Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
The Pulse of Payments: Swipe Right on SoftPOS: Unlocking Payment Freedom with Jason Stanchfield | Episode 298
Unlock the potential of SoftPOS technology with Jason Stanchfield from Ingenico, and ride the wave of the future in merchant payment solutions. Imagine the convenience of turning any NFC-enabled device into a secure, flexible payment terminal—this is the reality we discuss with Jason, whose unique background from the streets of Los Angeles to life in the Navy, and finally to the innovative realm of merchant services, brings us an unparalleled perspective on the evolution of payment systems. Learn how SoftPOS is revolutionizing transactions, offering businesses an adaptable and sleek way to handle sales with ease, while also delving into the seamless integration with existing POS systems.
This episode peels back the layers of SoftPOS's applications, demonstrating its utility in a diverse range of business environments, from the corner store to the most dynamic pop-up events. Jason walks us through the minimal training required for staff, the customization options available for branding, and the heightened security measures that set this platform apart. We scrutinize every angle, from the merchant's initial selection process to the comprehensive sales tracking capabilities. Discover the transformative power of SoftPOS as we explore its role in meeting the ever-evolving demands of modern commerce with Jason's expertise guiding us every step of the way.
Welcome to this special Pulse of Payment series titled Swipe right on SoftPause Unlocking Payment Freedom, a special six-part series brought to you in collaboration with Ingenico, the global leader in payments. Softpause is a revolutionary technology that lets merchants accept payments on any smartphone or device, unlocking a world of possibilities. Join us as we dive deep into SoftPause with Ingenico. Thought leaders, satisfied customers and innovative partners. Discover how this flexible solution can streamline your checkout, expand your reach and deliver a seamless payment experience for your customers, all while moving your commerce forward. Buckle up and get ready to swipe right on SoftPause and unlock payment freedom.
Speaker 2:This is the first in a series of six Pulse of Payments episodes focused on SoftPause. To start the series, I welcome Jason Stanchfield from Ingenico. Hi, jason, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast and especially this special series of the Pulse of Payments. So welcome, hey Greg. Thank you very much for having me. Absolutely Well, let's dive right in. If you don't mind, tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live and, if you don't mind, touch on your professional journey a little bit as well. Sure, I'm happy to.
Speaker 3:I grew up in LA, los Angeles. My dad was a retired LA narcotics investigator. When he retired from LA he took the whole family up to Oregon, so we moved from downtown LA to a far mountain Oregon. We're really kind of crazy experienced. And it happened to be in my teens. And then after that I joined the Navy. I did not go to college immediately and I was in the Navy security group and did my service there. I lived in Florida where I got married, and then I got stationed in Maine and did my time without ever stepping foot on a ship, which I thought was impressive. That is now currently in Washington state. So if you followed that, I went from California to Florida, to Maine, to Washington state. So I've lived in all four corners of the US and I find this my home and I've been here for about 20, 25 years and I've got three boys.
Speaker 2:Okay, and maybe walk us through your professional journey a little bit.
Speaker 3:Sure, after the military I got into high tech, did the telecom business for a long time and then fell out of that and into value added services through technical software and networking gear, and I always found myself in that kind of business and more of a sales role. But what happened somewhere in there? My wife at the time had opened a retail business, I think it was about 2005. And quickly we found out that the credit card side of the business was a really big expense and so I got into figuring out those numbers, like I kind of dive into most things, and I remember a first data wrap I still remember her name but I won't share it Came in and actually told me all about first data and I thought who the heck is this company and what do they do?
Speaker 3:Next thing, you knew, I worked for the company and I figured out how to understand interchange and the basics and I was a merchant rep running around without any bank relationships and not any partnerships, trying to figure out how to help my friends and family who have businesses to stay in business and have to pay less. So that's kind of how I got into this world. Things changed after that, for sure, but I started in merchant services in 2006 and 2007, reprogramming hypercoms or Trans 330s, those little terminals that were connected to dial up back in the day, moving people off of knucklebusters into the new technology of credit card payments with a terminal.
Speaker 2:Okay, and do you want to fast forward from there to today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess I got lucky enough. The big pivot moment was when first data at the time was owned by KKR. Now, 10 years later, after that, I exit and find myself at Ingenico with Fawz doing the same thing, trying to teach the Ingenico world how to be a value added, how to do more than just a terminal and have a platform for development that can meet our customers, our clients, where they need to be met, to make payments better and easier and faster, more secure.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay, great, that's a perfect segue into the next question. So tell our audience a little bit about Ingenico and maybe where SoftPawz fits into the overall company.
Speaker 3:Ingenico has been around and what are probably the largest terminal supplier, payments terminals in the world I think they've been around about 40 years, with about 50 million terminals out there being deployed and managed, and they acquired Fawz, who had been around four years doing SoftPawz, and that's a little bit of a step, like it's a leap. They've been doing payment terminals and SoftPawz, via Fawz, is a payment application. So we're moving out of a PCI hardened piece of equipment that's deployed in a secure environment the entire way to a payment app that can be pushed to any device that has an EMV Excuse me, any device that has an NFC chip in it and turn that into a payment terminal instantly.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, maybe take us a little deeper into soft pause and what it is, and define it a little more, if you don't mind.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 3:So back when soft pause and vase started, it was a brand new idea and everyone in the industry was trying to create a payment app.
Speaker 3:Paws kind of went a little bit different direction and thought let's make a product that can be a partner facing payment application or orchestration layer to help our partners actually sell that to their partners and help them manage those merchants and those endpoints, all on a really smart dashboard and easy to be co-branded or rebranded with the partner logos or the end user customer logos on the payment application itself.
Speaker 3:So it just kind of took a little different spin. Coming out of FISA or FIRST data, where most payment solutions are committed to their processing partnerships or their bank partnerships, paws was not that we were agnostic in a platform to let people do what they wanted with it. And then the marriage or the acquisition by Ingenico fit perfectly because that's exactly what Ingenico did, also through the terminal side. So we get to use both companies now to manage these opportunities to let our partners of any type be it an enterprise client to a processing or a bank partner to the small, medium customer have a payment application solution that is custom built for themselves and they use and pick what they want, out of our layers, out of our APIs and SDKs, to make it their payment solution.
Speaker 2:So when I try to visualize this, should my visualization be like a smartphone that has an NFC chip, or are there other devices beyond some smartphones, iPads, things like that? Is that the right way to think about it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess, if let me help you say it the right way, or a little slower, to really unpack what soft paws is. When I say payment application, most people don't know what that means, right, but I think most of the generations now have their digital wallet on their phone where they have their card in their Google Pay or their Samsung Pay or their Apple Pay and you pay with a double click. We just reverse that where let you be paid with that same technology. So the business owner can use their phone or their Android device, anything with that NFC chip enabled in it to accept a payment. So, instead of enabling your wallet to give money, you're enabling your phone to take money and it becomes that terminal in your pocket or your terminal. That could be a purpose built device. That's not a phone. It could be an Android or a barcode scanner or anything else that is purpose built for a business that we just layer on the payment application to that same device.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got you perfect. So what is the value to the merchants?
Speaker 3:Well, the easiest is.
Speaker 3:I think the goal is to obviously make it really convenient for your consumers to pay the way they want to pay, when they want to pay.
Speaker 3:I know when I owned that business a long time ago, we would operate seven days a week because, well, it helped us make more money.
Speaker 3:I mean, we weren't closed on Sundays, we wanted to maximize the hours in the day. But, for example, if we wanted to add an off-site event where we might bring in another day's worth of revenue at a special event, we'd have to pack up our credit card terminal or point a sales system and drag it along with us, hoping that we could connect it with power or connect it to a network and to take a credit card payment. This will do all of that without anybody having to worry. So the value of the merchant a simple merchant. It's a payment terminal and they're probably in the pocket. They can take it and meet their clients wherever they want to be met. So it is easy to use, easy to accept, it's secure and convenient and hopefully, as the experience grows, we'll find larger and larger use cases that just kind of start to blow your mind on how we're going to make a payment journey easier for businesses not to be tied to a counter or the normal traditional point of sale.
Speaker 2:Really, you gave us a good example of maybe how a small merchant might use it in a remote scenario, and I'm sure there are multiple use cases. So maybe cover the use cases. If there's another one for small businesses that you want to mention, that'd be great, but can you cover, like, how an enterprise merchant may use it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, certainly Small merchants drive the business of the US. I mean, there are millions and millions of merchants out there, but the medium size and their larger enterprise all have good use cases. It's funny we were in New York at NRF and they were coming to us saying and I would think, oh, I know the answer right. But if you just ask a question to a larger enterprise, what are they thinking? You'd be surprised with the development of payments that they want to leverage to make this easier. Again, they just want to meet that consumer and make it convenient without really even thinking about that actual transaction. And when you get off the airplane and you go to your hotel, you get an Uber or a Lyft and you don't make a payment. It's all part of the transaction, right, it's just done so. I think we're going to get that way with more and more enterprise clients.
Speaker 3:But, for example, there's a very large I guess what do you want to call it? I don't want to use a hypothetical the Girl Scouts sell cookies like crazy. They're going to launch their season in a couple of weeks. I don't know if you know that they're the second largest cookie distribution company during the season of the entire cookie business world. They do $800 million in sales each season. Kid grief and, yes, those little girls probably all have cell phones in their pocket, and so today they're using a terminal they got to get trained on, they got to figure out how to use it, they got to manage where it is and who's got it and all sorts of different complexities to it.
Speaker 3:But with this example, yes, that may seem like a small business, but really, when it's $800 million in sales, with thousands and thousands of remote salespeople doesn't matter what their age is we can make this easy. We can enable commerce and we can make the consumer happy. I don't walk around with cash anymore. I want to pay with my watch, my phone or my credit card, and a soft pause solution on a phone or any kind of NFC enabled device will accept that and let that transaction happen securely and quickly. Then really really easy.
Speaker 3:So, yes, you can manage it all. You can see where it's happening and that's just one example, but there are thousands of them where you may have a large enterprise client. That may be AAA, it may be Home Depot, they all have ways that they're doing traditional point of sale today and we all queue up and wait in line to pay. You don't know how many people run out because they just don't have time. So a soft pass technology could actually enable that business to do that business right. When they're helping you at the counter try to figure out what plumbing part you need, and you're trying to figure it all out with assistance, which is great. But if you can complete the sale the exact same time is kind of nice. And I tell you. You know, when I'm going grocery shopping, right, you put everything in a basket, then you get to the line and take everything out of the basket.
Speaker 2:And then you have to put it back in the basket.
Speaker 3:There you go, so let's just pretend you don't have to do that anymore. When you take it off the shelf, it could be actually your. Your shopping cart could be that point of sale system with an Android device attached to it Watching you all put it in and then you just push it out of your car. You're gone. That's really where we're going to go. I think I'm trying to help. My job is to help our sales teams at Ingenico work with their clients to find these opportunities and create the value that is a better payment solution for their customers. That's as simple as that. It sounds simple, but, by the way, I love it when I get in these conversations and I think I know where they're headed with the questions and then I'm surprised. Sometimes I'm like I hadn't even considered this use case. So there are small, medium ones where you can just simply help them run their business better, maybe help them enable more sales, which is all about and not lose business because you're not meeting your client where they want to be.
Speaker 2:Let's stick with this theme of use cases. Are there some that maybe use cases or situations where soft pause is not appropriate or not the right fit you?
Speaker 3:know. I saw that question and I thought about it and it's really tricky one. The I don't know is the best answer I can give you, because I don't try to sell, I guess right, I'm finding buyers. I want to educate them with this new technology of how to do, or how they can accept, payments and then let them, let us figure out the journey of if this fits for their solution. We may not fit everybody today with this, but I'm surprised by every use case that I get into what I see around the corner. And again, because it's an Android payment application intent, we can kind of enable almost anybody to make it happen.
Speaker 3:I was just on the phone with an events company who has really large festivals once a year and you know the deploying of a terminal to this the sales force that's going to run that event maybe volunteers is really complicated cycle of shipping and receiving and coordinating and understanding and tracking where that hardware is. Instead of you can give them a quick two minute YouTube video on how to install an app onto their phone and take a payment. It's kind of going to change how we're doing things and just simplifies. So I don't know if there's really necessarily an easy way to say there's not a good fit. I just think we got to be careful, we got to make sure it's providing the value that that client wants. I think it's pretty incredible when you think about it. And then, because it's software, we can customize it. We can make it look like that hypothetical of the Girl Scouts it could be that Girl Scout cookie logo on that payment application. That makes us all happy, makes them really proud of their product and it makes you know the buyer secure and feel, you know, comfortable paying that way to a device that someone else took out of their pocket perhaps.
Speaker 3:But again, I think we're going to grow in this business of payments and I think we're going to see that it's just going to change faster and faster and faster. And yes, like the old Hypercom or Trans 330s, some of these older devices are going to go away, but they're still. I mean, hey, my mom's still writing a check, right, there are use cases everywhere. But I think as the payment landscape starts to change, we'll start to figure out more and more and maybe there will be a few places where it doesn't quite fit Because, again, that check example, we're not able to accept that. But we can turn on the camera and scan a QR code. So there are ways that we can do these things, but it just depends if it's really going to fit the need for that consumer or that partner in their actual payment process.
Speaker 2:So is there any special training or knowledge that's required by the retailer or the employee?
Speaker 3:It's pretty simple, right? I mean, if I was to show you the demo, you would be shocked. It can be automatically connected to your point of sale system so that the payment value is just populated in the payment app. So there's really no user interaction other than I'm going to present you a payment terminal in my hand and let you tap your card or your watch or phone to that device and often you go, you're done. It's that simple, so I don't think there's a lot of training needed Now to manage it.
Speaker 3:Like anything, we provide a dashboard to let the partners control who has what responsibility in that environment. Can they take a payment, yes or no? Can they refund a payment yes or no? Can they do a void? What devices are they using? What software version are they on? That's all managed through our self-service management portal. It's really easy to manage that. But that's the only next layer that a partner would have to understand, and most of them are already doing something like that today through a dashboard of anything that they're using for their payment solution. So, as a user, no, as a consumer, no. I think it's just an awareness of a new way to do business and a comfort level. That will happen here really quickly.
Speaker 2:So maybe let's walk through what I'll call the merchant journey. So a merchant say small business, pick a merchant any size. I guess they decide they want to use this solution. What's the first step?
Speaker 3:Sure, On a business side, if I was the merchant, the first step is making that selection that I'm going to do this and we're going to give them an email that gives them basically the. It pushes the application to them, gives them a username and password, let them start and then they install. So, just like any other application that you might end installing your phone, it takes just a couple of minutes to have that done and within a second or two you can launch it. And today our canned version comes out with a big US currency dollar sign as to start a payment logo. So you just push that button, you can enter in a dollar amount and it says tap card. I mean it's pretty intuitive to run this solution. Again, it can be customized by partners so we can tie it into their automotive oil change process or we can put it into your gym workout, your personal trainer process. You can do menus and have it pushed values to the device to make payments. But in the basic form it really is just a simple enter a dollar amount, tap a card and then it asks or prompts the user how do you want your receipt? Do you want to scan a QR code? Do you want to enter in an email or a phone number. We can also print it if you have a my printer at home, right, it's just a Bluetooth enabled printer, so you can associate a printer to your phone and it will print if you wanted to. So yeah, it kind of just is a simple way.
Speaker 3:The device, our application, then lets the merchant or business see their daily sales, let them see how they're doing this week versus this month or a certain time of the year. Some search for transactions if they need to do anything like refund or avoids. You know, can we even even change the language. You know, it's just. It's amazing what software can do Like. Think about the day where you could never do that on a terminal and, yes, it was a little bit tricky to even get the application secure and downloaded or updated via dial up. Right now, it takes just a couple minutes to install. Again, if you want to change the language or change the currency, it's just part of the setting. When you set it up and you're off and running. That's pretty quick, okay.
Speaker 2:And given in Genico's large global company? Is this solution available everywhere or only like in the US and the EU?
Speaker 3:It's everywhere Again. Fos has been operating for four years. They are currently active in 14 countries the US is the latest venture for FOS and really just come into market. The technical side of what FOS and Genico does is we do all the certifications to make sure we have the payment payload being handled or handed to a partner of choice. For example, if you're using FIServ as your payment processing company, we have to have the encryption keys with FIServ to hand off that payment load to them so they can finish the process. We do all of that behind the scenes to make sure, and we've got about 30 of those relationships already stood up today. We're usually knocking out one every other month to make sure we're able to direct payments to any partner you want it to go to without having to really think about it.
Speaker 2:Okay, that makes perfect sense. Do you see certain verticals finding it more attractive than others?
Speaker 3:Well, I think the easiest one is the remote or the dispersed sales force. You can go into verticals such as I mean I was tempted to say landscaping or repair. We all have the winter that just hit us. Some of us might need a new roof, who knows right. And if that business comes knocking on your door and you're going to agree to let them repair your roof, sure nice that they can actually take a payment from you right then and there without having to worry about another piece of equipment. If they have it connected, if they didn't forget it, if it's powered.
Speaker 3:This is that remote mobile sales force. It's just an easy first vertical I think we'll run into. But yeah, there are so many opportunities out there to engage your partners in that most of us don't think about it. But I mean, it really is. It is just meeting the customer where they want. I don't care if you're just walking around the countertop in your retail establishment to be more personal with your customer, but you can do that instead of having a countertop or terminal tying you down and it lets you give. Maybe better service will helps you produce more value and retain your clients better by having a more personal payment interaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly sounds like sort of that remote businesses that are in the field or whatever you want to call. It's kind of the low hanging fruit. And then there are other use cases. I mean like the line busting and things like that that we've kind of talked about. That that makes sense, so that all makes a lot of sense. So where do you, where do you see softboss heading in the next, say, three to five years? What's what's possible with this solution?
Speaker 3:You know it's funny. I think about that one all the time, right, and I do wonder where we're going to go and how far we can take it. I just think we're going to listen to our clients, tell us what they want, and we're going to enable that. We're may not be saying here's where we think it's going to go. I think our our goal, and and Jenneco and Fawze is to listen to our partners and support what they want to do.
Speaker 3:I, as a consumer, just want to do payments in the future where I don't have to think about it. My phone is in my pocket most of the time. I know my phone knows me and I trust it. You know I trust it with my biometrics. I don't use a code to log into my phone. It looks at my face.
Speaker 3:But if my phone knows where I'm at and it can also somehow associate that it knows where I'm at and that's a business that I might be doing business with, it would be really nice to think down the road. We're just doing a payment, you know, by near field communications or something like that. It is really just. I am here shopping and I can just check out wherever I want. I know what Amazon has been doing these things where you really don't have a checkout process, and that's where I do think that that software, these partners, are going to drive us to improve this security and the recognition that I want to make a purchase and off and go. And if we can give everyone more time in their day, shoot with COVID right.
Speaker 3:Everyone wanted you know hands free. No interaction stays this far apart, not say we're going back there, god help us. But I do think that an easier solution for pain and understanding it was the secure payment and it was approved transaction is great. I hope that the payment you know world goes along with that journey to make sure that we're enabling that securely and that we're not really stuck in the way of having to have a physical plastic card in our pocket. My kids don't have, they don't really go or have the idea of what a bank really is anymore. You know, when they get a phone, they get an Apple Pay, they get a credit card offer. It's all technology or a Neobank experience. So I think we're going to change as the future rolls on, this traditional credit card bank terminal solution to be more of a technology-embraced partner solution. That is just exactly what the consumer expected as a relationship with that product that they wanted and an easy way to check out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because there's a lot of trends there that are converging. When you talk about kind of where you see this going, you know removing the friction, you know the Gen Zs of the world are going to drive a cardless society at some point. You know the value of your phone. You don't need a wallet anymore. I mean all of those things are coming together and it sounds like you guys are kind of on the you know forefront of making that happen from a technology and an app perspective. So so that's really cool. Where can people go to learn more about the solution?
Speaker 3:Well, in Genicocom and under products, you can slide down to the bottom. It's only at the bottom because it's alphabetical, but SoftPause is in the product of in Genico and you can certainly click that button. It'll direct you through the product information that's on that site, or an easy way to reach out and have someone like me and a Subject Manager Expert reach out and engage you.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. Well, jason, thank you so much for being on the show today. I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 3:Hey, greg, it's been my pleasure. I can't believe, somehow, that I've been in this business long enough to be considered a payment expert, but I don't think I'm that old. But I am happy to be part of this journey and I'm really excited to see where in Genico and FOS takes us in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thanks again for being on the show. I really appreciate it. All right, have a great day you too, and to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to explore how soft pause can unlock payment freedom for your business, please visit businessingenicocom. Slash, swipe, dash right. Dash on dash soft pause.