The great digital shift demands that all executives — chief product officers among them — approach payments from a different point of view.
Daniel Cohen, chief product officer (CPO) at PayU, gave PYMNTS a glimpse into the mind of the CPO, where strategies surrounding financial services innovation must focus on the fact that modernizing payments is not simply a goal, but a means of modernizing commerce itself and making it more efficient.
“Merchants and enterprises cannot simply digitize for the sake of going digital,” he noted. The overarching approach is that “it needs to be as easy as possible for consumers to engage with their merchants of choice.”
Embracing Localization
To do that, it’s important to leverage localization on a market-by-market, country-by-country basis to foster frictionless shopping experiences.
Platforms such as PayU, Cohen said, are tasked with deploying advanced technologies, including application programming interfaces (APIs), to connect localized payment methods with what he termed a “single pane of glass.”
Scale is critical as merchants strive to reach new markets with speed, and to accept payments no matter the location or the currency. That trend has accelerated in recent years due to the pandemic, Cohen noted.
Along the way, digitization has paved the way for “old school” payment methodsand offline purchases to shift to always-on eCommerce.
The continued embrace of platforms has also proven to be a way for smaller merchants — those most adversely affected by ongoing economic turbulence — to gain access to working capital and the loans that wind up being lifelines, offered through platforms (including PayU).
Access to Credit
More efficient access to credit, he said, is also beneficial for consumers, as buy now, pay later and other recent, tech-enabled options can make purchases more affordable.
Looking ahead, he said, PayU has been working with an increasing number of third parties to help digitize commerce, and finance, around the globe.
“The API economy is booming,” he said, noting that integrations can be a timely, and costly, endeavor. However, platforms offer a “one stop shop” for the broadest amount of coverage for a broad range of payments needs.
“Throughout the payments life cycle, there are many services and many vendors that we can bring into play,” Cohen told PYMNTS, “and the challenge for the merchant [is] to find the balance between the digital skill set and the cost of achieving that digital skill set.”