Open payments platform Spreedly has expanded its partnership with payments company FlexPay.
The new collaboration, announced Wednesday (June 26), is designed to recover failed transactions and eliminate involuntary churn for subscription customers.
With this expansion, FlexPay will offer Spreedly customers its Advanced Vault, a solution designed to increase transaction success rates, reduce the overall cost of managing payment vaults, and improve the end customers’ experience.
“We work closely with our subscription customers to employ new financial metrics better to connect the results of retention initiatives to profitability,” said Charles Weiss, vice president of engineering at FlexPay. “Part of that story is the long-standing relationship with Spreedly that drives more value for our customers by taking away much of the integration complexity found in most payment stacks.”
Daniel Scagnelli, Spreedly’s senior vice president of client services, added: “Partnering with other innovative payments technology providers like FlexPay further increases the value we can bring to merchants globally. There is powerful alignment in our vision to unlock choice among PSPs, fraud tools, and other innovative payment services to improve customer experience, lower churn, and improve lifetime value.”
As PYMNTS reporting and research has shown, failed payments are a continual challenge for merchants. For example, “Fraud Management, False Declines and Improved Profitability,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Nuvei collaboration, found that 11% of transactions processed by the average eCommerce firm failed in the past year.
However, “few merchants have a clear understanding of the underlying causes,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “In fact, over 80% cite difficulty in pinpointing the causes of failed payments as a major challenge, with nearly 64% ranking it as their top challenge.”
Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke late last month with Peter Doughterty, Spreedly’s president, who said a steady diet of data and a willingness to shift when necessary will be the keys to success amid a shift in consumer spending patterns.
“As a savvy business operator, flexibility to make pivots is super important to run a great business,” Dougherty said. “Having access to data to make those decisions, but also having the flexibility to pivot and bring new products to market is key.”
The regulatory framework should not prevent banks from providing innovative and competitive products and services, Federal Reserve Gov. Michelle W. Bowman said Monday (Feb. 17).
Speaking at the American Bankers Association’s Conference for Community Bankers in Phoenix, Bowman said that while the framework must promote safety and soundness in the banking system, it should not impede banks’ operations.
“Our work to maintain an effective framework is never really complete,” Bowman said in a speech to be delivered at the event. “Just as complacency can be fatal to the business of a bank, complacency can also prevent regulators from meeting their statutory obligation to promote a safe and sound banking system that enables banks to serve their customers effectively and efficiently.”
In terms of bank supervision, Bowman said supervisory ratings have led to a de-prioritization of core financial risks. Pointing to a Fed report that said most large financial institutions met supervisory expectations with respect to capital and liquidity but only one-third had satisfactory ratings across all relevant ratings components, Bowman said this raised a question about whether non-core and non-financial risks had been over-emphasized.
When it comes to bank applications, Bowman said the process may have created impediments that have led to a current lack of new bank formation. She added that regulators could improve the process by developing specialized expertise, streamlining the application process and improving transparency.
In the case of mergers and acquisitions, Bowman said “the purgatory of a long application process” could be remedied by updating application forms to include all the information that is needed and by adhering to fixed approval timelines.
Addressing regulation, Bowman said that the body of regulations applied to banks has grown dramatically since the 2008 financial crises and that some of those regulations may be outdated, unnecessary and overly burdensome.
“The banking system can be an engine of economic growth and opportunity, particularly when it is supported by a bank regulatory framework that is rational and well-maintained,” Bowman said. “The work of rationalizing and maintaining this system is an ongoing cycle. While my remarks today have touched on a wide range of issues that require rationalization and ‘maintenance,’ this is by no means an exhaustive list.”