Adyen: Platforms Help Online Merchants Borrow the Best of In-Store Experience

It’s happening behind the scenes and before our eyes. Checkout is changing fast. But some would argue it isn’t changing fast enough to keep up with trends steering the payments sector.

In curious reversals, the deeper we move into what looks like the post-pandemic, the more it looks like there will be a commingling of habits from before and those acquired during lockdown living. One thing that isn’t going away with face masks is the improved customer experience that the connected economy has created nearly across the board over the past couple of years.

Making those experiences easier — and available wherever we want them — is the business of companies like Netherlands-based Ayden. Speaking with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster for the ‘One Thing’ series, Adyen North America President Brian Dammeir isn’t shy about the future of commerce.

“The way we look at the evolution of the next 5 to 10 years is that the distinction between digital eCommerce and in-person interactions is starting to gray and frankly is probably going to eliminate over time,” he said.

“What we’re finding is that merchants and customers are looking forward to what we call unified commerce. Whether it’s via an app, in person, a terminal, a card, what have you, merchants are realizing that they’re going to need to offer all those flows because different consumers are going to be expecting different things,” he said.

“It’s more important for merchants to really pick what’s going to be most impactful based on who their consumers are,” Dammeir added.

See also: Digital Shift Boosts Payments Group Adyen’s Transaction Volumes 70%

Next Stop: ‘Truly Seamless’

Pressed for ‘the one thing’ requiring extra effort in 2022, Dammeir’s somewhat surprising response centered on making eCommerce more closely mimic the physical checkout.

“The thing we’re not talking about enough is, ‘How can we make eCommerce or online payments look more like in-store?’ In-store is still evolving but you must admit, whether you’re tapping, swiping or dipping, it’s pretty straightforward, it works all the time and there’s effectively no fraud. That’s not how eCommerce works.”

Adding that “punching in 16 digits on a website, that will need to go away,” Dammeir noted that EMV chips, network tokens and 3DS2 are all integrated into the Adyen platform.

“We’re in the weeds on all those standards, building directly into them. I’m very hopeful where that’s going, along with all the other payment methods that are evolving the digital ecosystem.”

See also: Adyen Releases Score Machine Learning Solution

Embedded Embarks

Asked about the difficulties of evolving, maintaining and scaling a unified commerce platform, Dammeir didn’t downplay the complications but said Adyen is up for the challenge.

Calling out “balancing innovation with predictability” as the axis on which unified commerce spins, he said: “Because we’re a tech company but we understand the enterprise mindset, the question is, ‘How can we be fast and iterate a lot, but break very little?’ It’s a very easy thing to say out loud, but balancing those two things [is challenging].”

“For retailers, at the end of the day, that transaction has to go through. For subscriptions, any involuntary churn is central to your bottom line, so the ultimate balancing act we have as an organization is, ‘How can we make sure we’re keeping these two things always in check?’”

Almost regardless of the merchant or brand, Adyen is passing the message that “the traditional till is going to go away. We’re advising them to really see the store as an experience center and orient their organization in that direction. The other is payment method proliferation, whether that’s in North America or abroad. And how do you navigate what consumers are demanding?”

Short answer: You do it with a platform built to handle it.

Dammeir said: “Anybody who runs today, whether it’s a commerce platform, a point-of-sale or whatever, is wanting to embrace embedded payments and embedded finance. Basically, every platform woke up in the last two years and realized what embedding payments can do for their proposition, as well as for their bottom line, so all of them are asking a lot of questions there.”

See also: Mastercard Names 16 Partners to Its Real-Time Digital Payments Program