprise you, since consumers are now device-enabled. Almost every mobile device is not only a payment possibility but can be a point of sale for merchants. Gateways and service providers are developing universal acceptance with cards and alternative payment methods, so the whole network can become bilateral. Recent EY research shows that fintech adoption rate among consumers almost doubled over the past year and a half. Staggeringly, 96% of those 27,000 respondents were aware of at least one fintech service beyond the traditional ways of making payment and money transfers.
Maxpay’s chief commercial officer, Vasyl Mayor, recently commented: “We already see how payments becoming easier when major stores and restaurants go cashless. Even whole communities and countries aim for it. Commercial sites, browsers, and smartphones now store payment information and allow instant payments and transfers to merchants or contacts. And as a payment service provider we are responsible for fraud-protection, seamless integration and excellent user experiences for our merchant’s customers every time they decide to make that payment. It’s hard to imagine modern fintech without all the groundwork PSPs have done for its improvement.”
About Maxpay:
Maxpay is an international payment service provider for online business owners. Maxpay was nominated for the best Payment Company in EGR B2B Awards 2019. It’s a platform built by online business owners for online business owners engineered to accelerate growth. At Maxpay, our team of professionals provide access to a broad set of merchant tools within the payments processing stack, deliver deeper local insights and offer customised risk intelligence solutions. We offer online businesses personalised support, resources, and tools to diversify risks and scale worldwide. Maxpay is a payment solution with an integrated dashboard that is reliable, secure, and still easy to set up and use. Learn more at start.maxpay.com