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Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
Special Series: The World of Ecommerce: Thriving Online with Chintan Gandhi & Rob Ward, Worldpay | Episode 354
Ever wondered how small and medium-sized businesses can not just survive but thrive in the complex world of ecommerce? You’re about to find out. Join us as we sit down with Chintan Gandhi and Rob Ward from Worldpay, two industry veterans who share their fascinating career journeys and insights. From Chintan’s move from India to the UK and his deep-rooted experience in payments to Rob’s transition from law to a decade in the payments sector, this episode offers a rich tapestry of personal stories and professional wisdom. Together, they shed light on the dynamic evolution of ecommerce in the UK and how Worldpay’s global expertise can be a game-changer for SMBs looking to make their mark online.
COVID-19 has reshaped many industries, and we plunge into its profound impact on the restaurant sector in the US and the UK. Discover how traditional establishments, including countryside pubs, have pivoted to embrace online and curbside services. The conversation dives into the rise of mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay, now dominating over 50% of UK transactions. We delve into the pressing challenges SMB merchants face, such as fraud, security, cash flow, and conversion rates. Learn how Worldpay’s advanced solutions, including cutting-edge fraud detection and strong customer authentication, are paving the way for merchants to navigate these hurdles effectively. Packed with actionable strategies, this episode is an essential listen for anyone looking to master the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape for SMBs in the UK.
Thank you at the heart of great e-commerce experiences globally, whether you are just starting out or upscaling your business, we'll discuss current and future trends in the UK e-commerce landscape and dive into merchant pain points and world pay solutions. Additionally, our experts will touch on actionable strategies and tips to help your business thrive online.
Greg Myers:Hi everyone, this is Greg Myers, the host of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Today we have two special guests joining the show Chintan Gandhi, director of Strategic Planning and Go-To-Market, and Rob Ward, product Director Ecommerce from WorldPay. So welcome to the show and especially welcome to this special collaboration between the Leaders in Pay payments and WorldPay. So in this episode, we'll be discussing the SMB e-commerce landscape. So thank you both. So much for being here today. Hi Greg, it's great to be here.
Chintan Gandhi:Great to be with you, Greg.
Greg Myers:So let's go ahead and dive in Chintan. Let's start with you. 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, a few things like that and if you can touch a little on your professional journey as well.
Chintan Gandhi:Yeah, sure, I actually grew up and did my schooling in India and then moved to the UK to pursue my master's MBA. I currently live in Hertfordshire, which is just outside London. On the professional front, I worked in the payment space for almost 15 years in various roles across business strategy, partnerships, business development, product management and, more recently, I've been leading on the go-to-market and commercialization of our strategic solutions for WorldPay.
Greg Myers:Okay, great, rob, over to you.
Rob Ward:Yes, I grew up in rural England, in a small town in the countryside, I found my way to university to study geography. When I finished there I thought about a career in law. So I was working for a law firm, did my law diploma and then found an advert to work in payment for a merchant. So I joined that business and managed relationships with acquirers and payment gateways and really got into it and wanted to learn more, wanted to explore more of that career. So then I joined Wellpay just over 10 years ago, worked across operations, technical pre-sales implementation over those years and most recently moving into product leadership role on the SMB commerce side. So yeah, that's been my time and recently just finished my MBA at Cranfield University as well.
Greg Myers:So never ended up going the law direction.
Rob Ward:No, I think I felt at the time that it was going to be a lot of work to be successful. And I looked at payments and I thought I think this is going to be really exciting. I think there's going to be a lot in this. So I've made the change and I'm really pleased that I did, because every day you learn something new in this industry, so it's been really exciting.
Greg Myers:Yeah, payments is a great space to be in. I've been in it close to 20 years, so definitely is a passion of mine. Chintan, I think most of our audience will know who WorldPay is and what you do, but if you don't mind, can you tell our audience in your own words a little about WorldPay?
Chintan Gandhi:Yeah, sure, I'd love to give a quick overview. Worldpay is actually a global leader in payments, powering businesses of all sizes, from small and medium-sized businesses to large global enterprises, enabling them to process payments in a seamless, reliable way, whether it's payment processing online or in-store, or through mobile, worldpay sits at the heart of many great commerce experiences that we encounter in our day-to-day life today. What really stands out about WorldPay is our ability to meet our customers' business needs when it comes to payments processing with the solutions that are designed to support each stage of their growth. For small and medium-sized businesses especially, worldpay offers innovative and easy-to-use, easy-to-implement payment solutions that really help them thrive. But when it comes to the key things around WorldPay, it's beyond technology and solutions. What really makes WorldPay special is our global reach and a diverse team of experts behind the scenes who bring a wide variety of perspectives to solve payment challenges and create seamless commerce experiences for everyone.
Greg Myers:Great, let's go ahead and dive into the topic. Rob this question's for you. Let's start at a high level, maybe the 50,000-foot level. How do you define e-commerce? Especially in the context of this series that we're doing together? How would you define e-commerce?
Rob Ward:Yeah, it's a really good question.
Rob Ward:I think, with a lot of definitions and concepts, particularly in payments, the answer can be a little bit elusive.
Rob Ward:But I think if you look at the history of the development of e-commerce, particularly in the SMB space, let's go back 30 years and payments was really kind of a process that just happened at the end of a very complicated flow on a website.
Rob Ward:In its infancy it was just purely about catching card data and submitting that into a payment gateway or acquirer and very kind of basic and that's probably what you saw as e-commerce back then.
Rob Ward:But I think, certainly in the last 10 years, what we've seen emerge there is a whole series of different channels where e-commerce can take place. It's not just on websites. It's on payment links that businesses kind of generate and send out, whether it's for a specific service that they've provided, but also then into kind of that emerging trend that we're seeing where SMBs are increasingly using the social media platforms to be the place where they engage with their consumers. So I think in terms of a definition, it's all encompassing of all of that kind of online activity that happens. It's not just about taking the payment, it's about how do you generate the interest and the demand for your brand through marketing activity, through to optimizing your website checkout conversion and then through to processing those payments as well. So it's a whole kind of ecosystem now that's developed and I think for SMBs now to be successful online, it takes a lot for them to navigate that space and they need the right set of partners to be successful.
Greg Myers:Chintan. Anything you'd like to add to that, I'll say that the way I would define.
Chintan Gandhi:E-commerce is much more than just buying and selling online. It's a connected ecosystem where businesses and consumers can interact seamlessly across borders, time zones and devices. It's the engine that powers the digital economy, and its impact is profound on us, not just for businesses, but all of us consumers in the day-to-day life, in terms of how we operate today.
Greg Myers:Sure, chintan, we'll stay with you. What is the current state of e-commerce in the UK?
Chintan Gandhi:E-commerce in the UK is at an incredibly dynamic state right now. Uk has been one of the leading markets for e-commerce. The pandemic shifted the consumer behavior overnight and really accelerated the e-commerce growth in the UK. People who might have been hesitant about shopping online to the businesses who were hesitant on trading online suddenly had to embrace it, and that shift has stuck with us ever since. Today, e-commerce isn't just about growing your business. In fact, it's embedded in the way the UK businesses and consumers operate every day.
Chintan Gandhi:The rise of e-commerce in the UK is really transforming the industries across different verticals and how businesses operate. It's no longer just about the brick and mortar stores having to capture their customer base, growing sales and revenue. It's about delivering that end-to-end experiences, both in terms of in-store and e-commerce. A lot of businesses are having to now incorporate AI-driven recommendations to enhance their customer experiences. I believe in the UK we currently are at the forefront of e-commerce transformation, which is significantly boosting our economy. E-commerce is no longer just an add-on but an integral part of most of the businesses in terms of how they operate and trade.
Greg Myers:Yeah, a quick follow-up to that Curious like here in the US one of the main shifts at least that COVID drove, I think was people buying curbside from restaurants and pickup, and maybe older generations here in the US who never really bought from a restaurant online or on a mobile device. That has become huge today. You see more people, it seems like, picking up food at curbside than you do sometimes even going in the restaurant. So, just using restaurants as an example, I mean, do you see that same thing happening there in the UK?
Chintan Gandhi:Yes, absolutely, Especially in the hospitality and the restaurant sectors, having that presence online alongside your main store or restaurant environment. It's not only just an additional add-on, as I said earlier, it's become an integral part. Most restaurants these days want to operate online. They want to increase their or grow their customer outreach to be able to deliver that experience online, over the phone, through virtual terminals, etc. It's a crucial part of how they grow their customer base and increase revenue.
Chintan Gandhi:I think just to add in there, if I can, I think it's amazing how entrepreneurial businesses are being about the opportunity of e-commerce the typical flow of bricks to clicks.
Chintan Gandhi:Stores like you've just described, traditional restaurants even if it's just the local pub in the countryside even they're now engaging in e-commerce. They're making sure that they can allow people to purchase food and drink and go and pick it up pre-order it. There's so many of those things that are happening now and I think how that's kind of changing the market a little bit is that you're seeing an increasing amount of verticalized SaaS software providers who are helping to solve a lot of those pain points, and so I think, as a payments solution provider, it's really important that we play a role in that ecosystem and have those partnerships and connectivity to really solve those problems. For SMB merchants and you mentioned mobile wallets the UK market is increasingly important. It's over 50% of transactions now being checked out using mobile wallets and that's just an emerging trend. We see so many of our merchants wanting to take Apple Pay and Google Pay for their payments and that's a really strong emerging trend, absolutely.
Greg Myers:So, rob, let's stick with you. What would you say are maybe the top three pain points that merchants have today?
Rob Ward:We spend a lot of time thinking about this in designing our solutions and our products for SMB merchants. Really try and get into the detail of what are those pain points, what are the things that we can help make life easier for SMBs? And I think the first one it comes out kind of top of mind in all of the market research that we do is fraud and insecurity. It's making sure that your transactions are secure from fraudsters, making sure that the integration that you're using is secure from anyone who's going to try and hack your system, etc. And so I think that really is kind of top of mind for a lot of merchants. And, of course, you've got to make sure that you keep on top of fraud, because it's bad for your brand, bad for your reputation as a business. If you get hit by that. That can really do a lot of damage to businesses, particularly when they're a little bit smaller, I think.
Rob Ward:Then, going into the second, I think it's then really about cash flow, access to cash. It's cost of living crisis, particularly within Europe, has been keenly felt by businesses. It's pushed up a lot of operating costs for them. Cash flow is even more important. So making sure that you've got not just a quick assessment timeline but also the company that's providing you with that liquidity is reliable and is constantly able to make those assessments too. So I think that's second, and then I think third is kind of that conversion game making sure that once you spend all of that money trying to drive the activity towards your website and then making sure that you make the most of that, people can find the products that they want on your website. You provide a really easy, convenient way to then check out and that checkout experience really smooth, offers the payment methods that are relevant for those shoppers. So I think for me those are my top three.
Greg Myers:Okay, chintan, anything you'd add?
Chintan Gandhi:to that? Yeah, the only thing I would like to that is the complexity in payment integration. What I mean by that is many businesses, especially the SMB businesses, struggle with integrating their solution to the payment processing solution through the different platforms they use today. They need to adopt to a solution, or they generally seek to a solution that is easy to set up, scalable and flexible to handle various payment methods that they want to adopt for their business and therefore that end consumers.
Greg Myers:Okay, great. So, rob, if you don't mind, will you touch on some of the solutions that WorldPay has? That helps maybe address some of those pain points you mentioned, sure.
Rob Ward:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if we're taking that first one, that top of mind globally, and it's bringing the insights of those emerging fraud trends to SMBs who otherwise wouldn't have access to that type of data, that type of insight, so that's proven to be a really important tool for our SMBs on our e-com solution. And then, secondly, it's ensuring that you're adhering to the emerging regulations around strong customer authentication. We've had PST2 in the EU and in the UK. There's a lot of then rules placed upon merchants to ensure that they're doing the right things when they're processing transactions. So our 3DS Flex product it's built in again into our e-com solution for SMBs and it helps make sure that customers are authenticated as they're checking out on our merchant websites. So a combination of those two are really powerful to help secure our merchant websites. I think then you know, touching on kind of the second one around cash flow, there we pride ourselves on making sure that we settle on time to our merchants and we offer a T plus one settlement for our SMB e-commerce merchants and we focus a lot on making sure that we're calculating those settlements right, that that settlement is sent on time to merchants so they receive the funds that they're owed and they can operate as a business.
Rob Ward:I think kind of getting into that fourth one around checkout conversion, but also the ease of integration that Shintan mentioned as well. Our integration point for SMBs for e-commerce is using our hosted payment pages and our hosted payment pages. There's a really kind of simple API for SMBs to integrate into we offer plugin connectivity on that as well platform of choice that they're using. They can easily integrate those hosted payment pages into that and then it makes it really smooth then in terms of the checkout journey. So try and make sure that those pages simple as possible, easy and intuitive to understand.
Rob Ward:Merchants can also fully customize those pages as well. So that really helps people who have spent a lot of time and effort building their brand out. The last thing that they want to do is go from their website, have a hosted payment page in an iframe or in a page redirect and for then that to be in the brand of the payments company. So it's really important that they have the opportunity to customize that to look and feel, because it isn't just really large enterprises that are now spending money and time and effort on their brand Increasingly. You see that in the SMB space as well. So it's really important for the merchants to be able to do that.
Greg Myers:Great Chintan over to you. This is sort of a two-part question. Can you speak to the future of e-commerce for small businesses in the UK? That's sort of part one the future of e-commerce and then a little at least what you can share about WorldPay's strategy.
Chintan Gandhi:Yeah, sure, Looking at the future of e-commerce for SMBs in the UK, the way I see it, is a few key trends that are shaping up the landscape. First, multi-channel and omni-channel experience that would be essential. We look at small and medium businesses. It's really important for them to ensure customers can move effortlessly between online, in-store and offline interactions with their business, offering a convenience and flexibility at every step. Second, personalization is going to be a game changer. By leveraging customer insights and a data-driven approach, businesses can create tailored experiences that build customer loyalty and drive more sales. And third, I think, is the AI and digital transformation that will play a pivotal role and it's a must-have for any business. Moving forward From automating processes to enhancing customer experiences, AI will help businesses improve efficiency and innovate in ways that keep them competitive in an ever-increasing digital world. And as for WorldPay strategy, we are committed to developing innovative payment solutions enabling businesses of all sizes to grow and, especially with e-commerce, we want to deliver an experience that truly goes beyond payments for both our customers and partners.
Greg Myers:Rob anything you want to add to that.
Rob Ward:Yeah, I mean, I think the really interesting trends that I think we're going to see grow a lot more in the future is the social commerce side of the things. It's SMBs leveraging the social media platforms, like I mentioned earlier, and I think there's so much still to do there in terms of producing solutions that really work well within that ecosystem, and that's a really exciting trend that we need to get our heads around and make sure that we've got the right set of solutions to support that emerging trend. I think in terms of strategy to support that, today we support our customers no matter what channel they're coming in from whether it's store, whether it's e-com, whether it's virtual terminal and so we're going to focus on making sure that we're supporting customers whichever channel that they want to pay through.
Greg Myers:Chintan, Rob and for the listeners out there, this is sort of episode one of five episodes in this series where we're going to be doing, in future episodes, a deeper dive on a lot of those things that we talked about today. So this is kind of setting the stage for the rest of the series. Before we close out the show today, just wanted to see if Chintan, you or Rob have anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up.
Chintan Gandhi:Yes, greg. I would like to conclude by saying that, in this rapidly changing e-commerce landscape, the ability for businesses to learn and adopt is crucial. We here at WorldPay are committed to developing payment solutions that help businesses navigate these challenges, ensuring they thrive in this ever-evolving market.
Rob Ward:I think just to add to that in the UK, particularly the SMBs biggest employer, they make up the biggest share of the economy and so actually being able to support them when you think about the crunch they've had through the rising costs in recent years that they've had to overcome. You look beyond the data and you meet them. You meet the people who are starting businesses with funding from family and friends and there's a lot at risk for them. When you look at the businesses handed down from generation to generation and are entering e-commerce for the first time, it's a real privilege to be working for them, incredibly motivating to be focused on producing solutions for them. So I think we've got a really exciting future ahead.
Greg Myers:Well, thank you both for your time today. I know that your time is very valuable. I really appreciate you being here and again, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks, greg. Thanks, greg, and to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in today to this special series on e-commerce brought to you by WorldPay. To learn more about WorldPay and their e-commerce solutions, please visit wwwworldpaycom. Slash en-gb. Slash worldpay dash e-commerce.