From PayPal to Venmo, gift cards to wire transfers, clicking to tapping — the ways that consumers can now complete their purchases is almost as varied as the products that they’re buying. That’s great if you’re the one doing the shopping, but it’s a bit more daunting when you’re the seller, trying to keep up with demand from customers who expect to be able to pay how and when they want.
It doesn’t matter if the business is a small-batch candlemaker or a multinational corporation. To meet their customers’ needs and compete in today’s economy, businesses need underlying payment infrastructure that’s secure, flexible, and customizable.
They can attempt to develop it in-house, a bold ambition considering how quickly the market is evolving, or they can rely on the open payment platforms already boosting the fintech space. Whatever they choose, the stakes are high, according to Andre Machicao, Senior Vice President for Visa Acceptance Solutions, an open payment platform that allows for sell anywhere, pay anywhere capabilities.
“The difference between a great and simple payment experience and a complex one can mean the difference of whether or not that customer’s going to return,” Machicao says.
Why plug-and-play is pivotal
Gone are the days when accepting cash and credit covered all your bases.
“It used to be that payments were a very discreet step in a very linear process of transacting between the consumer and the merchant, and that’s really no longer the case,” Machicao explains. “Payments are much more now an integral part of this end-to-end commerce experience. And at the center of that, it’s really the consumers that are driving that change.”
Nowadays, customers expect you to accept a $10 bill as seamlessly as you do a traditional card, or a mobile wallet that relies on Apple Pay, or even to be able to pay using an installment plan or autopay. And as soon as the public migrates to a new method, you need to be prepared to ensure the smoothest customer experience.
However, the ideal payments platform shouldn’t just be nimble enough for those sellers to keep up with changing consumer behavior. It should also maximize approval rates, minimize fraud, and improve your market share, all while being hyper-secure. “A payment information breach can be tantamount to a natural disaster for a business,” Machicao says.
Accomplishing such a feat can be difficult to do in-house.
The benefits of a truly open platform
Instead of building their own payment solutions, sellers, software vendors and financial institutions can turn to open payment platforms that offer a cheaper, less burdensome, more secure alternative that gets them faster to market.
Consider the Visa Acceptance Platform, the underlying technology for Visa Acceptance Solutions that aggregates all of the payment services you need, available in a modular fashion to configure and use only what you need. “We’ve also incorporated access to a broad ecosystem of ISV and tech partner services to help our customers really rapidly unlock new capabilities,” Machicao says.
To clarify the difference between an open platform and one that’s semi-open or closed, Machicao draws a comparison between Legos and a board game. With Legos, you can “assemble really whatever you want and have it service the needs that are tailored to your specific design.” Meanwhile, a board game is limited by “very specific pieces, and you can only play it one way with the provided rules.”
With an open platform, the system automates, mobilizes, and simplifies the connection between sellers, independent software vendors, and acquirers and processors. That functionality is accomplished through the Visa Acceptance Platform products, which help to accept payment digitally, in-person and manage compliance everywhere in between.
Built on a network that can handle 5,300-plus transactions per second — over 5.8 billion a year — the Visa Acceptance Platform is exactly what a payment solution should be: fully customizable for any sector and for any business, whether it’s a scrappy start-up clawing its way through a cut-throat industry, or an established, laid-back firm maintaining its steady growth in a stable market. To offer fully bespoke services, it relies on insight from more than half a million customers, including leading global retailers, food delivery businesses, travel, and transit sellers.
For these reasons, the Visa Acceptance Platform is essential for any business hoping to expand its footprint. “In theory, the options are limitless, especially when you talk about a global merchant who’s servicing clients in multiple geographies,” Machicao says.
Staying ahead of the payments curve
In many ways, joining the digital economy has never been easier. With a great idea, captivating imagery, and the right website template, you can be online and ready for business within a workday. But in other ways, being a reliable, trustworthy seller has never been more difficult.
With so many payment methods available to customers — and so much sensitive personal financial information tied to those methods — businesses have to ensure that they’re balancing flexibility and security. While it’s possible to develop those capabilities in-house, plug-and-play payment services like the ones available via the Visa Acceptance Platform are the more efficient option for any business that wants to enable new payment experiences before consumers even realize they want them.
“This platform really is designed to allow all of our clients and partners to keep pace with this industry change without having to be constrained by the fixed capacity of their IT budgets or their IT departments,” Machicao says.
CTA: Discover how the Visa Acceptance Platform is transforming payments acceptance.