Complexity is a hallmark of business, especially when it comes to money movement.
Funds flow between senders and receivers in the blink of an eye. When they move across borders and currencies, there are several touch points in the mix.
Ten executives told PYMNTS why simplicity is a new key performance indicator (KPI) as part of the latest “What’s Next in Payments Series.” The quest to simplify all manner of processes — cutting down clicks and manual tasks, as well as boosting security — is never-ending. And, as Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Separately, Karen Webster wrote that “complexity powers the status quo,” and to put it simply, the status quo is not acceptable these days.
Simplicity Builds Loyalty
Cody Banks, senior vice president of product enablement and growth at Velera, told PYMNTS: “Simple is the new loyalty.”
Make things simple to do or easy to find, and the customer will stick around because then it’s easy to do what they need to do.
That’s true for financial institutions, and especially for credit unions. CUs can take a page from the intuitive nature of eCommerce interactions, where users only need a few minutes or less to browse, find, click and buy. Paper statements and letters can be crystallized into emails or text messages, along with fraud alerts that keep members engaged with their credit union.
Velera, for its part, has been working with its credit union partners — through a business-in-a-box approach for small business clients — to simplify their operations.
“We’ve been successfully moving into an agile framework,” said Banks, who added that CUs must be mindful of delivering the right financial products and services across a variety of channels — from in-branch settings to mobile devices to ATMs to contact centers.
That loyalty is not confined to consumers.
Christina Wagner, senior vice president of GTM for Automated Finance at FIS, told PYMNTS that simplifying commercial transactions also drives loyalty, in this case between buyers and suppliers.
For a long time, B2B payments were labyrinthine processes, characterized by multistep workflows, layers of approval and inevitable delays, she said.
“Designing applications that not only simplify processes for financial professionals but also offer intuitive, seamless interfaces for users who may not be tech experts is crucial,” she said.
Rethinking Business Models, End to End
Businesses across sectors are prioritizing agile and frictionless experiences, transforming legacy processes and adopting approaches that position the office of the CFO as a growth catalyst rather than a back-office function. Improving communications, data flows and payments between enterprises can make high transaction volumes and international payments speedier and more efficient.
By embedding automation and artificial intelligence into core financial processes, FIS envisions a finance function that is more adaptable, productive and aligned with broader corporate goals.
“We have to rethink everything about how we operate, and not just how we measure the operation,” Wagner said.
Modernizing B2B….
Boost Payment Solutions Chief of Staff Sam Silver said the challenge of simplifying B2B reconciliations becomes clear when examining virtual card payments, which exemplify the digital transformation paradox.
“You’d think virtual cards simplify things, but suppliers may receive thousands of transactions monthly, each coming in dozens of different formats,” he said. “These suppliers have to manually process each virtual card payment — a surprisingly labor-intensive task,” with up to 15 people potentially handling a single invoice.
Simplicity has become a performance metric at Boost, Silver said. Traditionally, companies focused on performance indicators such as revenue, transaction volume and profitability.
However, the scope of KPIs is now broader. Looking ahead, Boost is expanding its offerings with a new cross-border payment product aimed at reducing fees and a payments-as-a-service model that allows clients to use Boost’s processing engine independently.
“Simplicity is now a KPI because it directly affects the customer experience — from onboarding to transaction processing and customer support,” he said.
Boost measures this simplicity by tracking customer interactions and technological innovations.
“It’s not just about whether we hit a revenue target but whether our processes make life easier for our clients,” he said. “That, in turn, impacts customer satisfaction and loyalty, which ultimately drives revenue.”
The company’s approach to innovation remains grounded in direct customer feedback. Boost is committed to “listening to problems and actually building solutions to those problems,” Silver said.
…Away From the Paper Check
Finexio Chief Strategy Officer Chris Wyatt said the B2B landscape is ripe for transformation, as at least half of B2B payments are still paper-based and reliant on checks. Solutions such as Finexio’s accounts payable payments-as-a-service model help tackle those back-office complexities. By automating the payment process, businesses can shorten their payment cycles, a key factor in maintaining healthy vendor relationships.
No matter whether the interaction is consumer-facing or commercial, security is paramount. Banks often get caught in the middle, trying to defend themselves and their customers.
Featurespace founder David Excell told PYMNTS that fraudsters are growing ever more sophisticated as they attack financial institutions.
The challenge for banks is twofold. They want (and need) to offer end customers a seamless experience. While simplicity is the end goal, some individuals would like complexity and even friction when it comes to thwarting fraudsters. They’re comfortable with banks reaching out if they spot anomalous behavior to make sure transactions will proceed according to the customers’ wishes.
The banks need some help in simplifying the complexities of battling criminals. Featurespace’s ARIC platform uses adaptive behavioral analytics to analyze customer behavioral data in a cloud-based environment. This offloads some of the technical heavy lifting.
Transforming Entire Verticals
Addressing complexity can transform entire industries, said some of the executives we surveyed.
CellPoint Digital CEO Kristian Gjerding provided the example of the travel industry, which is undergoing a makeover through digital innovation.
One of the primary pain points for travelers is a fractured, cumbersome user experience, in which consumers frequently face issues, such as losing seat reservations or encountering checkout errors, he said.
“It’s having a complex and broken user experience in trying to complete the purchase,” he said, noting the frustrations travelers often encounter with interrupted transactions, fluctuating prices and limited payment options.
The complexity of travel payments underscores the need for simplicity, a KPI that Gjerding said believes is essential for CellPoint Digital’s own clients’ success. With AI and machine learning advances, the payments industry can deliver this simplicity. AI helps break down silos that hinder information flow and instead manage multiple services in a unified environment.
Banyan Chief Product Officer Vish Shastry told PYMNTS that data simplification — through receipt-level insights —can make a real difference within retail.
For merchants, data is a crown jewel, one they wish to harness for consumer engagement without sacrificing control. Banyan addresses this by offering merchants the ability to control data access at the item level, dictating exactly which pieces of data are shared and with whom, Shastry said. This dual approach of normalizing and governing data enables companies to simplify operations while adhering to strict security and privacy standards. One of Banyan’s contributions to the drive for data is its embedded loyalty program capability.
Simplicity Makes Global Expansion Easier
With additional insight into how abstracting away complexity can help merchants as they tap into international markets, Bob Legters, senior vice president of product at Paysafe, said that the know your customer (KYC) and enhanced due diligence (EDD) required on transactions done across borders means that “consumers just don’t stick around for the extra clicks and the extra requirements that are there.”
Paysafe helps remove those added steps by using partnerships to engage the customers in a “one bite at a time” fashion to keep them informed about what’s going on with transactions and why there may be additional friction during a transaction, he said. Advanced data and analytics can identify individuals based on devices, frequency of logins and other salient data points.
Transforming the Transactions
The drive to simplify can also help change the very ways in which we transact.
Splitit’s Head of Client Success John Beisner said that linking the appeal of paying over time with one of the most universal payment methods out there — credit cards — can help merchants and banks improve the checkout experience and prompt consumers to use payment methods that are familiar and convenient.
For merchants, Splitit “fits right into the existing payment flow,” and the card processing that goes on in the background rather than taking the customer out of the flow or collecting additional data, he said.
Separately, Ingo Payments CEO Drew Edwards said money movement systems have to be built with checks and balances, along with a healthy respect for rules.
“Sometimes making it simple and making it look simple doesn’t mean you did it right,” he said. “Later you’ll pay the price for improper simplicity.”
Ingo’s enterprise clients recognize the power of digital and instant payments and how a payment can lead to the creation of accounts, which in turn become the basis for an ecosystem, he said.
To get there, Ingo Payments has built a customer engagement platform that bridges the gap between paper checks and digital payments.
As Edwards told PYMNTS in a comment that could be the overarching theme of this WNIP series itself: “If we can achieve simplicity, elegantly, in a way that works, that’s the magic.”
