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Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
Special Series: The World of Ecommerce: Thriving Online with Chintan Gandhi & Rob Ward | Episode 359
Unlock the secrets to thriving in the UK's competitive e-commerce landscape with insights from WorldPay's very own Chintan Gandhi and Rob Ward. Join us, along with these industry leaders, as we explore how WorldPay is revolutionizing payment solutions to help merchants face modern challenges head-on. With Chintan's strategic know-how in payments and Rob's unique transition from law to a decade of experience at WorldPay, we promise a comprehensive look at how businesses can enhance their payment processing efficiency. From simplifying onboarding to crafting bespoke checkout experiences, our discussion unravels WorldPay's dedication to offering seamless, digital-first solutions tailored for businesses large and small.
Immerse yourself in a conversation about the crucial elements of payment security and management. Discover how WorldPay's 3DS Flex and tokenization can fortify your transactions while maintaining a smooth customer experience. You'll also gain insights into the powerful analytics and real-time data offered by the WorldPay dashboard, all designed to empower merchants with better control and understanding of their sales trends. Whether you're looking to streamline compliance checks or explore alternative payment methods like pay-by-link and pay-by-phone, this episode equips you with actionable strategies to ensure your e-commerce venture not only survives but thrives.
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.
Speaker 2: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 Strategic Planning and Go-To-Market, and Rob Ward, Product Director Ecommerce, both from WorldPay. So welcome to the show and especially this special collaboration between the Leaders in Payments and WorldPay. In the first episode in this special collaboration between the leaders in payments and WorldPay, in the first episode in this series which actually Jin Tan and Rob were the guests of that episode we talked about e-commerce for small businesses in the UK at a high level, and then in the second episode, we took a deeper dive into some of the pain points that merchants feel related to e-commerce and then also discussed the world-based solutions at a high level. So today we're going to be diving deeper into the solution. So thank you both so much for being here today.
Speaker 3:Hi, greg, great to be with you.
Speaker 4:Hi, greg, great to be here.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, let's go ahead and dive in. So, chintan, if you don't mind, let's start with you. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe a little bit of your background, and touch on your professional journey as well.
Speaker 4: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 Hypershire with my family, which is just on the outskirts of London. On the professional front, I've been in the payment space for the last 15 years, focusing on payments processing, merchant acquiring and card situating. Over the years, I've had various leadership roles, from driving business strategy to building partnerships with the ISVs and SaaS providers to leading business development initiatives and, most recently, in my current role with WorldPay, I lead the go-to-market strategy and commercialization of our strategic solutions for the global SMB segment.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, so Rob, same question for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So I grew up in rural England, in a small town in the east of England. That's where I did my high schooling and then I went to Lottie University to study my undergraduate degree and then out of university I thought I wanted to delve into the world of law. So I joined a law firm, did a conversion course to get the necessary qualification to pursue a career in law and then decided maybe that wasn't quite for me. I saw an opportunity to move into a payments role at a company and it sounds really interesting. It felt like the world was moving to that.
Speaker 3:E-commerce world was getting bigger and bigger. I took the opportunity to move to that and then, a couple of years later, I found an opportunity to move to Worldpay and spent just over 10 years there. It's been a fantastic experience. I've worked across operations, implementation, pre-sales products and in some leadership roles. In those areas as well. I had some fantastic opportunities given to me, including an opportunity to become a chartered manager and to complete my MBA with the sponsorship of WorldPay. So it's been a really great place to work and the current role of leading their SMB solutions really exciting to see what we can do in that space.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So thank you both for sharing that background. So, chintan, if you don't mind and I think most of our audience will know who WorldPay is, but if you don't mind tell our audience kind of in your own words a little about WorldPay.
Speaker 4: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 businesses to large scale enterprises. We really enable them to process payments in a seamless and reliable way, whether it's processing payments online or in store, or through mobile. What you'll see is WorldPay sits at the heart of many of those great experiences that they encounter in their day-to-day lives. What really stands out about WorldPay, I feel, is that our ability to meet our customers' needs and unique business needs when it comes to payments processing with the solutions that are tailored for each stage of their business growth. Especially for small and medium businesses, worldpay offers innovative and easy-to-use payment solutions that really help them thrive. But beyond technology and solutions, what truly makes WorldPay special is our global reach and our diverse team of experts. They bring a wide variety of perspectives to solve complex payment challenges and create seamless experiences for everyone.
Speaker 2:Great Thanks for sharing that. So let's go ahead and dive into the topic and, rob, we're going to start with you. In the last episode, we walked through the four main pain points that merchants have related to e-commerce and some of the solutions that WorldPay has as well. In this episode, let's talk about the entire WorldPay solution. Think of it from the very beginning to the end, so from onboarding to reporting. So let's just start at a really high level. So, in your kind of mind, what's it like to work with WorldPay?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, look, I think to work with WorldPay is to work with a leader and an expert in payments, particularly when you think about the SMB in the UK space. We have a large presence in that space and we really try and design our products around the point of trying to understand actually how merchants need to use this and how they need to be successful. So I think that's kind of the starter point to think, from how merchants kind of work with us and then thinking about kind of that end-to-end journey. We really try and be digital first. You know, and I think a lot of us with our experiences of things, services that we consume, now we really want that in our hands.
Speaker 3:You know, we want to be able to sign up for something we'd be able to self-serve that ourselves, which we we offer to merchants. And then, once we have signed up, you want to be able to kind of see where I am, what I've ordered. I want to be able to track that on the track the progress of my application. So that's what we focus on you providing that kind of digital first experience, being able to track your application with us, see where you are in those kind of meaningful steps, be able to get kind of testing out our products as we're boarding you, as we're completing those activities, test out the API, test out the reporting, the refund process, et cetera, start getting your staff familiar with services that we have.
Speaker 3:And as we go through that boarding journey, we activate more and more of those services for our merchants and so they can start getting activated. And whilst that's a digital first experience, all along that way we put staff in place to be able to support merchants. So we have experts available all the way along that journey. So if a merchant wants to talk to us, they can pick up the phone, they can do a web chat to us, they can raise a ticket. What their preference is is kind of up to them. So I think what they'll get is they'll get a digital-first experience, but backed up by human experts when needed.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, so Chintan over to you. So kind of putting ourselves in the shoes of a merchant. So I'm a small business, I'm starting an e-commerce website. At what point sort of in their journey do they start talking to WorldPay? Is it whenever they've already launched a website? Is it when they have the idea, or is?
Speaker 4:it sometime later on in the process.
Speaker 4:It's actually both.
Speaker 4:What we see is merchants typically engage with WorldPay at various stages of their business journey, depending on their specific needs and circumstances.
Speaker 4:What we see is many small and medium-sized businesses come to us even before they've launched the website, seeking guidance on how to integrate payment solutions into their business model right from the start.
Speaker 4:They may be exploring e-commerce for the first time and need help in understanding the payments landscape and what options are available to them, and these other merchants typically use one of the e-commerce or shopping cart platforms through which they will enable their business to go online and for which we have a suite of plugins available the likes of Shopify, woocommerce, magento and many others through which they can integrate to our solution. On the other hand, I would say we also have seen many established businesses that they come to us who are already operational but are looking to switch their provider for better payment solution or to enhance their current e-commerce setup. These are the merchants who have specific challenges or goals that they want to address, such as improving their payment processing efficiency or reducing costs or adopting to changing consumer preferences that they have, and for these merchants, what we have is more of a custom integration option through the API integration.
Speaker 2:So, rob, you talked a little bit about the onboarding process, but I think it's so important now to discuss this in more detail and I loved how you kind of described the whole process digital first, but with humans there to back it up. But I think some of the challenges a lot of merchants this may be the first time they've ever had to take payments and they don't really know what to expect. I don't think they go around using the term onboarding. I mean that's very much, I think, a payments or a financial services term. So what can the merchants expect from WorldPay when they're in this onboarding process?
Speaker 3:We really try and make it as simple as possible, because it is very complex If you look at the number of regulations there are to sign up for financial products, particularly payments. And these regulations are in there for a good reason right To stop bad actors accessing the financial ecosystem. There can be a lot of demands in terms of documentation, in terms of custom due diligence, that you need to complete, and what we try to do is build our onboarding journey to make sure that we're asking the right questions at the right time so that if we're going to need some documentation later down the flow, we're going to ask for that upfront. We get that understanding of who you are as a business and we get that information so that then when we do our CBD checks, that makes kind of life, you know, a lot easier to set you live. So you know we get that information and we get started with that and merchants then kind of get that kind of digital experience where they're seeing their application going through.
Speaker 3:And then you know, occasionally, you know there's a need to clarify points, as you've said. Right, it can be, you know, a complex business, so there's sometimes a need to clarify that. But again, you know, that's where the human expert from our CDD team is sitting there, you know, and able to kind of reach out and to clarify those questions with merchants and to get them live. So we try to make sure it's as easy to understand as possible, because it is a complex regulatory environment.
Speaker 2:Chintan. So sort of thinking through, as this merchant is now engaged with you guys. They're trying to figure out how do they integrate their website into WorldPay. Or maybe they have some of those tools you mentioned earlier where they've already integrated or they're hosted on some platform and they're trying to figure out how do I do this integration. So what resources are available to help them and what kind of integrations do you offer?
Speaker 4:We offer a range of integration options tailored to specific needs of these businesses, including APIs. This option is for those who are interested in more customizable option. This is with the robust APIs available, that allows merchants to integrate payment processing directly to their websites and applications, giving them complete control over the payments experience. The other option we have is what I referred earlier is the shopping cart platform, so the e-commerce platforms, and the plugins, so we have a ready to use plugins for popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, woocommerce, magento, opencart, etc. These plugins simplify the setup process, making it very easy for merchants to accept payments without extensive technical knowledge. With both of these options, we offer extensive documentation, tutorials and guides to help both merchants and their developers to understand how to implement our solutions effectively. And by providing these resources, our aim there is to make the integration process as smooth as possible, allowing merchants to focus on growing their businesses while we handle the complexities of payment integration and processing.
Speaker 2:So now, as we kind of go through this merchant journey, we're at the point where we're actually the merchants actually accepting payments or taking payments. So obviously you mentioned shopping carts there, chintan, but, rob, also you have other solutions like hosted pay pages and pay by link and pay by phone. So maybe can you speak to those other solutions and the value of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I think you've got your plugin options there right. You've got a platform, you've got there and you expect a kind of easy plugin to plug into that and you're integrated for payments and you know we offer that. But you know, I think also there's there's still space for that merchant who really wants to build a bespoke integration. They want to do something with you know. The checkout experience there and I think this is an important point you know, for merchants out there to to think about is, you know, something you can use your checkout, your payments experience, to be a differentiator. It's possible to build a really great experience that will help you differentiate yourself in the market. And you look at some of the biggest brands out there and so many of those have built a very bespoke journey around payments that is unique to them. So there's a real value in kind of considering that kind of custom integration, and that's where the hosted payment pages plays a really good role in doing that. It offers you the ability to get a redirect link and you can embed it into your website if you want. So it still looks like your website, but the card details, the kind of fraud checking, the 3DS processes it's all being completed by that page. That means the integration is still fairly light, but you get extra control over kind of how you want that checkout journey to work.
Speaker 3:And then the pay-by-link and the pay-by-phone options. These are really useful to an SMB because whilst an SMB can have a website, they can have an inventory of goods that they're selling. More often than not in the SMB space, one of the differences they have against larger brands is the ability to do bespoke orders. It's the ability to offer something custom for their customers. And that's kind of where, if you've got a particular invoice, you've got a particular different price that you've quoted and you need to take a payment for that's kind of not in your website. You haven't got time to add it in there.
Speaker 3:It's where a pay-by-link being able to just customize that for that one-off payment that's really useful to do. And the same for phone. You know, if you're speaking to somebody, you're closing the deal with them, you've given them the quote, they're happy to move on, you're going to take that payment. Maybe it's an initial payment. First of all, the deposit. That's where virtual terminal is really useful to you, being able to kind of key in that payment while you've got somebody on the phone and get that payment cleared for them, and again I'm fulfilling the order that they've asked of you. So there's lots of options there, depending on how you work as a business.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, rob, we're going to stick with you, and fraud and security is, I think, too important of a topic to just kind of skip over. So let's talk about a little bit of the details here about a few different things. So let's talk about fraud. What is the solution that you have today and how does it work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so our fraud solution is called FraudSight and that solution is an artificial intelligence tool. It's a machine learning tool that looks at our data as a global leader in acquiring, so it's taking all of payments data. It's saying what's a good transaction look like, what's a bad transaction look like, or what's a bad transaction look like, what's a transaction that ends up being fraudulent. You know that ends up being something that turns potentially then into a chargeback, and it's constantly learning that so that when a payment is presented by a merchant, it can accurately say whether that's a good transaction or a bad transaction and, crucially, keeping those false positives to a minimum, because that's something again, merchants should be really aware of the fact that you can say you've got a fraud tool in place and, yes, it might be keeping you secure, but it also could be rejecting a lot of good customers, and so it's really important to have a solution that's constantly optimizing itself.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned 3DS earlier, so what is 3DS Flex?
Speaker 3:Sure. So that's our authentication service that we have for merchants. So in the European market and UK we have the mandate around strong customer authentication pretty much kind of been replicated out in a lot of other markets in the world now. But that requires you would always have authentication in place for a lot of e-commerce transactions, and so what 3DS Flex does is that it takes out the complexity that comes with needing an authentication tool. There's a lot of different versions of 3DS still out there. There's a lot of different ways that issuers and schemes have implemented that, and it takes all that complexity and just gives you one easy way to integrate into and if you use it in conjunction with things like a hosted payment page or a pay-by-link, it's built into that service for you, so you then don't even have to do that integration into a particular authentication. It's just part of kind of the payment checkout process.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I think a little more on the security side. Maybe there's tokenization big word, a lot of people have heard of it. What is? Maybe talk about what tokenization is at a high level and the value of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I think there's two elements to tokenization. The one thing is the security element, which probably gets a little bit forgotten about now, but you know, again for merchants important to know, which is, if you need to store card data, um, you should store it using a token solution, because storing pan data yourself as, particularly as an smb, it comes with a lot of requirements around security, around regulations that you have to adhere to, and the risk to you if that should get compromised is quite significant for your brand and also financially for you. So that's kind of really important to use a provider who knows how to secure that pound data and is constantly doing it day to day. And the second element to it is that customer experience element.
Speaker 3:The second element to it is that customer experience element. It's the fact that if you can say to a shopper on your site, would you like to tokenize your card, they've got an account. Then with you You've got the card on file and then when they come back and they want to check out again, you can present the card and it makes that kind of checkout journey really easy. And how many of us as shoppers out there on websites think you know, I need this? Oh, you know what? I got it from that shop the other day and I saved my card with them. I'm going to go back and I'm going to use them, because that's actually really easy to do so in terms of kind of capturing the market, getting attention from shoppers. It's a really good way of way of building that loyalty element to your relationship.
Speaker 2:So, chintan, over to you. One of the important components, I feel, of the WorldPay solution is what you call your dashboard. So can you speak to what the WorldPay dashboard is and the value of it?
Speaker 4:Absolutely. One of the key components of the WorldPay solution is the WorldPay dashboard, which serves as a powerful, user-friendly interface for merchants to manage their payments processing activities. The WorldPay dashboard provides real-time insights analytics allowing the merchants to track their payments, monitor their sales trends and manage their day-to-day payments activity. A key component to that is the transaction management manage their day-to-day payments activity. A key component to that is the transaction management. Merchants can view and manage their transactions, including refunds, whether it's for their online payments or in-store activity. This really helps them to reconcile their payments and address any discrepancies that they may have pretty quickly. The other element to that is reporting.
Speaker 4:Dashboard provides a comprehensive reporting tool that enables merchants to analyze their sales performance, transactional data and analytics and activities for their day-to-day operations. It really serves as that self-serving tool for most merchants, especially the small and medium businesses. Flexibility is everything for them, as they're having to manage this in parallel to managing their day-to-day business operations. So it gives them what they need and when they need it, and I would say that it actually serves as a key support platform for us. Merchants can raise their support and customer servicing inquiries through chat, email and by raising ticket through dashboard and, I think, most importantly for small and medium businesses, making it a user-friendly interface is a key to the success of the tool. The dashboard is designed to be an intuitive, easy to navigate tool allowing merchants to access the information they need without a steep learning curve. So what we see overall is the dashboard adds that significant value by empowering merchants with the tools and insights they need to make the informed decisions they need to for their business, streamline their operations and ultimately, drive growth for their business.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, rob, as we kind of come towards the end of the show and we've talked a lot about features and benefits and different offerings and solutions, I don't want to lose sight of the value. So maybe, if you don't mind, could you sort of summarize, maybe, the top three values. The WorldPay solution provides small business e-commerce merchants in the UK.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I think those three. It's about being a solution that's simple, secure and it's cost effective. From a simple perspective, it's simple for the fact that Chintan's just lined out there around one dashboard, one portal to do your end-to-end management with it. It's simple from the perspective of that. You've got tools like the host appointment page where you integrate into that, and you've got Fra site. You've got 3ds flex all built into that process to make it as kind of simple and secure as possible to process. You know those transactions.
Speaker 3:Thinking about that kind of secure in. You know a little bit more detail, things like that fraud site detection tool, keeping false positives down, you know. So letting the good stuff through. But protecting you from the bad actors is really important. A 3DS there that's important to have on.
Speaker 3:It's important for you to be doing authentication right, because these things can really hit your authorization rate. You know we see some really good authorization rate. That's doing the right things in the payment flow. You're going to get improved revenue potential there by simply switching. You know your supplier in that space. So something really important to consider and I think you know from. Particularly then, from a cost effective perspective, you know we have a range of pricing options to suit the different kind of variety of sizes of SMB merchants and our consultative sellers will go through with that merchants to make sure that we get the right price plan from that perspective. But also getting back to kind of the quality of the products that we offer cost effective because the quality of the product that you are paying for is delivering a good return in terms of the authorization rate and the conversion rate that you're going to see on your checkout.
Speaker 2:Okay, chintan, anything you'd like to add there before we wrap up the show?
Speaker 4:Not much to what Rob covered there. It's truly that simple, secure and cost-effective e-commerce solution for the SMB merchants. It's a solution that they can adopt and really grow their business with.
Speaker 2:Great Well, chintan Rob, 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:Thanks, greg, great to be with you.
Speaker 4:Thank you, greg, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2: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 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-ecommerce. Thank you.