PCM Volume 3 - Issue 8: Payments in Motion by PCN Magazine

Vol 3. Issue 8 | August 2017

YOUR GATEWAY TO THE WORLD OF PAYMENTS

PAYMENTS IN MOTION How data is fuelling the future of payments

ACADEMY

EXPAND YOUR FINTECH KNOWLEDGE FOR A BETTER UNDSTANDING OF THE FINTECH WORLD

www.payment.jobs www.academy.teampcn.com

Contents STORIES 4

Artificial intelligence is our past, present and future

Establishing a culture of listening through payments technology

Shifting perspectives through Data & Analytics

The power of Data Science in the Payments Industry

Start-up Spotlight: NORTHSTAR

amir@teampcn.com https://nl.linkedin.com/in/amir-abdin-21365683

The importance of data in the evolving payments ecosystem

Transforming the POS experience

Aligning the physical and digital domains

Setting new standards in the world of payments

Hot Jobs

Amir Abdin Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Duc Dang Production Editor & Head of Creative duc@teampcn.com

Industry Events Calendar

https://nl.linkedin.com/in/ducdanghh

THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS PCM is designed by Duc Dang, Payments & Cards Network. Art and photos © Payments & Cards Network, picjumbo.com, Flickr.com and Shutterstock.com, excluding advertisments and company logos. PCM™ is property of Payments & Cards Network, Herengracht 576, 2nd Fl., 1017 CJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. All material contained within PCM is the property of Payments & Cards Network. All other product and service names may be trademarks of their respective companies. ©2017 Payments & Cards Network. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any kind is strictly prohibited without express prior written consent of Payments & Cards Network. ADVERTISING INFORMATION For details, please contact amir@teampcn.com

Thought Leaders Corner

Artificial intelligence is our past, present and future by Roberto Valerio

rtificial intelligence (AI) is the current buzzword of business. Computer software is helping us choose our films and music, dealing with our customer service enquiries, and improving our healthcare1. It is also helping fraud managers across the world to spot and stop fraudsters, keeping us safe online. Concepts of artificial intelligence have existed for hundreds of years2. More recently, mathematics and engineering have combined to produce algorithmically-driven probability-based systems that can perform pre-defined tasks. The advent of today’s digital technologies has opened infinite possibilities and fostered tremendous progress in the theories and capabilities behind these algorithms. Essentially what we mean when we refer to artificial intelligence is the ability of a machine to solve tasks. The ultimate goal is often seen as mimicking human intellect as closely as possible, but the reality is that we are seeking automated solutions that make our lives easier. In modern fraud fighting, machine learning is the essential reasoning system that enables fraud managers to track and respond to the rising threats faced around the world. More of us now transact online, which means greater potential rewards for fraudsters. But all of us leave a trace online, in everything we do, generating huge amounts of data. Using “stream processing”, we can constantly ingest huge streams of data, which enables faster reactions to emerging threats – a significant enhancement on rule-based fraud systems that process data in batches. AI learns from this data, meaning that businesses can address 1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2017/05/16/see-how-artificial-intelligence-can-improve-medical-diagnosis-and-healthcare/#1bb649e86223 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/12/30/a-very-short-history-of-artificial-intelligence-ai/#74ab649a6fba

their specific fraud problem rather than requiring expensive custom-built solutions that drain resources. More data also means we are beginning to understand how fraud itself works, which means we can get ahead of it. Let’s look at a specific fraud issue as an example. From June 2015 to June 2016, we saw an increase of up to 300% in account takeover attempts on our ecommerce customers. The relative ease with which fraudsters can access less secure accounts is causing a major headache for retailers. Fraudsters can buy login details from the black market, or steal them through malware or phishing attacks, or sometimes simply run through the most common passwords to crack a customer’s online shopping account. The challenge in tackling account takeovers is that they’re typically hard to detect. Fraudsters operate from within genuine and trustworthy user accounts, often with an impeccable purchasing history, but will make small changes to the account so they can obtain goods to sell for a profit. Importantly when it comes to AI, fraudsters will also change their tactics frequently, whether it’s going for lesser-known brands, smaller value items, or masking attempts via proxy services or numerous devices. In Europe, data privacy regulations are stricter than elsewhere, and will become more so after GDPR is implemented in 2018, but by anonymising the data, we can still identify fraudsters based on these ever-growing data pools. Artificial intelligence provides us with levels of information above and beyond individual fraud. The speed and scale at which AI can analyse and make connections between different data points enables us to identify orchestrated attempts of fraud; in other words, we can stop multiple attacks in parallel.

Roberto Valerio

CEO & Founder of Risk Ident Roberto Valerio is the founder and CEO of Risk Ident, a software development company specialising in fraud prevention and credit risk evaluation based on machine learning. He plays an active part within the fraud prevention community and is a member of the European Advisory Board at the Merchant Risk Council. He has also founded and worked within different management roles for software start-ups.

Many fraud attacks take place within a given timeframe and AI provides fraud managers with the capabilities to find similarities and connections with relative ease. Fraud departments can then find not just individual fraud, but use one fraud case as an anchor to find much more fraud information, protecting the business and customers from other risks. This interaction between man and machine is essential in building the best defence against fraud. Without support from each other, connections and cases can get missed or wrongly interpreted. Together, human intelligence (HI) and artificial intelligence (AI) learn more about their fraud problem.

Fraud prevention should work in similar fashion: the HI and AI elements should be blended seamlessly so that it is almost indistinguishable between the two; the priority is in reducing the risk for businesses. What could once only be imagined is becoming reality. The Turing Test has been passed (albeit subject to interpretation), and each day, huge volumes of data are processed by AI algorithms, creating greater accuracy as software becomes stronger. The journey is ongoing, but with constant advancements in the capabilities of AI the future is looking bright. The same cannot be said for fraudsters.

Unlike old anti-fraud systems, AI software adapts to changing data and fraud managers can label cases as they discover them. So, if the software incorrectly identifies something as fraud based on multiple risk factors, the human expert can say no, and the system learns. This means if new fraud trends began in the last week, companies can spot them quickly and act on them. Giving the system feedback enables it to absorb changes in patterns and provides stronger fraud defences. Tuning fraud on a consistent basis is particularly important, as different companies have a different risk appetite depending on the nature of their business. Economics drives every aspect of the commercial world and some businesses are more willing to accept risk if it means more custom. AI can help compute false positive rates if it makes economic sense. The purpose of anti-fraud engineering is not simply “to stop fraud”, it’s to limit damage to the company. Alan Turing’s “imitation game”, better known as the “Turing Test” is world famous for identifying the level at which a machine can be identified as intelligent. Turing proposed that in order for a machine to truly think, it must be able to answer questions in a way that is indistinguishable from that of a human.

Do you want to meet Risk Ident? Feel free to check their presence on upcoming events in 2017 here and arrange a meeting.

Risk Ident Risk Ident is a software company that offers world leading anti-fraud solutions to companies within the ecommerce, telecommunication and financial sectors - empowering fraud managers with intelligence and self-learning machine technology to provide stronger fraud prevention. The company is home to a team of skilled data scientists and software engineers with long-term experience in data analytics and machine learning. Risk Idents products are specifically tailored to comply with European data privacy regulations. www.riskident.com

3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27762088

MAXIMIZE YOUR DATA VALUE

THE LEADING SOURCE FOR DATA SCIENTISTS IN PAYMENTS

Thought Leaders Corner

Establishing a culture of listening through payments technology by Georgina Nelson

midst the noise of ‘big data’, how are merchants to distinguish the crucial information they need in order to understand and improve the customer experience? Can the customer feedback gap that seems to be growing ever wider, with merchants hearing from a tiny fraction of their customers, be addressed through point of sale technology? So much is changing in the retail and payment industries. While self-checkout capabilities have been available in the grocery sector for years, we’re now starting to see clothing retailers like Zara take advantage in a bid to reduce lines and wait times. And without question, mobile has created a fantastic opportunity to engage consumers throughout the shopping experience regardless of where they are located. While the focus is on the disruption for both merchants and consumers, the payments industry is equally challenged in keeping pace and driving change – and this brings opportunities. So, it may seem that the future of shopping is low touch and mobile, with traditional touch points becoming less relevant. We hear about security benefits, no checkout wait times, less friction, more sales. This all sounds very shiny and cool, but perhaps we need to take a step back and think about how else this might affect the customer experience. Less friction sounds great, but when that ‘friction’ includes a conversation between the customer and sales staff or servers, how can merchants replace that vital opportunity for customer engagement?

It’s a critical time for merchants to understand what drives their customers. It’s hard to go a day without learning about a new company with a disruption trying to woo them away. Aside from competition, an unhappy customer is one of any merchant’s biggest threats. Our own data indicates that, on average, two out of every ten customers have a negative in store experience; 96 percent of those shoppers will never complain and 91 percent will never return. If companies had the knowledge and insight about what kept customers happy, buying, and coming back, wouldn’t they act on it? Imagine if a merchant could gain instant feedback through a customer interaction that is so simple, 88% of customers will respond? Feedback that brings with it knowledge of the customer journey, along with actionable insights? This is where TruRating comes in. By capturing customer feedback in store at the point of payment, merchants can increase their bottom line by as much as 18 percent. Consider Crisp, a healthy, quick-serve restaurant. While undergoing a brand and menu refresh, Crisp also raised their prices. While naturally cautious on the impact of the change, they wanted to measure ROI by monitoring customer perceptions at the POS, before and after the changes, and observed customer satisfaction remained constant – in fact, customers rated prices as slightly cheaper after the brand refresh, even though their average total value of orders increased by $1. Meanwhile experience and product scores also trended upwards: a fantastic outcome for Crisp.

Thought Leaders Corner Georgina Nelson

Founder & CEO of TruRating Georgina began her career as a leveraged finance lawyer at Clifford Chance. Georgina then joined Europe’s largest consumers’ association, Which? where she was responsible for advising the EU and the UK government on their technology strategy, as well as advising internal teams on their online propositions. It was in this role where she identified a market need for mass, representative, reliable consumer ratings. She saw how this need could not only serve to improve the world of business but also be valuable to consumers alike. With this vision, she set about realizing the huge potential of TruRating by bringing together a wonderful team, exciting customers and partners in the payments industry with the ultimate objective to bring the truth back to ratings.

One better value, global sports retailer also used feedback at the POS to grow customer transactions. The company used a custom question to find out if customers were being offered a variety of options by staff, every time. When the procedure was followed, customers spent a whopping 46 percent more per transaction. Clearly, an opportunity to drive same store sales growth. This feedback loop can and should also transcend the current notion of the POS to encompass mobile and other checkout environments. For example, if you order your morning coffee via a large chain’s mobile app, as I sometimes do, you can probably swing in, pick it up and pop out without missing a beat. However, that’s not to say that my experience should go unnoticed or unchecked by the company. There’s a valuable opportunity for them to integrate feedback into the transaction by pushing a question to me. When it comes to the high street, this is one area where small independent stores and restaurants can actually outdo their larger counterparts, and is a big part of why some people prefer to “shop local” and go back to browsing traditional bookstores and vinyl record stores. There are lessons here that the bigger chains can build on - and fortunately there is now technology that makes it easy to capture that feedback

and gain actionable insights from customers, even as the same technology provides a low touch purchasing experience. This was part of my motivation for building TruRating in the first place. I believe that for a business, there is nothing so vital as listening to the people that pay you. Now, merchants looking at reinventing their POS have an opportunity to think bigger about how they use it. The payment experience no longer has to be purely about money changing hands – the technology now exists to position a payments system as the hub of communication for businesses and customers.

TruRating TruRating is the first mass point-of-payment consumer feedback system, providing accurate ratings from 88% of validated customers. By asking one anonymous question via the payment terminal, TruRating enables every customer to instantly feed back on an aspect of their experience. Businesses benefit from timely insight that links sentiment to basket data.

- NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER -

When successful anti-fraud risk manager, Edoardo Fiorentini is approached and asked to help find a way to carry out a fraud successfully, it is the beginning of a journey into the secretive world of e-commerce fraud with some astonishing outcomes.

Thought Leaders Corner

Shifting perspectives through Data & Analytics by Ana Assis Jesus

ata Science is an umbrella term for technologies and techniques that in some cases have already been around for decades, but which through maturing usability, increased computational resources, larger amount of data and more sophisticated algorithms are becoming easier and easier to use. A data scientist can turn these resources and the data available at a company into a set of tools for the business to make informed, science-based decisions which will in the end contribute to improving the overall performance of the company.

The rich diversity of data usage

Data Science in the FinTech world The data insight on payment authorization and card usage patterns lead us to better conversions; at the same time that pattern recognition and predictive analysis have been revolutionizing how Fraud Prevention works, making acting on new trends as fast and efficient as they change, instead of chasing behind.

Information can be gathered anywhere, there are processes which generate data that can be collected and processed, from the purely operational such as system log files, to payment and ad clickthrough data. In principle each data source provides an opportunity to improve decision making; whether it is used depends on the potential impact and the ease with which useful information can be distilled from it. And this can also bring another challenge on how to integrate the data collected in various parts of the organization.

Moreover, decisions are being made faster and smarter. It is not just about automation but also about optimization; using the insights extracted from data to challenge “gut-feeling” decisions and also discovering new possibilities that maybe wouldn’t be explored without.

Data driven organizations learn from their data and use it to optimize their processes, improving services at a higher speed keeping ahead of competitors. For Travix this means scalability and personalization; for instance, on the Fraud Prevention side we focus not only on stopping the risky/

Data Science is not only about collecting big amounts of data and “digging” but most important about pre-processing and cleaning. The cleaning stage is a very important one, even more since in the Payment market, not all merchants neither all Payment platforms use the same formats and data definitions, so it is very important to clean and transform these data into uniform batches for the desired analysis, making sure we draw the right conclusions from our data.

Thought Leaders Corner

Ana Assis Jesus Senior Data Scientist at Travix Ana Assis Jesus is the Senior Data Scientist at Travix and she has a broad background in statistical data analysis, from working on implementing databases, setting up basic analysis environments, data cleaning, basic statistical analysis and visualisation for building dashboards or reports, to statistical modelling, both in academia and in the industry.

suspicious transactions but also on facilitating the faster process of our valued customers. By having a data-driven culture, we are able to easily share data among the different departments of the organization and advancing the work on offering a personalized customer experience.

Data is a key enabler of the business and success of a company, therefore communication between all departments and great collaboration between Business and IT is crucial.

The outlook

Travix

The end goal is a continually learning and improving organization with rationalized decision-making processes based on continuous data collection and updating models. As a company, you need to be able to facilitate this, and should therefore be very agile and adaptive to change.

Travix is one of the leading global online travel agencies managing an extensive portfolio of travel-focused websites operating under the brand names CheapTickets, Vliegwinkel, BudgetAir, Flugladen and Vayama; providing both search and book capability for flight combinations worldwide on both legacy and low cost airlines.

A Data Science department is not a stand alone department.

Travix operates its five brands in more than 40 countries, employs over 550 people with more than 50 different nationalities worldwide.

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expert interview

The power of Data Science in the Payments Industry Daniel Linder is a data scientist at Adyen, the technology company reinventing payments for the global economy. After starting his career as a BioMedical Engineer and CEO at the start-up GreenOn, he moved on to become a data scientist in 2014, joining Adyen in 2016. Daniel works on building models to improve authorization rates of payments across the Adyen platform and consulting merchants in solving data problems. by Daniel Linder

uch like the other areas of finance, the payments i ndu s t r y can b e ne f it tremendously from adopting the latest techniques in data storage and analysis. To get an insight into practical use cases in the Payments & Fintech industry we interviewed Daniel Linder, Data Scientist at Adyen this month.

PCM: Why is Data Science needed? Daniel: There are a few reasons why data science is important for any organization. First of all, the amount of data that most organizations are dealing with and could leverage for their organizations is not scalable to analyze in a manual way. Data scientists have the ability to free up valuable resources by automating the known solutions and working on the unknown. For example, as the data increased at Adyen, querying one day of raw payments at Adyen took 5-6 minutes. As a result, we started using a customized version of big data streaming platform - Apache Spark and can now query 3 years of raw payment data in less than 3 minutes. Without changes like this, analyses of all of the analysts in the company slow down, leading to a big decrease in efficiency in the system as a whole.

PCM: How did the rise of Data Science influence the Payments & FinTech space? Daniel: More and more Payments and FinTech companies are using data science to solve a number of problems across the organization, for example uncovering insights around customer journeys, fraud prevention, corporate compliance, and overall service quality. Data science creates products that often become a differentiating factor in every field. Most of the best fraud prevention tools today use some form of artificial intelligence, many times leveraging expert knowledge in the payment industry. This combination of AI and expert knowledge is able to obtain much better results than any traditional tools. This combination is really where the future of the Payments and FinTech space is going, and you won’t be able to compete for very long without a strong data team.

PCM: How is Data influencing decision-making? Daniel: Frankly, any FinTech company without a data team is making decisions in the dark. This is not just for fraud detection, but also for questions such as: What markets should we enter? Should we block the payment as fraud

or route it through 3D Secure? Once the data is clean and visualized in front of you, the decision will be so much easier to make. At Adyen we have a very large reporting system that is constantly being improved, as we don’t only want to make good decisions internally, but also educate our merchants to make their own data driven strategic decisions.

PCM: How do companies make sure the Data is legit and can be used efficiently throughout the organisation? Daniel: Cleaning data is a skill that every data analyst and scientist must have, and it’s not just removing outliers, incorrect/null values etc. At Adyen we make sure we define metrics that when looked at together will paint a more accurate picture of what’s going on and have those available whenever anyone looks at the data. Every data scientist should always be skeptical of the data they’re looking at should try to leverage their technical skills and domain specific knowledge to really ask themselves “Do these numbers make sense?” Especially when the numbers seem too good to be true, many data scientists will allow their confirmation bias to blind them to the faultiness of the data. This

expert interview will unfortunately lead to incorrect decisions and a loss of time and money that could have been saved by looking at the data through a skeptical eye. We also do a Data Roadshow at Adyen where we send data scientists to other parts of the company every few months to look over how they’re using data and to come up with data driven solutions to make sure they’re using the correct data in the best way.

PCM: What purpose does Data serve in an organisation and on how many levels is the information used? Daniel: Data should be involved in as many decisions as possible throughout an organization. I think a data driven organization can really be seen by how many people in the company actually see the data. Often, companies will create data “silos” within the company, hiding the data from all but one or two teams, relying on them to make decisions and share their results in reports. When a company is really advanced, the data is spread throughout the company, allowing anyone to easily double check the work of another and many times look at the data in a different way. At Adyen data is really used from top to bottom. We have built dashboards for our account managers to break down all of the data on their merchants in real depth, which not only allows them to make smart decisions, but also frees up resources from the data team to work on the more advanced projects. Management uses other dashboards to review growth of merchants and markets, compliance for AML alerts, and marketing for understanding the effectiveness of a campaign.

PCM: As a service provider, how does Data help you stand out of your competition and what’s in it for Merchants? Daniel: Adyen has a true end-to-end platform, which allows us to have a full

overview of every part of a transaction, in all markets and channels. Old payment systems are a black box to merchants. With them, transactions are either approved or declined, and that’s the end of the story. We have developed a number of datadriven automated tools, which work in the background of each payment to drive authorization rates. One of these tools is RevenueAccelerate, which by analyzing data to increase authorization rates for our merchants lead to an average revenue increase of 1.43%. Since our platform is fully omnichannel, these insights across channels also help merchants offer a more unified experience to their shoppers. Next to the business benefits, having access to these insights also helps our merchants think data first when it comes to their payment and commercial strategy.

PCM: How will Data Science help shape the future of the industry and what developments are we going to expect in the future? Daniel: There are a lot of exciting things that will happen around risk management. In the near future ML risk systems are likely to be standard, and there will be many new data points when it comes to fraud preventions, such as identifying fraudsters by mouse movements on a webpage or scanning the dark web for breached card information. I also think that we can expect an influx of a lot of smaller players into the business focusing on one problem and doing it better than the big players by using data science solutions.

PCM: Any words of wisdom for aspiring Data Scientists or companies looking to branch out a Data Science department? Daniel: For budding data scientists I would say just start. I studied music,

biology, bio-medical engineering and fought in the special forces of the IDF. Later I worked as a Bio-Medical Engineer and as a CEO of a start-up, then moved to The Netherlands and decided to be a Data Scientist. I think my background makes me a better data scientist than if I had just studied computer science or something similar. The rest of our team is made up of Astrophysicists, Aerospace Engineers, Mechanical Engineers and Computer Scientists. Don’t worry that your background doesn’t “fit”. In the end, diverse backgrounds mean you have a more open approach to the same problem. For companies looking to branch out a Data Science department, remember that good data scientists can improve processes all over the company, not just in classic data science areas. Make sure your data scientists work on gaining as much domain knowledge as possible. A data scientist that doesn’t understand his domain can sometimes make great solutions to things that are technically difficult, but aren’t necessarily the most impactful. It’s also important to make sure your data scientists are merchant facing, as they can often be a key factor for opening up discussions in many merchant meetings that may lead to big decisions.

Adyen Adyen is the technology company reinventing payments for the global economy. The only provider of a modern end-to-end infrastructure connecting directly to Visa, Mastercard, and consumers’ globally preferred payment methods, Adyen delivers frictionless payments across online, mobile, and in-store. With offices all around the world, Adyen serves more than 4,500 businesses, including 8 of the 10 largest U.S. Internet companies. Customers include Facebook, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, L’Oreal and Burberry.

Spotlight You think you have what it takes to start a business in a super-hot market? PCM takes a close look at some of the most innovative and promising startup companies in the payment industry.

startup spotlight

Glyn Blaize, Founder & Director of Northstar Innovation Group

NORTHSTAR …SALES ALCHEMY?

or centuries people have sought to uncover the mysteries of Alchemy, a belief based on the premise that there are four basic elements in nature: air, fire, water and earth. Too often business and sales leaders have believed like Alchemy, the key elements to success are shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Practitioners of Alchemy mainly sought to turn lead into gold, a quest that has captured the imaginations of people for thousands of years. For organisations, the holy grail has been growth, profitability and ultimately an event. Like the Alchemist, everyone wants to be in control - when we are not in control we experience fear, anxiety and tension. For businesses control is an incredibly important commodity as a lack of control means a lack of growth, unengaged staff and ultimately a loss in profitability. Enter NORTHSTAR… NORTHSTAR is an application that puts control back where you need it most. Our innovative platform enables you to Map, Measure and Monitor the key elements of your business which are the drivers for success. Whether you are a trainee starting in a new role and wanting to know what to do next or a CEO needing a bird’s eye view of the performance of the business, NORTHSTAR provides a clear indicator of the health of the organisation through three modules.

Business Appraisal NORTHSTAR Business Appraisal enables you to gain an insight into the current state of the business. Using our assessment tool, we measure the health of the key pillars of your business providing a benchmarked score for each of these areas. The key benefit of the NORTHSTAR Business Appraisal is it allows you to make incremental gains, or in some cases quantum leaps, in the areas that are important to you. From ‘Leadership and People’ performance measurement through to ‘Systems and Infrastructure’ NORTHSTAR provides crystal clear indicators of the health and efficiency of the key factors important to your business.

People Analytics: Employee Appraisal Aggressive sales targets and employee development have not always walked hand in hand due to the perceived competing objectives of both these objectives. However, in the age when employer branding and staff engagement and retention are as important elements of business success as hitting sales targets, there is an unquestionable need to marry these elements. NORTHSTAR provides a platform for Directors and Managers to set aggressive sales goals; for employees

startup Spotlight

to feel in control of their own destiny; and organisations to simultaneously achieve strong sales growth while moving from a performance management driven approach to a performance development culture, which inevitably contributes to happier more productive staff. Whether you are a CEO, Manager or Sales Consultant NORTHSTAR will enable you to conduct agile appraisals and keep your team engaged with their individual targets and goals, aligning these to the vision of the organisation. Through incredibly clear and intuitive screens staff can see exactly where they are at and Managers can promptly employ suitable tactics in order to achieve greater success. NORTHSTAR is the perfect catalyst to data driven decision making.

Management Analytics It has been said that the best race car drivers are not necessarily those with the best dashboards but those who have the best feel for the road. With our Management Analytics module NORTHSTAR provides curated information that gives Manager and Director a great feel for what is going on across the business. Pulling data directly from your CRM, finance

and accounting system and other data sources, NORTHSTAR provides Managers with real time financial data and activity metrics that give them the edge. The holy grail is being able to influence what matters most and NORTHSTAR does this seamlessly providing key organisational insight so that decisions are no longer based on emotions but on fact. Curating the elements most valuable to your senior team NORTHSTAR displays variances, maps trends and provides a running commentary on the touch points that will affect your sales team most.

Why NORTHSTAR NORTHSTAR transforms businesses and sales teams. Enabling CEO’s and MD’s to quickly and efficiently turn strategy into action and allows all key stakeholders to ensure these elements that guarantee business success are being improved upon day in day out. With business ‘happening at the speed of light’ and competitive advantage being harder and harder to gain, NORTHSTAR gives control where it matters most. What excites me most about NORTHSTAR is the difference it is making to so many organisations… and we have only just begun.

About Glyn Blaize Glyn is a leader, motivator and creator of the ground-breaking application, NORTHSTAR. His people-led approach to business change started in 1999 when he was forced to retire from a successful rugby career due to injury. The experience of an elite team-orientated environment allowed Glyn to focus on the people element of businesses leading to him hold Director positions at a number of organisations. Perhaps a natural succession was founding Northstar Innovation Group. His experience within and outside the sales sector has allowed him to develop a platform that maps the mind of the entrepreneurs and sales teams and better enables businesses to recognise where they must adapt and improve in order to grow.

Payment Collective To get a more complete view on the all businesses in the payments ecosystem, in this rubric PCM showcases how merchants deal with payments and fintech challenges.

Kristen Morrow-Greven Director of Payments EMEA at Netlfix With 10+ years in payments and e-commerce, Kristen is an experienced strategist who focuses on customer-centric and results-oriented solutions. At Netflix, one of the largest recurring billing merchants in the world, she is primarily responsible for expanding the offering of consumer payment methods to help with member acquisition globally and implementing front- and backend optimizations for better performance.

Payment collective

The importance of data in the evolving payments ecosystem

n this month’s Payment Collective we interviewed Kristen Morrow-Greven, who is the Director of Payment EMEA at Netflix. She points out how data & analytics are creating value for organizatons and and customers alike. Moreover, Kristen shares some of her thoughts on the future of the payments landscape.

PCM: Tell us a bit more about yourself (background and what lead you to Payments & the Netflix specifically)? Kristen: I have been with Netflix since 2015, having joined just in time to help Netflix bring its internet television network to more than 130 new countries around the world. The timing could not have been better - it has been a remarkable challenge solving the puzzle of how to bring local payments to many new markets. As Netflix’s creative teams work to bring great stories from all over the world to people all over the world, the Global Payments team works to ensure potential members have a way to pay for their subscription. Prior to Netflix, I spent 8 years at PayPal where some of my notable projects included building the payment risk management infrastructure across EMEA and driving the migration from national direct debit schemes to SEPA Direct Debit. I also spent several years in tech consulting and payments / financial services regulatory innovation in both the United States and in Europe.

PCM: How important is data analytics when selecting a payments partner? Kristen: At Netflix, we generally prioritize a partner’s data capabilities over all other qualities, including cost. What is most critical for us is having a partner who provides key data elements during a transaction. Typically, Netflix creates its own analytical tools using external payment events data from partners merged with other internal data elements, so it is important to receive reliable and rich partner data to make our tools and analyses as robust as possible. Our Global Payments team relies primarily on our internal data analytics and tools, and our strongest payment partners are nimble with their own data and can provide additional insights in a timely manner. Within a few clicks in our internal tools, we can analyze payments data at the country-, issuing bankand even BIN-level, and when partners can match our agility, it allows us to move quickly and efficiently in building new optimizations. Combined with being able to understand our business objectives, data analytics capabilities are the driving factor behind our decision to partner.

PCM: What role does data play in your organisation when it comes to payments and how has it affected your organisation? Kristen: Netflix is a famously data-driven company, and payments is no exception. Data enters every discussion: measuring business performance, identifying opportunities or anomalies, designing and analyzing experiments, or making strategic decisions. There is no payments optimization where approval or conversion rates are not discussed — everything we do is measured. For testing new payment methods or optimizations, we prefer to run randomized A/B tests before rolling out changes. These tests may last a few days, weeks or months depending on the type of change being made, and to account for patterns in usage and traffic. Our 100 million strong member base allows us to obtain a sample size relatively quickly, and this allows for rapid iteration and multiple system experiments to be run sequentially for optimization. We monitor these tests across many performance metrics to evaluate whether to productize a feature. Data-driven decision making complements Netflix’s company culture well. We trust our employees to do what they think is best for Netflix, and we realize this by ensuring they have the power to make informed decisions. In turn, this freedom generates a sense of responsibility and self-discipline that we believe brings better results for Netflix. A recent post in our Tech blog summed it up well: when you have highly talented individuals who have lots of great ideas, it’s important to have a framework where any new idea can be developed and tested. This ensures that intuition alone does not drive decisions.

PCM: Taking a look at the payments landscape, what developments do you see in the future when it comes to data? Kristen: I expect to see analytics becoming more of a strategic product offering by innovative emerging payment companies. Some processing partners already offer very indepth insight tools, which enables them to invest in datadriven optimizations, executed in real-time with a simple user interface that merchants can control themselves. We see more vendors moving in this direction as merchants shop around for the best approval rates. Similarly, Netflix is testing ways to integrate data science into our payment engine. We have offline methods for optimizing payment processing and identifying fraud, but we want to

PAYMENT COLLECTIVE move the bulk of these processes online to drive more impact. Additionally, we are focusing on enhancing our machine learning tools which can apply intelligent logic to support transaction routing and market-specific retry logic in real-time with the goal of improving our approval rates. As the industry becomes more data-driven, I hope to see more data sharing for collective benefit across the ecosystem. Payments-savvy merchants have already realized benefits from transparency with other merchants. If partners would share data from acquirers, networks, and issuers with merchants, the customer experience will benefit the most.

PCM: How will these developments affect your payment operations? Kristen: As Netflix continues its global expansion, payment tools will likely get more complicated to support our growing network of processing partners and payment methods. As the number of different processing routes and configurations for a payment transaction increases, so will the amount of data and number of ways an event can improve or fail. It becomes ever more important to stay on top of critical metrics and ensure that we are constantly monitoring and testing for optimal performance. Additionally, expanding and integrating machine learning to our payments platform will bring us new opportunities to find and interpret patterns for optimization. As machine learning sends our vast amount of data through complex algorithms, it reframes our data which requires us to interpret the business impact and to find actionable insights for improving member acquisition and retention.

PCM: From a merchant PoV, what needs do you see coming up in terms of payments in the near future and what are you excited about most? Kristen: In recent years, the global payments ecosystem has been evolving rapidly, with the emergence of startups that are finding new ways to enable consumers to pay and incumbents racing to evolve their business models so as not to become irrelevant. As a merchant, we stand to benefit from the vast amount of financial products being offered in the payments space, and I am excited to see how this develops further, particularly in emerging markets. Furthermore, I see innovative approaches in detecting and authenticating fraud for e-commerce payments. Card network tools like CVV and AVS are dated and ineffective compared to behavioral analytics, device ID, and other tools. Merchants like us embrace the idea of moving fraud detection to the background of the customer experience, but we need collaborative efforts between banks, regulators, and likeminded merchants in order to affect change.

Netflix Netflix is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading internet television network with 104 million members in over 190 countries enjoying more than 125 million hours of TV shows and movies per day, including original series, documentaries and feature films. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internetconnected screen.

Money 20/20 EU Executive Interviews During Money 20/20 Europe in Copenhagen we had the chance to talk to high level executive and find out more about their innovative fintech and payments organizations.

M20/20 Special

Transforming the POS experience

t Money 20/20 Europe in Copenhagen we conducted an interview with Nelson Holzner, CEO of AEVI, who told us how his path has led him to AEVI and why the company’s mission is excatly what he was looking for in the Payments & FinTech domain.

PCM: Tell us more about yourself. What is your story behind joining AEVI and what excites you so much about it? Nelson: I’ve been in the Fintech space for almost 10 years now. Before joining AEVI, I founded a company called Bill Pay that was focused on online payments with instalment solutions for e-commerce merchants. Back then, we always wanted to go from e-commerce to in-store solutions. Offline commerce is still far bigger than e-commerce and our merchants asked for omni-channel solutions. The challenge is, however, that it’s hard to get to the physical point of sale because it’s a very complex system as it currently stands. For the past few years I thought it would be great to build an app and leave it up to someone else to take me to the point of sale. When I came across AEVI, that was exactly the value proposition I was looking for, which is what attracted me most. I’m all about checkout optimisation and for Bill Pay I was just optimising checkouts at the point of sale in e-commerce, whereas now I’m looking after the checkout at the point of sale in the real world.

PCM: What do you hope to achieve in this position? Nelson: AEVI is a hidden gem in the Fintech scene. It’s a sizeable company as we already have a revenue of €80 million and have taken 1.2 billion transactions through our platform, but because we are a white-labelled solution our brand is not front and centre. This makes our first mission getting it out to

market and continuing to increase people’s awareness of AEVI. We created a whole new market through our open Marketplace app store for business applications at the point of sale. We are the pioneers in this field, developing the first device which could take payments through a smart point of sale tablet solution as well as apply innovative B2B apps directly at the point of sale, making it both consumer facing but with the backend functionality required to run a small business. Our value propositions are extremely powerful, and have been proven in the Australian market with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and right now it is all about developing our solution further and continuing to expand into new markets. We are now far beyond the proof of concept stage, and it’s time for us to take our solutions global. One of my key responsibilities is to enable the company to do just that.

PCM: What markets do you currently operate in and what are your expansion plans? Nelson: We have a very solid footprint in Australia and we want to continue expanding there. It’s very sizeable and working out very well, however, the growth potential is still exceptionally huge. In Europe, we also have a good chunk of business in various markets and are proud to serve large tier 1 retailers such as Tesco and Total, which establishes us with a very good customer base that I look forward to building upon further moving forward. The next area for expansion for us is the Americas, starting from the US market, which is very complex but also very interesting. Following that we will focus on adjacent markets where we have already developed some very interesting synergies and are currently having discussions with interested parties that are eager to do more at the point of sale. This is a natural trend and there are very few

M20/20 Special

Nelson Holzner CEO at AEVI Nelson Holzner is AEVI’s first ever CEO, having joined the company in May 2017, and oversees all AEVI’s business operations. Before joining AEVI, he served for 3 ½ years at private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, before founding his own online payments company BillPay, where he served as CEO for 7 years.

organisations that can do what we are doing across multiple platforms.

PCM: What are the three things you want people to know about AEVI? Nelson: First and foremost comes openness, which is our biggest value proposition and our global Marketplace is a poster for how open our solutions are. We invite any third-party developers to come up with great ideas about how they can transform the point of sale for the merchants and consumers, providing them with a platform to showcase their creations to some of the world’s leading merchant banks and acquirers. It’s a white-labelled solution, as we want to keep our customers brand in the focus of merchant’s/consumer’s attention, so that they can position themselves with an innovative solution at the point of sale. We are a Fintech supporting the big players in the market. Everybody wants to ride the app train, but most of the other players are in closed loops, so it’s hardware manufacturers or vendors who would like to keep that as an extra functionality in their family of hardware devices. Many of our customers typically have a family of devices from different vendors, and what they are looking for is to have apps across these devices, but nobody wants to explain to their sales force how to sell five different marketplace solutions. We want to connect as many devices as possible and be hardware agnostic. We see very interesting hardware devices with different price points, so our ultimate goal is to enable all those devices to interact with our Marketplace. The same philosophy of openness is in our payment gateway. We are agnostic and reduce complexity by connecting as many devices as possible so that merchants who want to serve multiple countries and currencies have one gateway to talk through. This is a great way of simplifying the very complex payment landscape.

PCM: Why AEVI Nelson: It’s definitely the great innovation we can bring to the merchant base, which is much needed. In terms of where e-commerce eats very much into the overall pie of commerce, it’s very important for merchants to also have a line of defence. It’s the human element, the interaction with the customer, which for me is the strongest proposition for a small merchant who has local customers, and wants to keep them coming back. By enhancing the in-store point of sale experience merchants can increase their customer retention, while cutting runningcosts, thanks to the addition-al back-office apps and services made available to them through our Marketplace. The customer experience is becoming an integral part of how people shop, and it is vital that we provide merchants with the necessary means to provide the best point of sale experience possible. At AEVI, we listen to the needs of our customers, and collaborate closely with customer’s teams to deliver high quality products and services that they can rely on. Our collaborative, open platform connects merchants with the very best in innovative technology solutions that will enable them to optimise the way they run their business directly from the point of sale. We already delivered over 100,000 of our leading SmartPOS device, Albert, to merchants in multiple markets, and this number is continuing to grow.

PCM: What is your main goal for the next year? Nelson: I’ve been with the company for seven weeks now and at first you look at the team, the product, our customers and app partners to get real feedback. I’ve been through that and I’m very pleased that we have taken the first steps in terms of changing the way we work together. We want to work

M20/20 Special collaboratively across the two business channels, the payment business and the Marketplace business, because so many things can be done jointly, more effectively and successfully. We are also in the process of moving the headquarters to Berlin to attract more talent. We are already positioned in key Fintech hubs such as London and Prague, and we will add Berlin to the growing list. Finally, we are continuing to push the US side of the business and recently hired a team there for our expansion. We’re making very good progress and I hope we will be live with the first customer in the US later this year.

PCM: Any exciting news / announcements you would like to make? Nelson: Needless to mention, it’s our second year at Money20/20 Europe and we have had very interesting discussions. Many people came by our booth and told us we made a lot of progress since last year, so we know that what we are doing has a clear trajectory, and it’s great to see the team growing into that and shaping the future of payments at the point of sale. This was the best message we received at Money20/20 and that kind of market feedback is great. Alongside this we had some very good negotiations and meetings with customers. Everybody wants innovation and change to happen, but not many people drive that change, and I see AEVI as one of those drivers. We recently announced several influential app partners who joined our Marketplace, most recently Moroku and Epos Now, who also joined us on our booth at Money20/20 Europe. Going forward we also have several major announcements that we will be making during Money20/20 Las Vegas, so stay tuned!

The “Albert” with PINpad

AEVI AEVI brings acquirers closer to their merchants, and merchants closer to their consumers, with an open Ecosystem that combines apps, payment services and a multi-vendor selection of payment devices. Selecting from a marketplace of high-quality apps and services, Acquirers can quickly create differentiated, innovative SmartPOS solutions under their own brand. Our centralized payments as a service platform eliminates obstacles, and helps Acquirers simplify the complex payment landscape with a single integration and access to a comprehensive suite of cloud-based, back office reporting tools for enhanced control and flexibility.

M20/20 Special

Aligning the physical and digital domains

arket Pay is a payment institution, whollyowned subsidiary of Carrefour Group, where we handle all the acceptance and acquiring side and operate all the payment solutions that Carrefour developed for its customers. The idea is to bring something ahead of innovations for all the countries in which Carrefour is operating. First we started in Europe but we can bring the same kind of solutions for other countries where we currently operate, such as Latin America (Brazil and Argentina), and of course Asia. At Market Pay, we are always willing to break new grounds and think up new experiences. Here, we know how to adapt in order to rise to the new challenges and meet the ever changing consumer demands in these markets. Payment is an inevitable step in the retailer/customer relationship, often imposed on the customer who takes the back seat in the purchasing process. “People come to buy, not to pay” Yet it is a powerful and engaging point of interaction between a company and its customer. A “transaction” that can make or break the customer relationship. Our goal is to focus on the customer journey and the shopping experience by building the best customer experience with a simplified, rapid, fluid and secure purchasing process. Bringing all the payments along mobile payment service which smartly combines payment, loyalty and coupon functionalities, marks a new step in Market Pay’s innovation strategy. There is also one main ground for which this entity has been created, and that is around security. We handle all credentials of our customers through payments, which needs to be fully secure. This is why, we chose to be fully certified including Market Pay as an entity. There is no room for compromising in the management of personal and bank data. All data and money flows are and must be controlled and secured.

PCM: Tell us more about yourself. What is your story behind creating MarketPay and what excites you so much about it? Frederic: My career has always been focused on financial services, oriented around the merchant and client vision. I’ve been working for the Carrefour group for the last 15 years and have been specifically involved in financial services for the last 10 years. In those years, I focused on the merchant and customer vision alike. Bringing value through strategic product development, operational excellence and resource management. Apart from the core banking functions as a CFO, I was heading up the business development for Carrefour Bank for several years, and bringing innovation on both, the retail and the bank divisions through the launch of the first MasterCard Only and Contactless card on the French (2009) and Spanish (2013) markets. We were the first to offer the use of contactless cards to our customers by creating a pan-European issuing platform. At a later stage, we extended this platform to acceptance and acquiring. These solutions enable faster checkouts and adjust the acceptance in Carrefour stores. When you operate both at

the same time, the acceptance of the retailer and the payment solutions that you provide to the customer, it’s easier to bring innovations to life.

PCM: What markets do you currently operate in? Frederic: Our main focal points today are France, Spain and Belgium. The idea was to ensure that we create and operate the best payment solution to turn payments into a real opportunity to grow the business and enhance customer relationships. Our ambition is also to centralize payment acceptance and acquisition services for all of the retail channels of the Carrefour Group. Market Pay enables the setup and management of customized, secure, high-performance payment solutions. It will improve the security of payment data collected from customers of Carrefour and develop new payment solutions for the Group. We are also trying to provide new solutions for all the other countries the Group is currently operating in, Brazil and Argentina for instance.

PCM: What are your expansion plans and how do you go about choosing your next region? Frederic: There’s a lot to do within Carrefour Group. The first step was to bring highly customized and performance solutions for acceptance and acquiring as well as on the issuing side using different devices, cards, mobile and of course tomorrow’s IoT. The first expansion is to implement the solution where the Group is already present. We are currently working on making this happen and are studying how we can be relevant in those markets. The main goal is to add value to Carrefour entities at first, but also to close partners, especially shopping malls to deliver value to all the merchants there. Once we know we are relevant to them we can also be relevant for others in the second step, which is where we’re heading. Payment is about volume, so the more volume we aggregate, the more relevant and cost efficient we could be. We are open to providing the solutions to the market for those who would be interested in investing in our solutions. However, the first step is to create relevant solutions that can evolve quickly and fit to those markets because we know that there will be more new means of payments in the future. This is also including PSD2 specs, where initiation of payments and aggregation is something we are very interested in, not only for our B2B payments, but also for customer to business payments as it is the main basis of payments within our Group.

PCM: What are the three things you want people to know about MarketPay? Frederic: The first thing, which is quite unique to me, is that we operate as a dynamic energized company with a 360 degree vision of payment. Market Pay fully masters the French and European electronic payment ecosystem through the daily

M20/20 Special support of a pool of experts. “Tried and tested” know-how in France and across Europe. Expertise in retail, the purchasing process and the customer experience backed by over 35 years of work within the Carrefour Group. The second thing is that we always try to be ahead of innovations, meaning being bold and disruptive. This is one characteristic of how we operate in the country. Always willing to break new ground and precipitate new experiences. At Market Pay we know how to adapt to combat the new challenges and meet the new customer demands. Being the first to develop contactless payment in France was something important as well as being able to issue pan-European solutions. Right now, we are focusing on being the first and most innovative for new customer journey by using mobile solutions.

Finally, maximum data security - There is no room for compromising in the management of personal and bank data. All data and money flows are controlled and secured on the highest level.

PCM: What are your goals for the upcoming year Frederic: Our main goal is to bring the best payment solutions to the market as well as include payments behind the shopping experience into the retailer App. Also, one of our key objectives is to get tractions for all the merchants App including the Carrefour App that we are operating in all the different countries. Globally, it is about the improvement of the purchasing experience using mobile, contactless technologies and innovative solutions based on new terminals. Secondly, thre is the extension of our platforms in other countries where Carrefour is present. Our goal is to bring together all the Group’s payment infrastructures in the same solution. Last but not least, we initiate PSD progression. Strong customer authentication is something we need to watch, but working on initiations, aggregation and instant payments is something that we’re going to invest time and money in.

PCM: Any exciting new / announcements you would like to make? Frederic: Yes, there are some news we’d like to share. Right now, we’ve launched two products in two different markets of which we are very proud. The first is in force with Carrefour Bank, the first current account that you can find on the shelf. It was a great success, we launched that two months ago and I’m quite happy to hear that it’s well received by our customers. Also, just last week we launched a new mobile payment solution in Spain which was even in the news on TV, displaying the customers thoughts where it was very well received.

Frederic Mazurier CEO at Market Pay (Carrefour Group) Frederic’s career has been focused on the Financial Services, oriented merchant and client vision, with an emphasis on building value through strategic products development, resource management and operational excellence. As CEO of Market Pay, from January 2016, he’s driving one of the most important European payment institution and I’m convinced that tomorrow’s payment process will become a strategic point of interaction to create value and enhance the relationship with customers.

Market Pay (Carrefour Group) Created to support the brands of the Carrefour Group, Market Pay develops and operates custom solutions to boost the business and improve the customer relations. The payment institution, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Carrefour Group, combines all of Carrefour’s electronic payment systems, such as Carrefour cards, POS terminals and online payment solutions, and centralizes payment acceptance and acquisition services for all of the retail channels. Market Pay enables the setup and management of customised, secure, high-performance payment solutions. It will improve the security of payment data collected from customers of Carrefour banners and develop new payment solutions for the Group.

M20/20 Special

Setting new standards in the world of payments Arnaud Crouzet was elected General Secretary of nexo Standards in 2015. Within this role, Mr. Crouzet oversees the activities of the nexo Board, Technical Steering Committee and technical working groups. He also manages the association’s membership, which comprises representatives from the payment acceptance ecosystem.

n our last interview at Money 20/20 Europe in Copenhagen we sat down with Arnaud Crouzet, General Secretary at nexo Standards and Global Head of Payments Means at Auchan Group to talk about how the nexo standards community is continuously growing and to learn more about the association’s efforts to establish global standards for seamless payment card acceptance.

PCM: Tell us more about yourself. What is your story behind Auchan joining nexo Standards and what excites you so much about it? Arnaud: I’m in charge of payments for the different countries in which Auchan operates. A few years ago, it became clear that it is increasingly complicated to organise anything regarding payments when operating across so many different geographies. Each country has its own domestic payment system, which is usually provided by a vendor, PSP or bank. Increasingly, even different entities in the same country have different payment systems, which can cause a major administration headache when managing payment transactions across borders. At Auchan, we wanted to find a way to harmonise these disparate payment systems and processes, at least at a European level. We looked at a number of different possibilities and then we discovered the OSCar Consortium. We used the EPAS protocols and SEPA-Fast Specifications to realise our objective of a common set of implementations in the SEPA zone. In 2012, Auchan was the first merchant to join the consortium; I was proving that it was already the type of solution that could fit and solve our problems. In 2014, three organisations - EPASOrg, the OSCar consortium and the CIR SEPA-Fast technical working group - merged to become nexo standards.

In June 2013, Auchan was the first merchant to implement the nexo standards specifications and messaging protocols in the field in France, which was followed by Portugal in September. This was the start of our strategy to implement a new multicountry payment infrastructure, using the messaging protocols and specifications developed by nexo standards. What excites me is that we already have 128 hypermarkets using the protocols and they work perfectly. We now have a new payment infrastructure that is 100% based on the nexo standards protocols, with the nexo Retailer protocol for the connection between the cash system and the POS, using the nexo Fast POI Payment Application Specifications which is a multi-scheme, multi-language application. The nexo standards protocols fit with exactly what we wanted, which was to not have to rely on the domestic protocols of each country, but really to have a new type of payment system independent of country. Since deploying the protocols, we have also seen an improved time for payment by 7% per transaction.

PCM: What kind of markets does Auchan operate in? Arnaud: Auchan is present in different parts of the world including Europe, Russia, Asia and Africa. We started our deployment of nexo standards in France. The existing payment infrastructure in France is very complicated due to the existing legacy systems still in place. Auchan’s activities in France cover a lot of different areas, such as loyalty, prepaid, bonus, coupons and cheques for example, therefore there were a lot of different elements for us to consider when implementing nexo standards protocols. Our objective is to deploy across all European countries in which Auchan is present.

M20/20 Special PCM: On what scale are nexo Standards specifications adopted today?

PCM: Who can join your community and what are the benefits?

Arnaud: Adoption is growing and as with any evolution in the market, there are some players that start out first and others that follow. Today, nexo standards has almost 80 members, with many deployments now live across the global payments market. I can see how impressive the growth is by the businesses who have implemented the specifications and protocols. We get all kinds of requests for proposals from merchants and other businesses who want to add nexo standards to their payments infrastructures.

Arnaud: Really, anyone in the payment chain from merchant to PSP can join. We have a wide spectrum of representatives in our community including retailers, processors, banks, PSPs, card schemes and vendors (such as manufacturers of POS equipment). They are all welcome to participate in nexo standards and contribute to the different working groups and the development of the specifications and protocols. One of the many benefits is that our members receive insight into the industry’s evolution and they can provide their input and feedback on the direction of the association. The aim of nexo standards is not just to use the protocols, but also to utilize and benefit from each other’s industry knowledge and expertise. A merchant does not see a payment in the same way as a bank or a scheme does for instance. The same goes for a vendor or processor, we all have different views depending on where we are in the payment chain. This is what makes nexo standards so interesting: we can merge all these different views to ensure that our progress benefits all players in the industry.

nexo standards is changing and evolving the market. Some players say the legacy protocols can stay for a few years, especially if there is no real need to add a new international protocol, but at the same time, nexo standards can add extra value for the domestic market. There are additional functionalities in the nexo standards protocols. They can provide the capability to implement all types of functionalities, which is not always the case in different markets, because all domestic products have been built for their domestic market in response to local demands. It’s therefore not possible to take the domestic protocols and export them to other countries as they would be missing required functionalities. nexo standards is already there, so you can decide to implement it or not. I know that it’s already deployed across many countries in Europe such as France, Spain, Belgium and Germany, and it’s also deployed in Canada and Africa. I know that China and Asia are looking into it and a Japanese scheme is already a member of nexo standards.

PCM: If there are three things that you would like people to know about nexo Standards, what would they be? Arnaud: nexo standards is a collaboration bringing all the different stakeholders in the payments industry together. Processors, PSPs, card schemes, vendors and merchants are all working together to ensure we fully incorporate all the requirements coming from different parts of the payment chain. It’s the first time all the sectors involved in the payment chain are working together to create a new standard. nexo standards is a non-profit association, with the objective to create messaging protocols and specifications that can be employed universally to remove the barriers present in today’s fragmented global card payment acceptance ecosystem The protocols and specifications are flexible, international and already in place, so anyone can start using them. Interested companies can decide to use the protocols as they are published or they can join nexo standards and contribute to their development. Companies are also welcome to provide their feedback and knowledge of the market.

PCM: Any announcements or anything exciting that you would like to share with the readers of the magazine? Arnaud: nexo standards protocols and specifications are live with many of our members. They are also already deployed by many businesses, working perfectly whilst remaining flexible. For a merchant to implement a new payment system, the use of the nexo standards specifications and protocols can solve many challenges. We are convinced that this is the future. In fact, it’s not the future, it’s now. It’s a real open standard based on the new evolution of ISO20022, and we can do so much with it compared to the previous fixed protocol. standard based on the new evolution of ISO20022, and we can do so much with it compared to the previous fixed protocol.

nexo Standards. Enabling interoperability in global payment acceptance. nexo standards enables fast, interoperable and borderless payments acceptance by standardising the exchange of payment acceptance data between merchants, acquirers, payment service providers and other payment stakeholders. nexo’s messaging protocols and specifications adhere to ISO20022 standards, are universally applicable and are freely available globally. nexo standards is an open, global association dedicated to removing the barriers present in today’s fragmented global card payment acceptance ecosystem. Headquartered in Brussels, its members represent the full spectrum of card payments stakeholders, including acceptors, processors, card schemes, payment service providers and vendors. nexo was established in 2014, when three historical contributors of card payment standards and specifications were merged: EPASOrg, the OSCar consortium and the CIR SEPA-Fast technical working group. Keen to find out more about the payment acceptance standards revolution? Interested to become part of nexo’s global community? Contact us today. www.nexo-standards.org

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Boston, U.S.

ETE17PCN = 25% Dis

eTail East is where the top minds at America’s most successful retailers meet and learn. Find the most disruptive content, designed to help you optimize the profits. No commercials. No egos. Talk is cheap - so we cut out the fluff to give you hundreds of strategic takeaways. Guaranteed. Transformative. Inspiring. Actionable Insights. That’s eTail.

14-17

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

12-14

Attending this conference will let you be part of an advanced, inspiring, open, and P2P-passionate peer environment of experienced peers with quite mature P2P functions from number of industries and with typically a global responsibility span. This event should give a very good benchmarking point for what to aim for as world-class P2P function with limited resources we all have, and definitely should leave everyone with a good range of fresh, interesting and implementable ideas to benefit from. Bangkok, Thailand

The 3rd edition of RetailEX ASEAN is an annual trade show and conference that caters to retailers in ASEAN. RetailEX ASEAN 2017 is committed to bring success to the retail industry, with focusing on two exhibit profiles; Retail Shop Fitting and Retail Shop Technology. RetailEX ASEAN 2017 is the hub where all retail owners come together to share ideas, explore the retail market trend and meet new buyers.

14-16

Paris, France

19-20

Between 19 and 21 September 2017, Paris Retail Week will once again showcase French Expertise and will be the only event in Europe which addresses the omni-channel problems associated with 360° retail. For three days, Paris will be the capital of connected commerce by bringing together 600 participating companies and 30,000 professionals. Request your free badge Request free badge Inviation Code: PCN

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