How to save time and money by reducing complexity from payments

As the FinTech revolution percolates its way through the economy, there are more and more payments solutions on the market. As they have multiplied, the range of functions on offer has expanded in tandem.

It can be tempting to opt for a different provider for every payment scenario, or your strategy may have developed that way organically.

We know how easy it is to stay on the path of least resistance.

As you’ve grown over time, it’s likely you’ve built a series of relationships with different payments platform providers – indeed, often with different partners for digital, in-store and international markets.

This can result in a confusing and inefficient payments stack, with overlapping functionalities and different data standards haemorrhaging time, adding to your costs and ultimately detracting from the bottom line.

Standardised off the shelf platforms may not reflect your unique needs and priorities, so it is far more effective to seek out a hybrid platform. One that will empower you to meet the needs of your customers and work with local suppliers.

Consolidating all your payments into a single unified platform delivered by a single payments provider offers many benefits. In short – cutting complexity means cutting costs.

Planet’s newly published Retail Report provides some useful hints and tips on what to look for and how it can be done.

An efficient solution that has been built with your precise requirements will take less time for your team to operate – which means it costs less money. Data integrity is easier to preserve, records are kept more accurately, and you can gain better and faster insights on who your customers are and how they are behaving.

The real benefits go even deeper

If you work with a payments platform provider with deep structural understanding of your market, whether it’s Retail, Hospitality or any other, they’ll be able to harness this experience to work with you in building a solution that meets your needs across channels and across global markets.

A hybrid approach opens up opportunities for localising your offer, developing new payments channels, or creating loyalty schemes based on the data you gather. The efficiencies and synergies it opens up gives space for development and innovation, and better opens the door to importing the fast-developing benefits of data-empowered payments architecture to your organisation.

Long story short – keeping things simple keeps costs down.

So, what should you look for in a provider?

Here’s our key list of things you may want to consider:

• Global reach and scope, with the ability to scale things up as you enter new markets and open new stores
• A single payments platform that unites digital and physical channels into a unified commerce platform, with unlimited access to inventories across all channels
• A complete suite of retail payments services, including acquiring and processing, a payments gateway platform, and ecommerce
• All-in-one capability for in-store payments to help you give your customers the best experience possible
• Scope for creating additional revenue-generating services, including currency conversion, multi-currency pricing, VAT refunds, marketing and sales consultancy
• Multiple flexible integrations, connections and partnerships with technology partners – including terminals and hardware, stock management systems, shopping carts, and CRM systems
• The ability to work with your strategic and local partners to better cater for your particular needs
• Deep sector knowledge so they can understand your needs instinctively
• Strong local support anywhere in the world you’re likely to do business, with experienced people on the ground who understand the market, speak the language and can provide local expertise
• State of the art data, reporting and reconciliation capabilities that deliver a 360-degree view of your customers’ needs and surface operational efficiencies across all channels and markets
• Best in class fraud and risk management tools.

For more information on how choosing a single payments provider can benefit you, CLICK HERE