CardinalCommerce: 2021 Was the Year of Connecting

Tackling the false declines that plague the payments industry while preventing fraud requires connecting the dots between data, decision making, and shared responsibility, says Tim Sherwin, co-founder and CEO of CardinalCommerce. Read his thoughts in the PYMNTS eBook, “In a Word: 50 Thought Leaders Sum Up 2021.”

The word that best describes what has been important to me and to the Cardinal team in 2021 is connecting.

We are trying to move the ecosystem to a place where merchants and issuers are not making decisions in silos and understand that the merchant’s customer is the issuer’s cardholder. There’s a very deep connection there. Issuers know a lot about their cardholders and merchants know a lot about their buyers — and when they connect to share information, that’s where the magic happens.

As an industry, we’ve also been focused on connecting the dots — using machine learning and artificial intelligence to use all of that rich transaction data to help issuers and merchants identify which are the good orders and which are coming from the bad guys. At Cardinal, since we support both sides of the transaction, we connect the data from the billions of transactions we see to identify trends and anomalies — to keep false declines from happening on the one hand, and to spot fraud on the other.

Creating a connected environment through data, decision-making and shared responsibility is the only way we’re going to get where we all want to go: driving approvals with fewer false declines, less fraud and a better consumer experience. Because of our familiarity with the payments space, we see how often some issuers challenge, what can trigger a challenge, how long authentication can take and how often it’s frictionless. And merchants can write rules to address these factors. We all have to work together — merchants, issuers, gateways, processors and other service providers. We all have a stake in this, and we’re all working toward the same goal — to let consumers buy what they want, when they want, from the merchant they want, using the payment method they choose.

Staying connected has been really important to me during this pandemic — to connect and collaborate on fighting fraud as well as connecting with colleagues personally. We’ve learned a lot more during this second year of the pandemic that we need to make an effort with our connections. We need to keep connected as a team, maintain those emotional connections with both our teammates and with our customers and partners. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, we were all very empathetic toward one another, as we were all in the same situation, and I hope that continues. When we’re connected as we have been — not seeing each other in person, but virtually — we’ve really been making that extra effort, and I don’t think we’ve missed a beat. We need to continue that sense of urgency for being connected with the people who matter in our world of payments.

As we all know, there really isn’t a silver bullet to solve all the issues in the payment ecosystem, but when we connect and all work together, we’re going to get closer to a solution. I’m looking forward to connecting again with a lot of you soon in person, after too long of a break.