BNP Paribas and 321founded Launch Payment Management Tool Panto

French banking group BNP Paribas has created a FinTech aimed at European eCommerce players.

Dubbed “Panto” and launching with the help of 321founded, the offering gives marketplaces “a dedicated payment management solution that guarantees smooth and secure transactions,” the companies said in a news release provided to PYMNTS on Wednesday (Oct. 18).

According to the release, Panto offers marketplaces a number of payment functionalities, including payment acceptance and “access to multiple payment methods, adapted to each market.”

There are also cash out features like automatic redistribution of payments between third-party merchants and the marketplace, with instant or standard transfers.

Finally, Panto provides management features like “automated onboarding of third-party vendors from an in-house know your customer (KYC) process and global fraud management, powered by AI,” the release said.

Set to debut in the first half of next year, Panto will initially target business-to-consumer eCommerce players in Europe, particularly the “leading marketplaces that are BNP Paribas customers,” the release said.

Speaking with PYMNTS earlier this year, Link Money CEO Eric Shoykhet said the cost of payment acceptance is the main focus for merchants.

“Enterprises want to drive these costs down,” PYMNTS wrote. “Interchange rates have been rising, which makes card transactions more expensive; alternative payment methods may be attractive to consumers, but they cost merchants money. It all eats into the bottom line.”

As that report argued, the emphasis on cost-cutting has gained urgency in a macro environment where top-line growth is stagnating amid macro headwinds and inflation.

Merchants need to “shift their narrative” when it comes to payments overall, Shoykhet said.

It’s no longer a good strategy to “have every payment method in the checkout cart and give customers all the optionality for whatever they want,” he said.

Many merchants, prior to recent macroeconomic pressures, may have just chosen to pay whatever costs would be facing them to ensure a customer’s preferences were met, that transactions wouldn’t fail and that they’d close the sale.

“Now the mentality has shifted to ‘how do we actually optimize the cost of payments and find cheaper alternatives if they exist?’” said Shoyket.

Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence finds that eCommerce merchants will need to ease some common pain points for consumers to keep them buying. Twenty-seven percent of consumers pointed to delivery delays as a pain point, while 24% cited high shipping costs as issues they faced with online purchases.