Learnings of a payments newbie

It's been a month since I joined #Adyen and I thought to share some of my learnings in the payments space so far.

Firstly, payments is complicated. There are so many ways to pay today. Payments has evolved from barter trade to money to cash, credit card, debit card to FPX (online bank-in) to QR payments (e-Wallets) to Tap to Pay (i.e Apple Pay, Google Pay) etc. In Malaysia, the most popular payment methods (besides cash) are FPX (online transfer), debit and credit card and eWallets (Touch N' Go and GrabPay).

Secondly, people around the world pays differently. For example in Germany where the Germans are taught to be financially prudent since young, credit card is not really a popular payment method there. Debit, direct bank in or cash on delivery works well in Germany. Contrast this to the UK where credit is seen as an enabler. Hence credit card is a preferred payment method in the UK. In countries with growing GDP per capita like Brazil, the locals prefer installment payment plans (IPP). So if you are a merchant offering IPP in Brazil, you are more likely to resonate with the local shoppers.

Thirdly, online payments is complex. For example, when you tap your credit card at a payment terminal or buys something online, the transaction is routed to the gateway, risk assessment software, processing / acquiring which then connects to the schemes (Visa, Master, Amex, JCB..) and then lastly communication with issuing banks. If all is well, the transaction is magically done in 3-5 seconds. However, as you can see from the chain mentioned, there are so many points of failure and if a payment does not go through, a merchant has no idea where is the point of failure and there is nothing he/she can do other than re-try or ask the shopper for another payment method. Have you had a frustrating payment experience in retail or online recently?

In my next post, I'll share how #Adyen makes it easy for large scale businesses to seamlessly accept payments around the globe.