Page 46 - Pay Magazine

digital money
Will Merchants Find their Voice in
PaymenTs
44
The payments industry says
it wants to give retailers more say when it comes to creating new payments products.
Find out why, and what
the results might be.
By Thad Rueter, Senior Editor
The call from the pay-
ment networks is clear: Merchants, we need you. For the last several months —including at last autumn’s Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas— executives from the four major
U.S. networks have been saying that as commerce becomes more omnichannel, and payments strive to keep pace, merchants will and should have a larger voice in creating and deploying new trans- actional technology. The call stems in no small part because retailers are sitting atop an increasing collection of digital information that describes in detail how their customers shop and buy.
“Merchants deserve a bigger seat at the payments table and we are working to ensure that is the case,”
says Jack Forestell, head of global merchant sales and solutions at Visa. He points to the payment network’s ve Innovation Centers— San Francisco, Miami, Dubai, Singapore and, as of late February, London—where merchants and technology experts can collaborate with Visa on payment programs
as an example of that commitment. Working together has gained im- portance, he adds, because by 2020, consumers will own nearly 21 billion Web-connected devices, all of them capable of payments
in an increasingly complex com- merce environment.
“One important emerging trend we see is that open payment platforms and global interoperability hold
the key to the future of commerce,” Forestell says. “Therefore, merchant
and acquiring-partner developers are key stakeholders we work hard to reach every day. They are on the front lines, the rst step in the ideation process, who help keep their brands’ consumer experience frictionless and engaging.”
Granted, such talk is easy, and retailers have heard it before. What is di erent this time—what makes the overtures from the payment networks seem genuine—centers on two points. First, merchants are acquiring mountains of data that through advanced software can better predict what consumers want to buy and when they want to buy it. That’s because consum- ers shop and purchase from a variety of devices as well as use those devices inside stores to compare products and prices.