In order to address the topic of payment innovation, Laurent Nizri, the founder of the Paris Fintech Forum and CEO of Alteir Consulting, gathered an impressive panel composed of international experts. Susanne Steidl (CPO, Wirecard), Jack Zhang (CEO, Airwallex), Marc-Alexander Christ (Founder, SumUp) and Jason Gardner (CEO, Marqeta) shared their vision on the future of the payment industry.

The conversation started with Laurent Nizri stating that Paypal used to be the best Fintech company and that it rapidly met success thanks to its innovative digital payment solution. "Then, every company wanted to become the next Paypal," he added.

The experts then all described their respective company. Susanne Steidl highlighted that Wirecard was about accepting and making payments, facilitating the lives of both customers and merchants: "most of you have actually used the Wirecard system without even noticing it. We serve the merchants but the consumers are the ones who are at the end of the chain". Jason Gardner then explained what the Marqeta open API platform was all about, operating in North America, with services launched last year in Europe and the plans to expand to Asia in 2020. "We focus on on-demand delivery, e-commerce, etc, and aim at bringing customers on a journey," added the CEO. The founder of SumUp, Marc-Alexander Christ, presented his card payment solutions dedicated to small merchants, with a presence in 31 countries and with the main mission to bring card payment to the masses: "100% of the population should accept these types of payments". Finally, Jack Zhang shared his company's vision: build a cross border financial institution, while creating accelerated global growth. He said: "Airwallex, is the new way to create bank accounts globally, access interbank exchange rates, and send funds to more than 130 countries. The ambition is to bring offline banking products online, in a unified way".

In the payment industry where many aim at creating a seamless world, Point of Sales (POS) are still growing nicely, with a 12-15% growth per year, as explained by the founder of SumUp. He also sees a lot of potential in this specific field, with the goal to keep connecting merchants and end-users, to bring even more excitement: "it means a much better access to data compared to other players".  At Wirecard, the experts have experienced linking payments to printers, because as said by the company's CPO: "the most important data when you pay…is what you bought!". The topic of inclusion was also addressed with Jason Gardner underlining that in Vietnam only 7% of the population has a bank account, while only 3% has a credit card: "we need to bring them into the ecosystem and innovate at the POS. The infrastructure is already here and available".

Then, the experts discussed the entire user journey, end to end, which aims at easing the life of the customer. "Through technology, we have the potential to change the way we live and work," said Susanne Steidl, when Jack Zhang explained that "customer experience could be improved with a programmatic money flow and instant money movement. Companies now think beyond payment and focus on customer journey".

Regulation was also on the agenda of the panel discussion. According to Marc-Alexander Christ, standards should even be higher to gather high standard data and therefore provide better services and products. Jack Zhang highlighted that even though we have seen a lot of regulation around data and privacy lately, the actual regulation most of the time depends on the country, while these should still allow companies to scale. More specifically, the experts also discussed the PSD2 directive which is to redefine the world of payment and banking more generally. According to Jason Gardner, in today's digital world, "the movement of data is essential. Moreover, data represents a competitive advantage for the companies and will therefore benefit the end customers". Susanne Steidl then underlined that fact that PSD2 doesn't go far enough, as money is not moved in real-time, usually taking up to 10 seconds: "the regulation is a good start, yet it needs to be adapted". Marc-Alexander Christ agreed: "PSD2 is a step in the right direction and allows us to enter the future of payment".

 

Alexandre Keilmann

Photo: Steven Reti