Digital Transformation, Real Time Payments, Ether DeFi, Embedded Finance, Banking As A Service are all the latest buzz words in Payments and FinTech.
While those words actually describe the market segment or grouping of service providers in the ecosystem of finance, how do you know what type of payment service you really need?
Who cares what the latest new technology is if you can’t take advantage of it or fully utilize the capability? Selecting a payment service provider is more than just getting a merchant account, in today’s world of complex systems, work process flows and regulated use cases. Picking a payments vendor is more like selecting a partner in your business life.
A good payments partner can assist you in navigating the deep complex processes that allow you to create frictionless customer journeys, but also improve the effectiveness and efficiencies all while improving your bottom line.
Considering that most payment vendors utilize the same if not similar technology in most cases and connect to the same networks in the end, what’s really needed is a partner that will assist in navigating the ocean of FinTech providers and Banking Services. .
The State of the Industry is basically the same every year except for the names of the players seem to change; in the end it is always Rapidly evolving. So how can you make decisions on a payment service partner when things are always changing and evolving?
Hire a tour guide …
If you were buying a house, wouldn’t you want a real estate agent to show you the houses that best meet you needs? You wouldn’t ask one house owner to just show you their house, how would you compare and validate it is best for you? Would you buy a car or hire an accountant without doing research and/or validating they are experienced to do the job?
When adding forms of money movement to your business, whether it is to automate your account payables or improve your customer acquisition and onboarding process, understanding what payment types work best for you and how to work with an acquiring bank is a critical yet very important part of building out your service offering.
Over the last 5 years infrastructures have been built in order to establish a new industry platform of sorts by which new technologies can be built. New payment rails, blockchain utilities, wholesale Banking networks and connectivity, data & fraud management companies have established a ground floor of the new financial service industry.
Only now the industry can start building out specific solutions for specific vertical markets and their unique use cases to provide better customer experiences by utilizing these technologies. The difference is that the new technologies utilize more information and makes better business and transactional routing decisions. So many times, it means evaluating your business processes and sometimes fully re-engineering those internal procedures to take full advantage of the new capabilities.
Either way, the only two things you need to build the next best customer journey (hint: it isn’t a UX developer) are a Bank Sponsor that understands you and will not hold you back when you start to scale your business and an industry experienced Tour Guide who helps you navigate the ocean of FinTechs, Banks and Payments providers.
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AUTHOR
Travis Dulaney
Faster Payments Council – Operational Board Member
General Partner, Founding Member of Timeis.io
MPC Advisory Board Member
Travis Dulaney is a Founding Member of Timeis.io a Proof-of-Concept firm dedicated to helping companies realize the benefits of real time payments.
Travis previously held the CEO role at PayFi, a payment processor connecting Community Banks to the real time payment schemes and successfully exited in September of 2020.
As part of his role directing and building PayFi’s Real-Time payments capabilities, he was able identify dynamics between businesses and banking providing him with provide critical insights. Insights required to build and re-engineer business work processes and streamline the integration efforts required to realize the benefits of real-time payments.
Travis’ experience provides businesses with the visibility necessary to get a product to market and the team with the experience to deliver the product to the market quickly. Mr. Dulaney has over 25 years of Financial Services experience, specializing in Payments, Processing, and Banking across vertical markets providing vision, insights, and creative solutions.
Travis Dulaney has held executive positions with FIS the #1 FinTech company as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Government Services; VP of Product Development for eFunds Systems a payment switching and card processor; VP of IT for Interliant, a ASP. Travis’ experience ranges from software development to Six Sigma process engineering, Product Design and Operational Management providing him a unique ability to have vision across corporate functions.
For more information, visit www.timeis.io
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