Halloween and Payments!

Yes, there is a connection to Halloween and Payments!

Let me explain - I was searching for a Halloween costume to gift someone, found it on Pinterest, got directed to a retailers website and did a pick up in store for same day pick-up. My entire product search to store pick-up journey was completed in less than 2 hours from diverse channels across different vendors. I was following a sports influencer whose pin got me engaged to begin with. As I was shopping and building my cart online, I got prompted to add 2 more items to match with the costume theme, which I did. When in-store, waiting for my pickup, I saw a QR code to scan for a seasonal saving, when I scanned it, it took me to the merchants app giving me my next cup of coffee for free if I shared it on Pinterest (amongst other social media apps). As you can imagine by the headline of this article, I found it very interesting to close my search to buy loop in this manner within a 2 hour time frame.

I am a firm believer in how consumer centricity is going to be the key enabler for commerce and more so, to decouple the 2% margin business most payment providers find themselves in.

As consumer demographics change and a bigger share of expendable income moves to Gen Y and Z, there is a plethora of change in behavioral dynamics which impact search to buy modalities. Merchants are tracking, are the vendors servicing them ready?

I think there are 3 big trends emerging which will directly shape consumer journeys:

1.?????Digital Wallets

2.?????Super Apps

3.?????Social Commerce

There is enough research out there which talks about usage and adoption trends. What I find absolutely intriguing is the ability of the above solutions to recognize and track various personas of the same consumer and present it to merchants to engage with in the right context for relevant commerce. Alipay+ and WeChat Pay as an example have an astounding array of apps which a consumer can participate in during the course of a regular day. Within this context, presentment of offers, messaging and relevant content in a contextual manner is limitless. All of this for the most part runs on existing payment rails. Strategically, any modernization RFP is going to require competing on the ability to orchestrate effectiveness amongst a multitude of vendors to create magic for the consumer in those 2 hours or less. 苹果 Pay, 谷歌 Pay, PayPal , Venmo and various regional wallet players are also ramping up towards this.

Payments vendors need to build for scale and partner for targeted solutions. We all need to play well for the new North Star – the consumer! (who we need to find a way to reach through our merchants)

As I had written before: “Orchestration is the art and science of arranging a musical composition for performance by an orchestra or another ensemble. A good show, on the other hand, is orchestrating - keeping the audience in mind. Successful commerce orchestration is not being a sole winner. It’s about creating a good show and that almost always never happens alone”?

Trick or Treat?