Page 12 - Pay Magazine s2014

TrISTAN rOffey
Vice President, Products & Business Development, Blackhawk Network Canada
companies & people
Smartest People in Payments
10
When most kids are dream- ing of being an astronaut, athlete or doctor when they grow up, “I was probably one of the few dreaming about prepaid cards,” laughs Tristan Ro ey.
The truth is, like most people
in the industry, Ro ey “fell into prepaid” and it stuck. Now as vice president of products and business development for Black- hawk Network Canada, he sees plenty of opportunities to expand the Canadian prepaid market.
After launching two startups,
the Canadian native got his rst taste of prepaid leading the retail card services group for Canadian telecom TELUS. “Companies like Blackhawk o ered TELUS a retail footprint for prepaid products that extended beyond its own stores,” Ro ey says. Products like prepaid gaming were subscription-based and prepaid music cards could be purchased to buy songs on TELUS’s music Website. Blackhawk was one of TELUS’s largest distribution part- ners and he joined the company
in 2008.
“The move to Blackhawk was a bit of a risk. I had established a good career trajectory and loved what I was doing at TELUS. At the time, Blackhawk was still a smaller com- pany, but the vision for the com- pany, the people and culture were big draws, and it was an opportu- nity I couldn’t pass up,” he says.
Ro ey’s colleagues champion his keen understanding of the industry,
consumers and clients, which he attributes to listening to clients and spending an “exorbitant amount” of time reading reports, trade publications, the news and Black- hawk’s own consumer research.
“All of those things combined have given me an appreciation for and understanding of how the market and customer needs are evolving,” he says. “People today are always connected. They want access to everything yesterday; they want more personalized service; they’re more value conscious with their purchasing decisions; and they’re more socially aware of the busi- nesses they work with. There is so much choice out there for consum- ers that businesses that do not react quickly to these changes will be left behind.”
Simplest Is Best
Ro ey admits that it’s not always the obvious “home run” idea that is most important to customers. A “process tweak” to a Blackhawk product, which Ro ey adapted for the Canadian market, put more online self-service tools in the customers’ hands. The modi cation only took a few months to complete, but it ended up having an enormous impact on the customer experience and the business, he says. Bene ts included a spike in registration rates, a drop in registration aban- donment, a decrease in call center usage, and overall improvement in customer and retailer satisfaction.
“Some of the best ideas are the simplest ones,” he says.
the Best idea in payments
“Account aggregation services like Yodlee, accessible to third parties like Mint.com through APIs. They opened up the walled garden that was personal nance and are now used by many ntech companies.”
A key part of Ro ey’s work is
done outside of Blackhawk as an advocate for the relatively young Canadian prepaid industry. Cana- da’s open-loop market saw CA$3.1 billion (US$2.4 billion) in total card loads in 2015, according to a 2016 market-sizing report by Mercator Advisory Group on behalf of the Canadian Prepaid Providers Orga- nization. To help spur further growth, Ro ey devotes much of his time to meeting with policymakers and writing letters to educate them about the products and businesses they’re trying to regulate. “Cana- dian regulators are interested in your point of view,” he says.
As for new, innovative products Ro ey and Blackhawk are working on now, mum’s the word, but
“there are a number of industries
in Canada that could bene t immensely from Blackhawk’s third- party retail network—some in more unconventional ways,” he hints.
And when he’s not working, he’s spending his free time with his wife, logging unimaginable miles on his bicycle or renovating their 100-year-old house.