At the beginning of this year, visa and PYMNTS Intelligence Spotlight on Click-and-Mortar™ shoppers.
This fast-growing segment that demands instant gratification and digital capabilities for in-store shopping presents both challenges and opportunities for merchants as they deliver reimagined experiences in the aisle, at the register and online.
Andre MachicaoVisa's senior vice president of acceptance solutions told Karen Webster of PYMNTS: Consumers expect digital on every channel they interact with. ”
There is a disconnect between expectations and reality.
Data shows that in some countries, retailers are unable to provide a quarter to half of the digital features consumers want.
When sellers can better tailor their products to changing consumer demands, they can earn more sales and gain stronger loyalty. But many companies lack the technical and budgetary resources to move quickly and deftly to meet consumer expectations, a ubiquitous commerce experience that follows individuals no matter where they shop. doing.
“Sellers of all shapes and sizes need access to a greater variety of capabilities, and we are looking to integrate and partner with more providers to bring those capabilities together.” Machicao said.
On Wednesday (April 17), Visa announced enhancements to its authorization solution with three updates. One is related to the Visa Acceptance Platform, another is related to Authorize.net, and the third is related to the Tap to Phone initiative.
Maticao said the update “opens up access to services, opens up an entire ecosystem to create experiences and deliver the capabilities consumers are asking for.”
This ecosystem includes 450 payment service providers, 450,000 active merchants, and 100 independent software vendors from 160 countries.
Expand and connect your ecosystem
just announced developer support provides artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help partners develop payment flows, answer testing questions, and suggest code. This effectively delivers a wide range of component services through a single point of access at scale and in a consistent manner.
“This is about the simplicity of enabling access to these best-in-class services and integrating them all,” Machicao said. “We are at the 'gateway' of AI-powered capabilities for everything from self-service commerce to shopping assistants.”
Expand acceptance of payments by phone
The new initiative also aims to accelerate mobile acceptance by: Tap to call, for merchants to accept contactless payments from consumers using certified smartphones. This feature is available on over 6.7 million devices in over 120 countries. Beyond brick-and-mortar settings for tap-to-pay use cases, pilots in Latin America and the Caribbean will also enable consumers to pay for online transactions by tapping their cards on their devices. did.
“Tap to Phone,” Maticao said, is an initiative by Visa that has enabled $8.5 billion in payment volumes over the past 12 months. “It has the ability to turn traditional smartphone devices into payment acceptance devices without adding any payment-specific functionality” technology or hardware… enabling acceptance in a variety of markets. ”
Rethinking the SMB platform
Visa's Wednesday announcement also details its “reimagined” small business platform. Authorize.net has tweaked its user interface and provided merchants and ecosystem partners with new dashboards and smart search capabilities to better align their data and improve workflows.
He said the company is “packaging the best of enterprise-class services into a more accessible and consumable package” for small merchants as they grapple with payment management activities.
Maticao said that providing merchants with a simplified and broader payment acceptance service will pave the way for new experiences, which will lead to “open collaboration and delivering 'the best' at scale.” This will be possible through “open technology that allows people to thrive.”
