Tagged: game Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • user 3:35 am on June 4, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , game, , ,   

    CHANGING THE GAME: Integrated payments in acquiring 

    Guest blogger Marc Abbey discusses why addressing competitive implications of is a priority.

    The explosion of software at the point of sale (POS) is a major force of change in today. This trend is not new, but its speed and scope are. Addressing the competitive implications of integrated payments is now a priority concern for acquirers. Understandably so.

    The issue: Disruption from developers

    Software is migrating down market into smaller merchants. It performs various business functions for merchants and is replacing traditional terminals and PC-based solutions. Increasingly, these solutions are integrating payments and capturing the economics of payment acceptance.

    The merchant market is characterized by industry verticals with niche business needs and specialized accounting processes. For example, health and fitness companies can handle scheduling, e-commerce, membership collections, and on-premise payments through the business solutions available to the vertical. And not-for-profits can integrate donor management, events, fundraising campaigns, and e-commerce. Also, faith-based organizations can take recurring payments and payments through e-commerce websites and kiosks. All of this is possible because of these business solutions.

    By streamlining business operations through a single application and creating new user experiences for merchants and their customers, software developers are filling gaps that traditional acquirers are not. With payments now central to developers’ businesses, delivering payments functionality is not just a nice-to-have for them.

    In fact, software developers are realizing that payments is where the real economic value lies. In many cases, they can double their revenue as a result, according to Accenture estimates. Developers can achieve this revenue growth through different approaches. These include referring merchants to traditional acquirers or becoming ISOs or payment facilitators that are more centrally involved in payments processing. Private equity firms are often agents of change here. They are targeting developers before monetization of payments, leading them through the process, and exiting on the strength of the improved economics.

    A look at the software mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market reveals how common this approach is among private equity firms. The market has about 500 to 600 deals per quarter, many are payments focused.1 Some 30 to 40 percent of these transactions have been completed by private equity firms or their portfolio companies in recent quarters.2 In addition, more than half of companies being purchased are in dynamic acceptance verticals like healthcare, education, hospitality and real estate.3

    The impact: A catch-22 for acquirers

    These changes are creating new competitive dynamics for traditional acquirers. Software developers are emerging both as a new distribution channel for acquirers and as a new and formidable category of competitors.

    Most acquirers recognize the complexity of this friend-and-foe relationship. In response, many are investing to create integration environments hospitable to software developers to attract these new referral sources. Sometimes, this investment involves pursuing acquisitions to add capabilities. Accenture estimates that in the past three years, there has been more than $ 6 billion in acquisitions with an integrated payments business thesis.4

    The new normal: Unchartered territory for all

    To keep pace, traditional acquirers must take stock of what all this means to the future of integrated payments. Here is what the landscape will likely look like:

    Old rules getting broken

    As software developers set the new rules of acquiring, there will be more share shifts between traditional and -enabled channels. Already, growth in the independent software vendor channel (35 percent) is outpacing growth in the overall acquiring industry (8 percent), according to Accenture estimates.5

    Rise of the gatekeepers

    The road to acceptance product enablement will increasingly run through software at the POS. This results in a powerful gatekeeper role for software developers. Just like they did for near field communication and Apple Pay, acquirers must prepare to modify their solutions for the next generation of acceptance products.

    Next-gen sales and marketing

    Sales and marketing will never be the same with developers in the value chain. While acquirers have long relied on third-party sales partners, the dynamics will be different with developers in the mix. Acquirers should start to prepare for non-traditional sales partnerships with developers.

    Beating them by joining them

    Acquirers will become developers in key verticals, either through building internal software innovation capabilities or through M&A activity. Vantiv Inc.’s acquisition of Paymetric and Global Payment’s acquisition of Active Networks are among several examples of this trend.

    A critical decision

    Software developers have the ambition and ability to capture a good share of the payments acceptance business. Traditional acquirers must act to avoid disintermediation, and software developers that have yet to get involved are missing significant revenue potential.

    This is a fight-or-flight moment that calls to mind e-commerce in 1995. At the time, an emerging business model was taking off. There were a few dominant players and a handful of specialized players. But many acquirers stood still. There is every indication that integrated payments will evolve on a similar trajectory. Now is the time for acquirers to lean into the growth.

    1 Software Equity Group, “SEG Snapshot: 3Q17 SaaS M&A Update,” October 20, 2017, retrieved on April 3, 2018
    2 Ibid
    3 Ibid
    4 Accenture Payments research conducted March 2018
    5 Ibid

    Marc Abbey, Managing Director, Payments

     

     

     

     

    The post CHANGING THE GAME: Integrated payments in acquiring appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.

    Accenture Banking Blog

     
  • user 3:35 pm on June 2, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , game, , , ,   

    Will PSD2 APIs and instant payments change the game in European payments? 

    The EU’s Second Payment Services Directive ()—and the Banking Authority’s related Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) and Secure Open Standards of Communication—represent a turning point for existing business models in in Europe. PSD2 and RTS open up ’ systems to third-party payments services providers (TPPs) for account information, payment initiation and confirmation of funds via an access interface such as application programming interfaces ().

    The final RTS published on 13 March 2018 specifies only the technical framework conditions and not interface standards. To help fill this gap, the Berlin Group—consisting of almost 40 banks, associations and PSPs from across the EU—has defined a common API framework called &;NextGenPSD2&; (current version 1.1) for the use cases specified in PSD2.

    The major impacts in this context include:

    Payment initiation opens up: For payment initiation, the NextGenPSD2 framework offers, amongst others, SEPA Payments (SCTInst) as a payment instrument. The combination of PSD2 and SCTInst has huge potential to disrupt existing business models, depending on the level of API standardization and penetration of SCTinst in the EU.

    Impacts on the cards business: TPPs such as merchants, giants and PSPs could use the PSD2 APIs to make instant payments directly from customer accounts to the TPP bank account, bypassing card schemes and fees.

    Frictionless instant payments with PSD2: Customer experience is key in payments. Friction and slowness can reduce acceptance of the payment instrument on both the customer and merchant sides, leading to higher cancellation rates in eCommerce checkout processes and longer queues in the store.

    But there are issues with SCA—PSD2 APIs require banks to perform SCA on every transaction. This could lead to friction in the user experience at the point of sale (POS) and in eCommerce. PSD2 provides a convenient way to solve the issue of SCA through inherence and biometrics-based SCA methods. As innovation in this area continues, there will be a huge push towards creating RTS-compliant biometrics authentication methods.

    How banks can innovate

    TPPs such as tech giants and fintechs are not the only ones that could profit from PSD2 and instant payments—banks could also play an important role. Access to accounts and instant payments become commodity services with low or almost no margin for banks. New revenue opportunities will be in the value-added services and the platform ecosystems around these commodity services. “Going beyond PSD2” will include opportunities to monetize additional data and services combined with instant payments.

    Read my complete article at InstaPay for more insights and share your views.

    The post Will PSD2 APIs and instant payments change the game in European payments? appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.

    Accenture Banking Blog

     
  • user 12:18 am on February 15, 2018 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , game, Holden, , , Lindsay,   

    PFM App Long Game CEO Lindsay Holden Joins Bank Innovation 2018 

    EXCLUSIVE – , co-founder &; CEO of personal finance app , has joined the speaker faculty for . Bank Innovation 2018 will take place March 5-6 in San Francisco. Based in San Francisco and not yet two years old, Long Game uses gamification tactics to help users save money by rewarding [&;]
    Bank Innovation

     
  • user 8:53 am on November 28, 2017 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , game, ,   

    Banks Up Their Game On Digital, But Is It Enough? 

    know they have to move to , but are they doing ? Legacy systems are a persistent problem.
    Financial Technology

     
  • user 2:10 am on June 6, 2016 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , game, , ,   

    Fintech is playing the long game 

    chess Our team has been actively investing in for the past two years. In addition to reading pitches from hundreds of companies and meeting with dozens, half of our team has worked in the finance sector in previous careers. SparkLabs Global decided to create an easy to read overview for others to get up to speed on how innovation and will disrupt the financial sector. Read More


    fintech techcrunch

     
c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
shift + esc
cancel
Close Bitnami banner
Bitnami