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A critical factor is often overlooked when focusing on improving the customer experience: ensuring payments go through successfully. A failed payment is more than simply a lost sale. It can lead to wider-scale revenue impacts and erode customer confidence over time.
In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, John Winstel, VP of Optimization Product at Worldpay, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the factors influencing authorization rates and examined how even small improvements can drive gains in both revenue and customer satisfaction.
The Four Pillars of Payments Authorization
Why do payments fail? For many reasons, actually, such as technology failures or inaccurate payment data. A payment may also be incorrectly flagged as suspicious and declined if a merchant’s fraud prevention tools are misaligned. These issues are even more pronounced in e-commerce, where the risk of fraud is higher and declined payments are more common.
Thankfully there are four primary components for optimizing payment authorization to address these issues. The first is consumer optimization, where an organization focuses on streamlining the checkout experience with a focus on the customer experience.
“In my own experience, I love it when I'm shopping at a merchant that is new to me or I don't shop at very often and they have Apple Pay as a way for me to complete that transaction,” Winstel said. “It's so easy to do, and you're not having to fill in all your billing and shipping card information. It’s creating that seamless experience for consumers that is key.”
Conversion optimization—the second factor influencing payments authorization rates— ensures the merchant always maintains the most updated customer credentials on file. The third aspect of authorization optimization is risk optimization, which remains a constant challenge for many organizations.
“We've done some studies internally looking at how having a strong fraud authentication strategy can lead to not only benefits from a fraud savings perspective, but you also start to see a huge uplift in your issuer approval rate when you have your fraud rates below six basis points or less,” Winstel said. “You see double-digit growth in your issuer approval rates because those issuer models are viewing that traffic as being much safer.”
The fourth and final pillar of payments authorization optimization involves optimizing for cost, where we identify the most cost-effective way to route a customer’s payment. While keeping all four of these considerations in mind is difficult, the optimization process becomes even more challenging because merchants aren’t operating in a static environment. If a busy retailer has predictable periods of lower activity, they may shift gears to better meet customer demand.
“Slower response times coming in from certain networks may deprioritize those routing paths over faster paths,” Apgar said. “Even though they are more expensive, it will produce better throughput at the point of sale and ultimately a better customer experience. It's a dynamic environment because you can't ever optimize in a static prioritization.”
Lightening the Workload
Fortunately for merchants, effective tools do exist to combat complex authorization rate optimization and take care of the heavy lifting. For example, to optimize the conversion aspect, retailers could employ account updaters which utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure the merchant is using a customer’s most current card information.
Similarly, network payment tokens—the digital identifiers issued by credit card companies to replace primary account numbers—can be leveraged to obtain the most accurate card data.
Another component of conversions is the retry process. In many cases, retrying a payment could result in success but many organizations don’t have the bandwidth to continually retry payments. -
When customers make purchases using Apple Pay or Google Pay—or enter their card info at online checkout—their sensitive data is protected by replacing it with a token. While this safeguards consumer privacy, it has also created a challenge: because the same card can be tokenized differently across multiple merchants, businesses are losing access to vital customer insights that could drive smarter marketing, stronger loyalty programs, and better fraud prevention.
In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Andrew Sjogren, Director of Product Marketing at IXOPAY, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed a promising solution: using personal account reference (PAR) values as a consistent, secure link across transactions to help merchants reconnect with critical customer data and unlock new insights.
A Single Consistent Value
As the e-commerce space has evolved, a personal account number (PAN) from a single card can be tokenized countless times. That same card might also be tokenized in multiple formats, including network tokens, PSP tokens, and universal tokens. This has led to a more secure, yet increasingly fragmented, digital economy.
“As in so many times in payments, the solution becomes the problem,” Apgar said. “After so many data breaches, everybody rightfully invested in tokenization. Now that merchants are moving ahead with orchestration strategies to optimize other metrics and payments, competing token strategies mean merchants have lost track of the customer journey, because they're no longer able to connect the dots and follow the breadcrumb trail from disassociated tokens.”
Despite these challenges, merchants have found workarounds to link transactions to customers. For example, the merchant might have a customer log into their website or enter their information at a point-of-sale device. A small coffee shop, for instance, might ask customers to enter their phone number at checkout to manage their participation in a rewards program.
Though these patches exist, they are manual workarounds that require customer participation and can often cause friction at checkout.
Tracking transactions using a PAR value could offer a universal solution requiring no manual intervention. PAR is a 29-character alphanumeric identifier associated with a single card account, developed by EMVCo several years ago.
“With so many different token formats, you lost sight of these tokens being associated with just a single card account,” Sjogren said. “All of a sudden EMVCo says, ‘We're going to establish this PAR reference value, it's going to be that common thread so no matter what token format or where it's tokenized, you're going to have a single consistent value linked to that card.’ That’s a transaction that you can operate on—without being afraid that it'll come within PCI scope.”
Satisfying Compliance and Reducing Fraud
The fact that PAR satisfies merchants’ Payment Card Industry (PCI) obligations is a significant advantage, and the protocol could help mitigate many of the fraud and compliance challenges merchants face.
“From a compliance standpoint, it can descope your PCI, if you're storing PAN anywhere for customer record keeping,” Sjogren said. “Maybe you're passing on the PAN to a fraud services provider to associate with an account. PAR can just replace PCI-sensitive data in many cases where it is used outside the transaction, and you're incurring no scope there.”
Beyond improving compliance, PAR can help merchants fight fraud more proactively by providing fraud prevention tools with deeper insights into potential threats through access to more data.
There are also specific types of fraud that PAR can address head on. For example, when merchants run promotions designed to attract new customers, existing customers often create additional accounts to take advantage of the offers. Sometimes, a single customer may create multiple accounts using different e... -
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A cursory survey of sports venues will reveal fields sponsored by Citi, Chase, PNC, and Truist—just within Major League Baseball alone. However, the connection between payments and the arenas and stadiums that host events runs much deeper than naming rights. With a captive audience of thousands, there’s a strong opportunity to drive loyalty and revenue, which is why so many stadiums and arenas are exploring new pay methods.
In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Christopher Miller, Lead Emerging Payments Analyst, and Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed their experiences at sports arenas across the U.S. and the emergence of new payment protocols at entertainment venues.
A Cash-Free Stadium
The greater movement away from cash and toward digital payments has been gradual shift on a national scale, but many event venues have already made the transition to cashless operations.
“I went with some friends to Charlotte to a soccer game for the team we support in Atlanta,” Hirschfield said. “You walk in this big 70,000 seat football stadium, and the first thing you see is a massive banner that says, ‘We are a cash-free stadium.’ I go to enough games, and almost every stadium I'm in nowadays is cash-free. It creates a lot of openings for organizations to grow their revenue base through new kinds of payment activities.”
One unique aspect of sports and entertainment events is that they attract a captive audience of tens of thousands. Many attendees have paid a premium for entry, and re-entry is often not permitted. Not only are most patrons there for the duration, but they are also frequently loyal and enthusiastic supporters of the team or artist they came to see.
These factors create opportunities for venues and payment firms to drive revenue and foster innovation.
“Many new technologies—and I’ll take biometric authentication as an example—have the best application in scenarios where you have loyal, repeat customers for whom it is worth the effort to enroll. And they believe that there is a benefit to them of enrolling that they will receive repeatedly,” Miller said. “Folks like season ticket holders are a slam dunk of a category there.”
Season ticket holders have already invested a substantial amount of money, are likely to spend more, and visit the sports venue frequently. This gives the team or arena a strong incentive to provide them with unique and distinctive experiences to engage and retain them.
“It's really a sweet spot for both piloting and implementing these types of things,” Miller said. “We've been seeing, for example, biometric entry for a couple of years. There are some stadiums that have done away with every form of media whatsoever—there's not even digital tickets. Your face is your ticket, your face is used for payment, and there's just nothing but your face, not even digital wallets. But that's at the far end of the spectrum.”
Cautionary Tales
Though stadiums and arenas can be effective environments for introducing these new programs, the initial scope should be manageable.
“The Intuit Dome in Los Angeles was the first one I know of that went fully biometric,” Miller said. “The first event there was a concert, and the biometric entry system was broken, and long lines formed of angry people who had been told they didn’t need tickets. It was a cascade of technological failure that delayed individuals from experiencing the concert or, at the very least, colored their perception of what type of experience the arena could be trusted to give.”
These issues can impact repeat patronage, but they are also common when dealing with emerging technologies.
“I was at a soccer game in Atlanta this past weekend and the Just Walk Out technology was down, so all of these stands were inoperable,” Hirschfield said. “They had food spoiling on the shelves, the hot food, but it goes to show there are limitations still in current technology that need to... -
Because digital payments offer such powerful use cases, many speculate that they will inevitably replace physical cards. However, this perspective overlooks several key factors—not only are physical cards highly reliable at the point of sale, but they also offer personalization options that create a tangible connection between consumers and their payment method, something digital payments can’t replicate.
In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, James Sufrin, Senior Vice President of North American Payment Services at IDEMIA Secure Transactions, and Christopher Miller, Lead Emerging Payments Analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the continued prevalence of physical cards, how customized card offerings with advanced card designs, features and metal cards, can help brands drive loyalty, and the future of premium card products.
The Digital Wallet Dilemma: Convenience vs. Adoption
Digital wallets can be a gamechanger in e-commerce, allowing consumers to skip the hassle of reentering card details at checkout. However, their advantages are less pronounced in retail, dining, and entertainment settings.
“Physical cards are important, and we think that the market is demonstrating that they aren't going away anytime soon,” Sufrin said. “Quite frankly, I just started to use my digital wallet in earnest last year and it's still a mix for me. I still sometimes pay with my digital wallet and sometimes with my physical card, and honestly, I don't know that I could even tell you why in certain instances.”
The “why” we favour certain methods of payment or even certain bank cards, can be complex and indeed we may not understand it. In a National Library of Medicine study1 into our subconcious ability to authenticate banknotes, it was found that accurate authentication of banknotes is possible within one second of viewing. Every moment of every day, we are all experiencing and acting on cues all around us, and the payment experience is not excluded from this phenomenon. The look, feel, weight, and sound of a payment card provides us with cues which we interpret emotionally, without knowing we are doing it. A certain payment method can make us feel safe, cool, or part of a particular group we have a positive association or aspiration to. Even for those who tend to favour the digital experience, the presence of that physical card in their wallet carries huge importance, whether they are aware of it or not.
The ongoing rise of Metal payment cards supports these findings, with banks and their customers increasingly opting for a payment card with a heavier and more distinctive metal composition and design.
This sentiment is reflected in recent Javelin research, which found that nearly all respondents had used a major credit card in the past 12 months. However, only about 20% of older users and roughly 85% of younger users have used a digital wallet in the same period. These numbers dropped substantially when respondents were asked if they had paid with a digital wallet in the past seven days.
This highlights a major flaw in the digital-versus-physical payments debate—the assumption that the two are mutually exclusive and that one will inevitably dominate.
“Cards are there, wallets are also there, and I think it's important for us to understand that many people are both,” Miller said. “We like to divide the market into segments as if those are separate groups of people, but they are not. A digital wallet user can still want a physical card for no reason, for some reason, or for a specific reason. Those all remain possibilities even as digitization continues.”
Customizing for Brand Loyalty
Regardless of their payment method, consumers have become extremely accustomed to customization in their products, services, and experiences. With the rise of hyperpersonalization, they are also increasingly willing to pay a premium for tailored solutions that reflect their individual preferences. -
Reconciliation has traditionally been seen as a back-office function, but modern technology has made it a priority. Automation, real-time data, and embedded finance solutions are transforming cash flow management, risk mitigation, and operational efficiency, enabling businesses to take a more strategic approach to maintaining their books.
Penny Townsend, Chief Product Officer at Qualpay, explored the evolving landscape of reconciliation during a PaymentsJournal podcast. She spoke with Don Apgar, Director of the Merchant Payments Practice at Javelin Strategy & Research, about leveraging reconciliation to drive profits and the impact artificial intelligence will have on the future.
A Technological Makeover
Twenty years ago, reconciliation was a straightforward, even sleepy process. An accountant or bookkeeper would check the business’s bank account, then perhaps walk into the next office to ask how many sales had been completed that day. Early software like QuickBooks or Quicken helped streamline the process, but the responsibility fell almost entirely on a single person.
Fast forward 20 years, and everything has changed. Advances in technology have dramatically improved the flow of information. Aligning cash management with sales has become a priority. Merchants now have much greater control— not just over distributing products and services in a timely fashion, but also over tracking revenue from those sales. In addition, with payments being accepted in different ways—digital wallets, crypto, ACH, credit cards—merchants need to be able to handle various transaction methods.
As a result, payment processing and reconciliation have evolved into strategic priorities.
“We as an industry have done a good job of making it easy for the merchant to accept payments, embed them into software, and integrate them with other workflows,” said Apgar. “But we're still, for the most part, sending out statements of card transactions and leaving it up to the merchant to reconcile that to a paper bank statement that comes in the mail. The next step in the payments automation revolution is automating the rest of the workflow in the back-office, not just at the front counter.”
Bringing Flexibility to the Statement
Many of these statements are still just pieces of paper that merchants can't click on or interact with. While some service providers have replaced paper statements with online portals, the statement itself is often nothing more than a glorified PDF.
Viewing the information online doesn't give the merchant any real advantage over seeing it on paper. The challenge is compounded by the need to reconcile the merchant account, the bank account, and the merchant’s internal records.
“Merchants have to log into each of those different portals to be able to see that 360-degree view,” said Townsend. “But every time you make a hop between systems, data gets lost. That little piece that matched the transaction probably disappeared somewhere along the line. By the time that you look at your bank statements, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened?’”
More Money, More Problems
Not only does the merchant have to verify that the money goes into the right account, but also that they’re being charged the correct fees and how those fees were deducted from sales. Everything must balance, and the process becomes more complex as the business grows.
Some vendors offer all-you-can-eat buffet pricing, where everything is charged at a flat 3.5%, making reconciliation straightforward. Flat-rate pricing is almost like charging merchants a premium for simplicity, but it only really works for smaller businesses.
Larger businesses must focus on minimizing costs upfront while ensuring they receive the proper amount of cash in the right amount of time. The reconciliation process isn’t just about verifying what happened—it’s also about identifying what didn't.
“In a previous organization, when we were doing reconciliation, -
Last year, a breach of cloud storage company Snowflake resulted in data stolen from more than 150 companies, with more than $2 million extorted from victims. The attack was carried out by an infostealer, a type of malware that didnât directly infiltrate Snowflake but instead entered through a client with weak security measures. The growing market for financial data stolen by hackers has made these attacks an escalating threat to financial institutions worldwide.In a PaymentsJournal podcast, Mike Kosak, Senior Principal Intelligence Analyst at LastPass, and Jennifer Pitt, Senior Analyst in Fraud and Security at Javelin Strategy & Research, looked at the threat that infostealers currently pose to banks. They discussed how infostealers present risks even to third-party vendors, and how organizations can stay one step ahead in protecting their sensitive information.What Are Infostealers?Infostealers are a specific type of malware that collects critical information from victimsâ computer systems. They primarily target browser-based data, such as credentials, session tokens, and details about software that can be extracted from the operating system and sold to malicious brokers.Infostealers are generally small, lightweight programs built for speed. They're designed to execute quickly and then delete themselves. This rapid execution is a key reason why infostealers are so difficult to detect. In 54% of the cases that security service Spycloud examined, the victim had an active antivirus program running on their system.Infostealers are typically sold by initial access brokers, a subset of the cybercriminal ecosystem focused on gaining entry to systems. This initial access allows other, more specialized groups to take action using the stolen information, including ransomware operations and nation-state threat actors. These brokers are agnostic to the buyer, willing to sell the data to anyone.FIs Are Especially VulnerableInfostealers often target financial institutions, not just because they hold the money, but because they can scrape passwords from customersâ browsers, which frequently include login credentials for financial institutions. This tactic is a way to circumvent many of the fraud and account takeover prevention measures that FIs have in place.Customers at financial institutions often reuse passwords across multiple accounts, including those at different banks. Many of these financial accounts are linked to other services like email or social media, with the same passwords being used. These reused credentials are especially valuable to infostealers.These kinds of attacks are not limited to customers; employees have also fallen victim. If multi-factor authentication is not enforced for employees, they often use weak, short passwords or reuse them across multiple systems. Some employees continue to access personal accounts or use personal devices at work.In recent months, major browsers have implemented strong mitigations, but larger infostealers have been quick to figure out workarounds.âThey're constantly evolving,â said Kosak. âIt's a very effective marketplace and a very effective tool. It's cost effective and it works. That keeps bringing on more of these threat actors, both people who are trying to make money on the initial access broker sites and the developers themselves.âInfostealers are also targeting session tokens, which can be used to circumvent credentials if the right protections aren't in place. If criminals get the data fresh enough, most of it ends up available for sale within a day of the of the time that it's stolen.The Hidden RisksThe risks to financial institutions from infostealers are broader than they might initially appear. While the primary threat is theft, there is also fraud loss, operational risk, and reputational risk. Once a financial institution starts losing a significant amount of money from this,
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Across industries and companies—from small businesses to large enterprises—organizations are constantly searching for ways to improve corporate culture and boost employee engagement. However, in large, dispersed companies, providing employees with the personal touch needed to maintain motivation can be particularly challenging.
In a PaymentsJournal podcast, Julie Gu, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, North America, at Prezzee, and Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, examined key trends in employee incentive programs, the challenges organizations face, and how customized gift card program can effectively drive engagement.
Don’t Skimp on the RICE
Just as important as understanding what employees bring to the table at work is recognizing who they are as individuals. This is why organizations are increasingly interested in their employees’ hobbies, wellness, and inclusion interests.
As companies explore ways to boost employee engagement, there is an acronym—RICE—they should keep in mind.
“You know I'm Asian, so I never skimp on the rice,” Gu said. “What that means is that ‘R’ is for rewards and ‘I’ for incentives. ‘C’ is for celebrations—and that’s celebrating moments big and small, professional, and personal. Then, there is ‘E’ for engagement, which is making sure you’re forming a daily habit throughout, and that transcends all the aspects.”
Fostering engagement on a daily basis can be difficult in a busy office—and even more so in virtual or hybrid teams.
“We're very virtual in our organization, so I joined a running group,” Hirschfield said. “I'm a poor runner, but it motivates me to run. Someone just ran a marathon, so it's a great opportunity to celebrate that. With all these groups, we're getting updates on coworkers who are having babies or weddings or things that humanize the organization. You don't want to be an organization that’s robotic.”
Reinforcing the Right Behaviors
This shift toward interest groups is a key engagement trend. While many companies have already implemented enterprise resource groups (ERGs) to foster inclusion, interest groups can be more enjoyable and feel less obligatory than ERGs.
One of the most common types of interest groups is step challenges. However, many organizations are evolving past simple challenges like reaching 10,000 steps in a day. Micro-challenges, such as hitting 500 steps in a day, can be even more impactful.
“The micro-goals are important because that person who hasn't been participating in an exercise program might be intimidated by 10,000 steps,” Hirschfield said. “I look at myself—I work at home, so I'm not walking from my car to the elevator, which adds a couple hundred steps here or there. Getting to 10,000 steps can be difficult for some people, but when you have attainable goals, they get that feedback and engagement.”
In addition to setting smaller goals, more companies are creating groups around shared experiences. As they organize these activities, organizations should ensure they support interests that positively impact their company.
“The first step is to think about what behaviors are already happening around the organization that you want to reward?” Gu said. “What do you want to continue to validate and celebrate? Who can you showcase as a great example of somebody who's already living our core values who we can show as an ideal value ambassador? You want to reward those behaviors and make that a daily habit.”
Once organizations recognize existing behaviors, they can begin identifying the activities they want to incentivize. For instance, many employers emphasize mental health and wellness initiatives, as a healthier workforce tends to be happier and more productive.
“Think about which ways you want to reward versus incentivize, and from there, cascade down to the snackable ways (you) can start, so you can start small,” Gu said. “It shouldn’t feel like this big three-year-lo... -
When Academy Bank first considered outsourcing its item processing, it anticipated a challenging and uncertain journey. However, partnering with Fiserv transformed the experience, delivering both anticipated and unexpected benefits—ranging from a streamlined training process to a significant reduction in client impact errors.
In a PaymentsJournal podcast, several members of the Academy team—including CIO Shannon Gilley, Executive Vice President & Director of Deposit Operations Margaret Bosley, and Item Processing Assistant Manager Dionne Green—discussed the challenges that outsourcing presented and how the new system has changed how they operate. They spoke with Candace Burleson, Implementations Analyst at Fiserv, and James Wester, Co-Head of Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research.
A Legacy of Problems
As Academy embarked on its outsourcing journey, the bank encountered numerous challenges. The proof team was tasked with monitoring140 branches, overseeing everything from the opening run to the end run. Many branch scanners were nearing the end of their lifespan, and perhaps most concerning, the physical tickets were increasingly contributing to negative client experiences.
“One of the biggest challenges for us was that we were the frontline of support for all of the branches,” said Green. “We had over 140 branches that we were balancing daily, with just eight full-time employees that divided all of those runs. If there were any connectivity issues when the branches were trying to open up their runs or any issues related to the scanner, we were the front line of support.”
The Academy team had a single dedicated resource that was responsible for custom scripting. If there were any issues or incidents with that individual, there was no contingency plan in place.
Balancing was an issue because of all of the manual or physical tickets being run at the branch level. The team had to wait for batches to close at the end of the day and often were forced to double their efforts by handwriting tickets and manually inputting them into the teller system. The manual processes also resulted in errors affecting client accounts.
The branches were saddled with hardware that was near the end of its life and was in bad need of standardization. The different types of printers across the branches resulted in a continual need for additional software or logins.
Increased Efficiencies
Once outsourcing was in place, Academy found several efficiencies on its end. The proof team was reduced by two full-time employees who had been handling keying and balancing proof work. Additionally, Academy had been relying on an external provider for keying assistance when short-staffed, at a cost of $600 to $800 per month. This expense was completely eliminated.
“It was always difficult for us to maintain eight FTEs for this department,” said Green. “When folks get into banking, they expect bankers’ hours. These were not bankers’ hours. Because of the different time zones that we support, our balancers would have to work until 8:00pm and 9:00pm, and sometimes on Saturday.”
The efficiency gains were significant. With fewer client-impact errors at both the branch and operations levels, the time spent correcting those errors dropped to just five to seven person-hours a week.
Branches were able to shift their focus to sales, while the proof team redirected its efforts toward more critical functions, such as receiving training to identify check deposit fraud.
“Our goal,” said Gilley. “is to focus on our clients, making sure that we are working on the products and services that are meaningful to those clients every single day. Moving that technology to our software provider has really freed us up in order to focus on the more important things.”
An Involved Process
Outsourcing can initially seem challenging and expensive. But the costs of keeping everything in-house can often be even higher. -
Many organizations still rely on paper checks, with no immediate plans to phase them out. However, one of the key issues with checks is that criminals favor them as well.Last yearâs AFP Payments Fraud and Control report found that checks are the most frequently targeted payment method for attempted payments fraudânearly twice as much as ACH transactions.In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, U.S. Bankâs Scott Pope, Senior Vice President, Senior Manager of Risk and Compliance; Consumer and Small Business Payments and Mike Watercott, Vice President and Working Capital Consultant, Treasury Management, as well as Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the vulnerabilities of paper-based payments and the advantages of shifting to electronic transactions, particularly through prepaid disbursement options.An Increasing LiabilityCheck fraud has been the impetus behind the rising prevalence of mail theft, with criminals robbing postal carriers for arrow keys to access blue mailboxes. Once checks are in their hands, they have numerous ways to either sell the data or manipulate it for fraudulent purposes.Though these crimes may seem like isolated incidents, check fraud is often carried out by sophisticated criminal networks.âIn many cases, it's a sophisticated supply chain of bad actors, where the person stealing the checks and posting them for sale on the dark web is just one link in the chain,â Watercott said. âFraudsters may alter or âwashâ stolen checks. Washed checks may also be copied, printed, and sold to third-party fraudsters on the dark web, generating even more fraudulent transactions.âBeyond fraud or theft, issues with checks donât always stem from nefarious activitiesâsometimes mail is simply lost or misdelivered. These vulnerabilities increasingly make paper-based instruments a liability.âIt starts with control,â Pope said. âWhen a company is using a paper check, once they have signed that check and placed it in the mail, they have lost control of it. In contrast, with electronic payments, including prepaid, the control is always there. If the payment has been misdirected or stolen, there are processes in place to quickly replace it and to end its access to the underlying funds.âDramatically SaferIn addition to their vulnerabilities, checks also lack many of the fraud prevention tools that electronic payments provide. With digital transactions, the sender can proactively investigate recipients before ever sending a payment.For example, the payer can verify whether the account is open and in good standing and whether it is owned by the intended recipient. With prepaid payment methods, additional controls are built into the card activation process.Though some fraud mitigation tools exist for paper checks, such as positive pay, these processes arenât as robust as their electronic counterparts. Positive pay verifies checks by matching them against a customerâs issued records. Any discrepancies are flagged as exceptions, requiring the customer to approve or reject payment.âJust as the check payment process is manual and time consuming, so is the fraud mitigation process,â Watercott said. âYou're sending check issue files to the bank, you're reviewing and reacting to positive pay exceptions daily, and then you're reissuing checks. As you move away from checks, you gain opportunities to tap into more proactive risk mitigation before payments even happen.âIn addition, regulatory requirements at both the state and federal levels provide protections for prepaid and electronic transactions that don't exist with checks.Once a check clears, the only data typically available in statements or transaction histories is the check number and amount. In contrast, electronic transactions and prepaid cards provide organizations with a wealth of additional details, such as the merchantâs name, terminal ID number, location,
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Many businesses are familiar with payments optimization, which focuses on enhancing the outcome of individual transactions. However, the growing field of payments orchestration takes a broader approach. It addresses larger issues, such as deploying the latest payment methods and technologies faster than competitors and improving payment performance at scale. The goal is to deliver the most secure, frictionless customer experiences while also driving profitability.
Orchestration, at its core, provides the foundation for payments optimization to thrive. In a PaymentsJournal podcast, Brady Harris, CEO of IXOPAY, and Don Apgar, Director of the Merchant Payments Practice at Javelin Strategy & Research, spoke about the benefits of payments orchestration, from dynamic routing to enhanced data and analytics.
Like Conducting an Orchestra
Simply put, payments orchestration unifies a merchant’s payment operations, providing a comprehensive view of what’s happening across the entire ecosystem. It allows them to identify where breakdowns are occurring, resolve inefficiencies, and enhance security by leveraging multiple fraud prevention tools, optimizing authentication processes, and ensuring compliance with global security standards.
Large enterprise merchants typically have as many as 20 or more integrations with various payment service providers (PSPs) and acquirers around the world. IXOPAY has had customers with more than 150 to 200 different processors they're managing behind the scenes, requiring upwards of 150 to 200 full-time employees. Businesses are starting to move away from off-the-shelf orchestration solutions in favor of a global network of payment providers, typically through a third-party orchestration layer.
“Companies in different industries and sizes start to play this game of payments whack-a-mole,” said Apgar. “They start out with a PSP and find there's something missing—a new payment type or fraud solution. So another integration layer comes into play and eventually you wind up with this massively complex web of integrations.”
The orchestration mindset drives efficiency into this web of integrations, which were originally built to fill gaps in what was once a simple payment process.
“Before I fill another gap, why don't I take a step back and see what are the universe of payment solutions that I would like to have?” Apgar asked. “How can I put them all together in one basket, even if I need to use multiple providers and do it in an efficient fashion? It's like conducting an orchestra where all the all the instruments are playing their individual sounds, but come together to form the music.”
The Promise of Tokenization
IXOPAY started hearing from large global merchants with substantial payment volumes who realized they wanted to own their own data through vaulting solutions. That’s where tokenization comes in. With tokenization, businesses can not only own their data but also leverage it to improve authorization rates and reduce fraud and risk.
“Think about millions of transactions and all of the intelligence that sits at that transactional level—how can you create actionable insights that the business can then synthesize and operationalize back into the business,” said Harris. “When you combine them together in highly configurable, very customizable ways, you are now effectively offering these very large merchants a way to customize and build their own payments infrastructure with out-of-the-box solutions. To me that is next-gen orchestration.”
While tokenization has significantly enhanced data security, it has also reduced visibility into customer data. Tokenization makes it challenging to track customers across different channels and geographies. However, this challenge highlights the importance of orchestration, especially as more enterprise-level merchants explore tokenization strategies that can help unify customer interactions across multiple sales channels.
