Ian Hillis
Hi everyone, and welcome to PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix and Worldpay. I’m your host, Ian Hillis, and today I’m talking with Ella Aguirre and Michael Veatch about everything that happened this year in Embedded Payments, from highlights to insights and much more. Ella and Michael, welcome to the show.
Ella Aguirre
Thanks for having us.
Michael Veatch
Thanks Ian, appreciate it.
Ian Hillis
Thrilled to start this conversation. You’ve both worked with dozens, if not hundreds of software partners over the years. For this episode, in particular, we’re especially keen to unpack the insights you gathered from this past year. But before we get into that, let’s give our audience a quick intro so you understand the depth of experience that’s being shared here. So, Michael Veatch, Senior Director of Worldpay for Platforms Implementations, Michael is a strategic leader focused on delivering successful business outcomes for his customers. With over 12 years in the payments industry, Michael has supported SaaS companies to navigate the complexities of implementing and operating a payments business. His experience in driving large scale, high paced integration has armed him with a deep, technical, and consultative approach that aligns business needs with a smooth, low impact solution that elevates both the integration and customer experience. When it comes to delivering results, Michael is your go to expert for strategic insight and flawless execution. And Ella is a passionate thought leader for all things payments, technology, and commerce. In her current role as Director of Solution Consulting, Ella works with SaaS companies to develop a vision and strategic solutions to embed and monetize payments. Her 13+ years of experience in payments implementations and product solution engineering enables a unique lens on the end-to-end journey of a software company and its clients experience. When Ella’s not solutioning problems or driving growth for software platforms, she enjoys spending time in the mountains of Colorado with her husband and two dogs.
Ian Hillis
I love it, me too. I mean, I get excited just reading those introductions, having known you both for quite some time, I think the level of expertise on this call, we’re in for a fantastic conversation. So, thanks for joining us. All right, so let’s jump in. Welcome! Michael and Ella, as you reflect on 2024 and all the various touch points you’ve had with software platforms, which we’ve already established is dozens, if not hundreds. What notable changes have you seen over the course of this year in particular?
Michael
Yeah, I think it’s been interesting, right? I think the payments landscape has shifted drastically in the 13 years I’ve been in this space. I would say, as it started to evolve, PCI and security and EMV and just the nature of payments has evolved drastically over the last 8 to 10 years. You know, we’ve spent a lot of time having to be in a position of educating. I think what I’ve seen a lot of this year is just, is the natural maturity of our partners has started to really increase. Rather than spending a lot of time having to just educate and consult on some of the basics, they’re really coming in with a well-rounded understanding of payments and really asking some just well-rounded questions to challenge us and how the landscape really is designed today and really helps push us as a business to really support not just them, but the rest of our partners and the ecosystem of payments. So I think that’s been a big thing that I’ve seen this year, is just, is really the noticeable education and readiness for our partners to really take payments as not just kind of a sidebar, but really a true stakes of their business, and how do they really stand that up.
Ian Hillis
They must have been listening to this podcast together for all of that information to come in. Well, that’s interesting. Do you think that’s a matter of software platforms having had previous payment relationships? Do you think that it’s just much more salient in the market, and there’s lots of educational resources out there? Any inklings as to what might be driving that enhanced knowledge set coming in?
Michael
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s honestly a little bit of all. I mean, you know, based on the customer type, some of them just, they’re doing some due diligence. There is a lot of material out there. There’s a lot of exposure to just the benefits that Embedded Payments can bring to these types of providers. And I think they’re just, they’re all starting to listen to just, you know, the media and the outlets like this, the podcasts that are available to just learn and educate. And you’ve got those who just who have been in the space for a period of time, and they’ve started to mature and really started to understand the impact this has to their business and just how they can make it much more of a proliferation of what they do, and not just, you know, a sidebar of their of their software application. So, I think it’s a little bit of all the above.
Ian Hillis
Ella, as you think about the past year, what are some of the notable changes you’ve seen over the course of your 13 years of experience?
Ella Aguirre
Yeah, I would say, obviously, over the last couple of years, you’ve seen things come across regarding surcharging or convenience fee or other ways right to cover the cost of processing, but I think this year in particular, with inflation and just overall costs of doing business, we’re seeing a larger increase than I’ve ever seen in my history, in the space and requests to support surcharging or some other type of product really help with that, right, cost of processing. It’s been in with that, right, there’s been an increase in there’s been an increase in requests to support surcharging, but because of that, we’re also seeing right the brands and even local legislation crack down a little bit more on making sure that if merchants are and their partners are leveraging surcharging as a product, that they’re doing it in a compliant way. We’ve seen more, than more than ever, an increase in fines associated with that. So, it’s becoming more and more important to really understand the landscape and do it in a compliant way.
Ian Hillis
It’s really fascinating thing about how macroeconomic conditions like that can then feed into product considerations, regulatory compliance considerations, that manifesting in this instance through surcharging. I’m wondering both Michael and Ella other questions you’ve received from software platforms or notable areas of interest that have kind of been enhanced over the past year or so?
Michael Veatch
So, from my perspective, we’ve had, again, I think just going along the lines of just the maturity of the business, there’s just been a greater stake and theme around, how do you address existing books of business that are with other providers? How do you really look at minimizing impact with change? How do you look at marketing and socializing, kind of what else is out there as you look forward into the payments landscape that are coming within Embedded Finance and other product offerings that are coming through the space? Again, I think we’re seeing a shift from kind of just, how do I do things, to really, you know, how do I start to optimize on the opportunities I have out there in front of me and or just, what can you as, as a payments provider enable for us to really grow our business? Again, I think it’s just a shift with the maturity of these discussions with these partners. You know, we’re not just focused on, let’s just get you set up and doing it’s really, how do we really optimize your entire experience? How do we enhance and look at future opportunities together and collaborate to help drive our product roadmaps and opportunities? How do we think differently about how they’re thinking about their product and go to market options? So again, I think a lot of that’s kind of where the questions have been driving from, from what we’ve been seeing. And again, it’s highly collaborative. It’s leveraging our teams who are here with those skill sets to kind of go through those consultative discussions and really drive that partnership with these SaaS providers.
Ian Hillis
You bring up a really interesting point there. It relates to the initial point you made at the beginning, which is just the maturity coming in, and then certainly how they’re thinking about that. So, if partners, if we believe part of that sophistication and maturation is from having previous relationships or multiple payment relationships in that they’re coming with back books and established customer bases that are elsewhere, and they’re thinking through that new go to market motion, what is required for success in that? So, I know that’s something that your team spends a lot of time thinking about. We all know it’s not as simple as well. Here’s a simple API that converts everything in your entire back book from over here, over to here. What are some of the areas of success you have for your team as you have these more sophisticated, mature requests coming into your particular team?
Michael Veatch
Yeah. I mean, it’s a great question, and the hard part about the answer is, it depends. Every one of these because of the of that maturity, because of just the complexity of the industry. I mean, everything is unique. Obviously, there is a fairly standard kind of playbook of things we want to talk about and how we want to go through approaches. But every single time we’ve gone through these types of engagements, it’s been a super unique experience per customer based on their business needs, their customer needs, the types of data and tools that they have available to them today. And so, it really becomes a partnership in every single scenario of really understanding their kind of environment. You know, what are the timelines and kind of the outcomes that they want to achieve? You know, do they want to do a higher touch with their portfolio? Do they want to do limited touch? I mean, all of those kind of inputs really play into kind of the way that we manage. So, at the end of the day, these, these become very customized, very discovery oriented. Let’s build custom plans. Let’s partner through these. Let’s have active conversations to kind of come up with a decision point on how we’re going to do it, which that’s how we’ve been successful. I think if we walked in the door and told partners that it has to happen in an XYZ format. You know, I think we would be doing our ourselves and our partners a disservice on how we really optimize based on what their ultimate experience needs to be.
Ian Hillis
Ella, shifting back to you for a second. I’m curious, anything that surprised you this year? So, you share that certain interest around surcharge, new areas of interest and questions coming your way. But anything you reflect on from 2024 and say that was that was unexpected and surprising, that I’m hearing this a lot, seeing this a lot, or engaging on this particular thing?
Ella Aguirre
Yeah, absolutely. So, I think one of the things that surprised me this year is obviously the last few years, there’s been a big focus on eCommerce and online payments. And while that has continued, there seems to have been a renewed focus on how to modernize card present acceptance as well and really provide kind of that omnichannel experience across multiple payment channels. Specifically, we’ve seen that in an ask for kind of robust contactless payments, including, right, tap to pay. So sure, many of you are familiar right that there’s traditional card acceptance hardware out there, but there’s a shift, right, to being able to replace those more traditional, legacy devices with just accepting, right, a contactless payment on your mobile phone or tablet. So it’s been interesting seeing that while we’ll continue to see the growth in eCommerce and the focus on online payments and making sure that’s a seamless embedded experience, there’s still a lot of use cases out there for card present, and providers are really, and merchants, are expecting to have a modern all in one Android device or some kind of right tap to pay solution to make that a best-in-class experience.
Ian Hillis
Really interesting. Michael, what about on your end, things that have surprised you from the past year of working with dozens and dozens of partners?
Michael Veatch
Yeah, I mean, I think, from my perspective, you know, as we’re talking through standing up a new partner and really kind of getting them to understand what it means to stand up a payments business, you know, where I think that we still have opportunities, kind of, in the industry, or just awareness around just kind of what a payments business really takes to operate it is really outside of just the technical work stream. We have a lot of deep conversations and knowledge from our partners around how do you do integrations, to Ella’s point around what type of devices are out there? Just the technical aptitude is certainly there. I think, where we still have some space for growth and opportunity and understanding, you know, through education and just consultation, through these projects and just engagements, is really the other components of running a payments business. You know, how do you stand up a support and operational function within your organization? Are you planning to stand up a sales arm? Or how are you planning to kind of go after your portfolio base? You know, there’s other areas that stand, you know, beyond just the technical kind of component. I think it’s still an area of an opportunity that was a little bit surprising as we think about just the maturity, again, of the industry is just there is that technical side just seems to be the natural place that people kind of evolve to as they think about payments, but obviously it’s a bigger component of that when we really talk about making that part of your overall business model. And so, we got to start to have some of those kind of conversations and more detail. And again, how do we provide tooling and education to support the partners? But just how are they thinking about that? You know, as you want to stand up, a payments business, and you know, to determine your strategy, you know, just what are those things that you need to build internally to really scale and support that, you know? And some of that is just, is part of the evolution of starting the company and the payments process and really seeing what it takes to do that. And I think that that’s, that’s an area, I think that continues to be a challenge that I see with partners, is, is having that, thought through of what those pieces are going to take. You know, if you need to hire in resources, what’s that going to do to your timeline, separate of just the readiness to truly send payments through. So again, I think it’s just really taking that step back and just thinking holistically about just what does a true operational model look like to stand this type of capability up.
Ian Hillis
Related to areas of opportunity and things you’re seeing across that. We’re here. It’s the end of 2024 we’re getting ready to kick off 2025 I’m curious from both of you, what parting thoughts do you have for software partners as they’re going into 2025? Things that they should be keeping an eye on. Things that they should be asking questions about, advice, just general taking all these reflections we’ve had from 2024. What parting thoughts do you have for software partners going into 2025?
Michael Veatch
I mean, there’s a lot going on in the industry from a compliance and product perspective, so obviously, just general awareness of what’s coming through and how is that going to impact their strategy and kind of where they want their business to really grow and develop. I know that expanding beyond the US is a big kind of desire that we’re seeing as well coming through. So how do they partner with us as a global organization? We’re here to help partner and provide feedback and guidance. You know, we’ve got a lot of smart and intelligent people who can kind of really help guide and tailor those conversations. You know, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re here to do, is support these, these partners, you know, and wherever they want to go with their strategy. So, leverage us. That’s, you know, that’s what our expertise is here to do, whether that’s with my team, who, who kind of does the day to day components, and really kind of do some consultation discussions, you know, through our account managers and our PSMS, you know, who are really there to kind of do forward looking and look, you know, through those partnerships around the strategies and what’s coming, and what products do we have to help them talk through that. But I think the biggest thing you’ve got to have that open conversation. You know, the more that we’re aware of the needs and the desires of our partners, the more that we can put ourselves in a position to be, as of much help, directly or indirectly, to those conversations. You know, it’s a hard, it’s a hard landscape to navigate. So, you know, let us do our job of being those experts to help them through that.
Ella Aguirre
Yeah, I’d say from my side, I would say the big theme that I am looking at for 2025 is focus. So, there’s going to be a lot of things coming at software companies who are focusing on Embedded Payments, everything from Embedded Finance to consumer experience components, AI cost reduction strategies. So, it’s going to be really important to think about what is going to be the most impactful thing for their customers. Make sure you’re using data and lean on partners who have that expertise in Embedded Payments. In collaboration, I think that that will enable building the most optimal plan for 2025. It’s very easy to get distracted with the new shiny thing. So really, getting back to that core of using data and understanding what’s important for your customers is going to be super important.
Ian Hillis
I love it, and I love the data driven approach. Michael, Ella, thank you so much for being on the show. Really great insights and reflections from 2024 and a glimpse into 2025.
Michael Veatch
Thanks again for having us; appreciate it.
Ella Aguirre
Yeah, thank you so much.
Ian Hillis
We want to be a trusted resource for software providers who are out there trying to make sense of embedded payments and finance to help them get the education they need to make the business decisions their customers and investors will thank them for thank you to everyone joining us today, and I look forward to continuing the conversation in our next episode.
