The Evolving World Of Payments

By Business Solutions magazine

Merchant Warehouse — Facilitating The Future

Payments and transactions are rapidly changing. Within the next couple of years, payments, as we know them today, will be a completely different experience. The next evolution will make the move from cash to plastic seem minor in retrospect. Although next generation payments have not reached a tipping point, the new era is currently being driven by three major factors: technology, compliance, and customer experience. Merchant Warehouse, a fourteenyear payments leader, is facilitating the future of mobile payments by creating technology, security, and customer experience innovations that will help solutions providers to capitalize on the future of payments.

Technology
Payments technology has changed more in the last ten years than in the previous one hundred. With the number of mobile solutions around the corner, including ewallets, QR based loyalty programs, and mobile gifting, the coming years will become even more transformational for the industry. Unfortunately, solutions providers have to determine which partners and emerging technology to back. How can anyone know which will succeed with mass consumer adoption and which will not? Choosing wrong may be detrimental, but if you wait, you may miss the entry window with customers. Should we mention that VARs that don’t adopt might have a less competitive product offering? Merchant Warehouse envisions a future where solutions providers are not burdened with integrating only certain payment types. The key to payments technology will be to create an open system with the ability to accept as many transactional forms as possible.

Compliance
With the number of targeted attacks against businesses of all sizes, compliance and security cannot be treated as a back burner issue. However, these compliance issues are often highly complex and completely separate from a solutions provider’s area of expertise. This reality has unfortunately led to pain points around forcing solution providers and their customers into unfamiliar territory: security and compliance. Merchant Warehouse believes that the key to strengthening compliance in the coming years is to remove solutions providers from the security burden by providing a consistently updated service that silos payments. Ultimately, this approach’s goal is to allow providers to step away from compliance and focus solely on their expert offerings.

Consumer Experience
The third major change in the payments evolution involves consumer experience. Generally, people are happy with using a credit or debit card for their purchases. For that reason, the next payments evolution will have to become more than just a replacement for plastic. The next stage will provide customers with an engaging experience. Customers can check out a store before they step into it and once in the store they can find deals and rewards. Along with this, mobile gifting provides consumers with a more efficient way to use gift cards. These attributes move payments far beyond the transaction at the checkout counter. Merchant Warehouse believes that customer experience will be a paramount concern for solutions providers looking to create the best possible engagement and retention strategies. By focusing on the payments evolution, especially how to address technology, security, and customer experience, Merchant Warehouse is determined to help solutions providers stay at the forefront of this rapidly evolving space. Once solutions providers have the correct partners in place, they can easily equip themselves to handle the future and continue to provide the best technology for their customers.

Merchant Warehouse
One Federal Street, 2nd Floor
Boston, MA 02110
PH: (800) 498-0823
www.merchantwarehouse.com