Guido Vermeent, Payconiq’s CEO, talked with Daniel van Delft, CEO of Currence (iDEAL) about partnerships, focusing on the latest and future trends. They shared their vision on the payment industry and how Payconiq International and Currence shape the future of payments together.
Since COVID-19, the demand for digital solutions and mobile payments has continuously increased. Consumers use their smartphones increasingly for online and offline purchases and expect a seamless payment flow that’s easy, flexible, and includes options such as “Buy Now, Pay Later.” The payment journey is a critical step from a merchant’s perspective, allowing the client to stay within the merchant checkout environment to successfully conclude a purchase.
Conversion is key, and intuitive value-added services are high on merchants’ wish list. Payment is just one step in a broader checkout experience. With legitimate innovations, the payment can be more deeply embedded in a seamless shopping user journey.
Currence (iDEAL) and Payconiq International clearly benefit from their collaboration in order to tackle its daily and future challenges. As Daniel van Delft puts it:
“Partnering with Payconiq International was a logical step of our growth strategy: they had a proven product based on cloud technology. They have the knowledge and the expertise we needed to create and manage a hub where all fundamental players of the payment ecosystem are connected.”
Today, one of the major challenges in the payments industry is the fragmented competitive landscape. Real time account-to-account payments — such as iDEAL processed by Payconiq International — compete with the traditional debit card payments on-line and more and more at the point-of-sale. This drives Payconiq International and Currence to promptly bring new solutions to the market, increase brand visibility, and ensure a constant innovation pipeline.
The convergence of the physical and digital set-up brings many opportunities. Payment trends will evolve by facilitating the consumer to share their “consent” for merchants to initiate seamless payments. This form of tokenization enables merchants to allow consumers to complete a purchase in one click or even support subscription-based models securely with low friction.
Identification combined with consent becomes pivotal in the “data exchange world”. This could result in strong identification enablement by Payconiq International to support all stakeholders.
Faster checkouts can be achieved through means like early registration — a fast checkout experience is key for the launch of the new iDEAL. According to Daniel van Delft:
“This evolution needs to be seamless: users should not notice a change or a distortion in their current way of paying. In our proposed journey, we urge our consumers to register as early as possible to enjoy faster checkout.”
To grow further, companies like Currence (iDEAL) need to stay innovative and at pace with the latest market trends. However, if big players in the market want to move forward, they must clarify to the consumers the real, added, and tangible value in the registration step for a one- or two-click payment experience.
Any company needs to identify and anticipate the expectations of its customers. Value-added services can bring more to the table to benefit both consumers and merchants. For example, with digital-embedded loyalty solutions that give consumers incentives for using the merchant services, consumers can experience a better user experience, while merchants benefit from revenue growth through safe and guaranteed payments.
According to Daniel van Delft:
“We also have a role to play as -critical and essential infrastructure-. The way forward is to evolve to an account-to-account-based setup in a verified way. This way, we can ensure a checked and clear set of data when processing a transaction. A key success factor for a payment scheme is to be trusted and to stay vital.”
Size matters in the payment industry. Payconiq and Currence have a joint ambition to scale, add more volumes, and build the best customer journey for their clients and partners. To stay competitive, they focus on innovation, scaling, partnership, and cooperation.
Meanwhile, Daniel van Delft remains optimistic as he expressed:
“We position ourselves as a scheme by which we can serve all parties of the value chain. We have the right partners to build on towards the future in order to develop value-added services and any new game changing feature. This is, finally, a volume game. Let’s surprise the world!”
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