Latest / Leaders In Payments / The New Rules of Ecommerce with Alex Dewison, Global Payments | Episode 469

Transcript

The New Rules of Ecommerce with Alex Dewison, Global Payments | Episode 469 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Signal, powered by the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we are cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments and fintech.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me today is a very special guest, Alex Dewison, Director of Digital Solutions at Global Payments.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's been an absolute pleasure with Greg.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for bringing me on and looking forward to chatting to you today.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: So this episode is part of our signal series where we're cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments in FinTech.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to unpack how online payments and e-commerce have evolved and why the checkout experience has become just as important as driving traffic.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about what best in class payments looks like today, how to think about platform and payment method choices, and where merchants should focus as social, mobile, international commerce, and AI continue to reshape the buying journey.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, Alex, before we dive deep into this topic, can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to global payments?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of just a bit of background.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was born in the UK.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a small town in Newmarkets.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's famous for its horse racing and specifically the new market races every year.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then in my teenage years, I moved to Cambridge.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout my teenage years, I kind of stayed there and subsequently moved back after university where I studied software engineering.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But been around Cambridge ever since.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of the payment kind of world and my kind of career journey, I currently lead a digital e-commerce payment product strategy team.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we focus on delivering products and solutions across Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: My team and I manage the whole product development lifecycle.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So from requirements gathering to the delivery and working with engineering to commercialization.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we're really focused on delivering card payment products, local payment methods, and advanced value-added services like network tokenization and 3D secure.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: But my career didn't start out like that.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I currently initially started coming out of university and then kind of looking at different development jobs, right?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the most logical thing after you've done a software dev is go into a development job.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I worked at different web agencies, bringing out kind of new websites for different customers and clients, did the payment integration with multiple different providers then.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the most interesting part that I found was actually right at the beginning, understanding the requirements, understanding the problems that they're wanting to solve.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where it moved away from myself being a developer, sitting there coding every day, and my first ray into payments.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Where I started out at Wellpay.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually started at Wellpay as an implementation consultant, working with some of our some of the key UK customers, like Tesco, Next, for example, and helping them with either a new micro site where they wanted new payment integration, they wanted new payment methods that were kind of applicable to that particular market, or wanting just general optimization and enhancements.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: My Worldpay journey then took me to a point where I was looking and looking after customers directly, to actually working in product initially as a BA and kind of then subsequently became a product manager, leading the car payments domain.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: The opportunity within Worldpay, they were at the time building out a completely new payment gateway.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So serving multinational merchants, so not just UK customers, but really large kind of multinational merchants from retail to crypto to gaming to then also airlines.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So really understanding a variation of how customers are wanting to pay and what merchants are expecting from their payment service provider.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Before joining Global Payments, I also served as a go-to-market and kind of product lead at a company called TEA.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: TA primarily serves SMB type of merchants.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I specifically looked at an EPOS solution that was really successful in the Czech Republic and brought that to the UK with specific UK integrations.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So most of our audience will be very familiar with global payments, but for context, can you give us a quick 50,000-foot level overview of the company and maybe your role within the digital solutions team?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Global Payments is a leading financial technology company that provides specifically payment technology services to merchants.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So think about just basic car processing from credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets, and local payment methods, be it in a kind of an e-commerce journey on a website or actually a physical terminal, such as a soft pause device or a physical card machine.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: We also provide integrated commerce solutions and with our kind of key brands, Genius, as well, kind of driving the really key next generation of point of sale.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we also provide value-added services like fraud detection, analytics, and business intelligence.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically with my team and the kind of within digital solutions, we're looking at bringing the kind of new world of connected commerce.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we specifically manage digital first products and our priorities include platform innovation, so overhauling and kind of continuing the enhancements of the card not present space or the e-com space for our payment gateway, including virtual terminals and pay by links, or kind of web in a box for kind of a complete website and payment experience.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: We'll also look at consistently emerging trends, so which payment methods are kind of emerging and becoming really popular and we need to kind of get in front of.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're also looking at AI and looking at proof of concepts and seeing how that can help with either payment optimization or agentic commerce.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we're also really focused on making that merchant experience as well as the developer experience as seamless as possible.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So making friendly APIs that are easy to consume for a developer and for merchants to be able to kind of manage their business from a reconciliation perspective or kind of getting queries and support when something's not quite right for their websites.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's start with the big picture.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Online payments in e-commerce, as you well know, have evolved quickly over the past few years.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So from your perspective, what's changed the most in how consumers expect to pay online today?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the biggest shift is that speed and security are no longer kind of features, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple of years ago you could say we have an uptime of 99.999, and that was something to kind of shout about.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, that is kind of the basic playing field.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: In 2026, consumers no longer want to pay, just pay by the simple terms.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: They want to essentially have that be a part of a seamless shopping experience and make it essentially a quiet or invisible checkout experience.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Any friction, if it's slow refunds or you're having to enter manual pan entry, that is not going to be acceptable for a lot of consumers and also for merchants.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: The wallet first standard, so digital wallets are now kind of dominant for the majority of consumers, especially here in the UK.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: More than 20% of consumers in the UK are wanting to pay by Apple and Google Pay.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually evident with our kind of payment gateway.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen more than 20% of kind of consumers using either Apple or Google Pay.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're also needing to kind of support instant gratification, be it through kind of unreferenced refunds, through Visa Direct or MasterCard Send, pushing out funds to a card within 30 seconds is key.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: The time of three to five days is now gone.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Consumers want to be able to have that funds in the balance in their kind of bank accounts, and then subsequently either go and buy something else within your store or kind of take it elsewhere and kind of utilize that funding.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: The rise of Gentec Commerce, we're seeing a move towards AI-powered agents managing transactions.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Consumers now expect platforms to be agent-friendly, allowing AI to autonomously browse, compare, and compete what you're actually buying.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: The last one is account-to-account maturity.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So in the UK, we have pay by bank.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: In Europe, we have Awiro and kind of those kind of other options outside of your cards and digital wallets.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's becoming more and more prevalent.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So consumers that are paying for their credit card or repaying the balance on their credit cards, majority of the apps today are pay by bank.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: It removes the need to have a card.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: It adds that additional security because you're redirecting to your kind of bank or your issuing bank that you're using, and you're kind of confirming payments.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it does away with any form of manual card entry.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we've gone from basic web checkout to carts, mobile wallets, one-click checkout, and embedded payments across channels.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: So with all these options, what does best in class checkout experience actually look like today?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you see that changing over, say, the next couple of years?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I wouldn't say it's no longer a page, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a one-touch event.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So think of when you go to a product page, you're wanting to have that instant kind of checkout and everything embedded.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So from your delivery or shipping information, your billing information, and the payment method should all be contained within one wallet.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So really think about recognition over entry.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So using biometric or tokenized identity, so your customers never have to type their card number.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: The next piece that I really think is critical is relevant choice.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So dynamically displaying the two or three payment methods like Apple Pay or PayBuyBank or Bism in if you're in Spain, based on the user's location and spend.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last piece, and in terms of thinking of kind of what it looks like today, is post-purchase trust.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if something does go wrong with that purchase, being able to do an instant refund through the kind of new payout rails that are available.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where I see it changing is probably going from the invisible checkouts where you're kind of doing that one-click button to the agentic commerce.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So in the invisible checkouts, you're seeing like being able to click one button and everything is done for you.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where we're seeing it moved to is AI agents will do machine-to-machine payments where your personal AI agent, or like Gemini, for example, will be able to kind of display the products and you can set it to pay and go.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: But we're quite a way from there yet, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So getting the tri-party trust of schemes, the merchant, and also the payment service provider to all facilitate that technology is still a little way to go.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: A common question that we see online is control versus the simplicity that you're talking about.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So for merchants deciding between platforms like Shopify versus more customer modular setups, how should they think about the trade-off between control, flexibility, and speed to market?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a choice between two factors, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's either speed to market.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you're a small business or you're a new business and you're wanting to get something up and running very quickly, or you're wanting to have ownership of the experience.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce, it provides essentially a business in a box.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: It provides your payments, it provides your website, provides your stock control, and it also provides the kind of outside elements of security, compliance, making sure that it's up and running from a stability perspective.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You get that all from day one, but what you do away with is control, and you don't have a way of looking at controlling the payment journey, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if I looked at two different Shopify sites, I could tell very quickly that they're a Shopify sites just from the look and feel of the website.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't really differentiate yourself in that way, and you're very kind of constrained to what they're providing.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Once you kind of grow and you have either development resources or you have a payment operational team, this is where you can turn the kind of cookie-cutter experience into really focusing on what your consumers are going to be doing and kind of experiencing from a payment journey.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you can control the payment methods that have been displayed.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can help with retrying the payment if they were failed.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think those are the kind of key differences.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But where it's moving to is like a hybrid shift.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the likes of these platforms are recognizing that they're wanting to not wanting every single site to look the same.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they're creating modules or kind of components to their kind of platforms.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're wanting to add a new payment method like pay by bank, or if you're wanting to have some form of agents to help with uh purchasing or personalize offers that adding that kind of facilitation.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're really probably starting tomorrow or wanting to revisit your kind of payment uh strategy for your site, I would put it as two points.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a decision framework that you should consider.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are payments a kind of utility?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you wanting to do something a bit more radical and really make payments a bit more unique and specific to the to your consumers?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: If it's a utility, so for example, if it's a financial institution, you're repaying your credit card, you're paying your water bill, then don't go out of whack and kind of make something too radical.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Stick to the platforms.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Keep it simple, make sure it's reliable and easy to make a payment.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're wanting to have a better understanding of your consumers and your and your cardholders, then building out something that is more radical, providing relevant choice, providing uh hyper-focused offers and personalized AI experiences are going to be the next piece in terms of choosing what you should be doing in terms of payments.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you've mentioned payment methods or payment options a couple of times.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a point where having too many payment options actually creates friction or risk?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And how should merchants decide which methods really truly matter that, you know, and they should be offering?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So really there is a huge risk of putting hundreds of different payment methods in a in a payment page, and then you're leaving your consumers in option paralysis effectively.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you give a customer 10 different ways to pay, you aren't giving them the choice, you're giving them a basically a homework assignment.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every extra button is a moment where a customer can stop, think, and then effectively abandon the cart.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're coming to thinking about revisiting that's that strategy in 2026, think about the geography that you're wanting to target.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: If it's for Netherlands, for example, then ideal needs to be top and center, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Majority of payments are by ideal.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: If it's Poland, 60 to 70% of transactions are done by Blick, which is a kind of QR code-based payment method, what and and very quick.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Majority of consumers are using that particular option.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: If it's in the UK, digital wallets, Apple Pay, Google Pay.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: The other part that you should consider is order value.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: If it's something for£20 or£20 USD, give them something that is quick and easy to go through, like a digital wallet or their kind of most preferential payment option for that country.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or if it's something that is high ATV, think about leading with a buy now pay later option, giving them options or an instalment, breaking it down and making it more consumptuous in terms of getting the payment completed.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: The risk factor beyond the kind of friction point and tuning methods, I think every payment method that you add, you have to think about the reconciliation, the overhead for your operations team, and making it too cluttered to manage from a fraud perspective.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Each of these different payment methods won't have the same reconciliation, won't have the fraud same fraud mechanism.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to be making sure once you do choose to have a new payment method, that you've got everything in the background operationally set up and ready to go.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's bring in some things that are kind of, I'll just say, adjacent to payments in some way, and some things that merchants struggle with, which is really connecting the dots between traffic, conversion rates, and checkout abandonment.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So from a payments perspective, what signals actually matter when it comes to conversion and abandonment?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what noise should e-commerce teams stop over-indexing on?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think merchants really get really over-indexed in in terms of the numbers and kind of looking at I'm losing everything and kind of not getting the best acceptance rates.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is consumers like you and I are kind of looking very often, just window shopping, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of looking at particular sites, either bookmarking it for later and saying, oh, that's that's uh one that I might purchase later, or kind of waiting for a better deal.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And really, the reality is about 70% or even more, I'm to say 80%, are kind of dropping off because they're just simply just window shopping and it's unavoidable.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there are some areas that I would probably put your focus into.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And one area that I've seen, especially as kind of things are changing in some kind of regions in the US, in the UK, for commercial cards, is the surprise cost drop-off, right?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you get all the way through, you select your item, you think it's a great deal, and then you come to the end of the payment page, and then you've got these additional feeds, right?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the surcharging, sudden surcharging puts probably a sour taste in a lot of your consumers.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then subsequently will instantly abandon it, right?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So being up front with the the charges that you will apply, if it's a commercial card or if it's a more of a premium payment method, trying to display that as early as possible is key.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is page speed, and I've had this directly to myself with merchant feedback.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: If a page takes longer than three seconds to load, you'll see dropouts, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I've seen merchants say if something is more than two seconds, they will switch provider, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So in terms of payment service provider.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So getting that speed on your website in terms of showing the actual payment page or showing the products that you're wanting to display is going to be key.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is, and I'm I'm still surprised at how poor this can be sometimes, is the device mismatch.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So are your kind of your e-commerce sites optimized for mobile devices, tablets, desktop?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be surprised how many times I've gonna a mobile device and kind of different mobile device that may be a little bit more unique in terms of screen size, and it looks completely skew with and completely unusable to a kind of consumer.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the real noise to ignore is probably over-indexing on too many payment options, adding 20 buttons in terms of your payment journey.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Really focus on making the speeds, getting the payment complete as quickly as possible a priority when looking at the numbers.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's talk a little now about social media and commerce.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: So social and commerce are colliding fast.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that's obvious in the the world we live in today.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So platforms like Instagram, they can drive massive demand, but payments often lag behind the experience.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, what should merchants be thinking about to make sure they're not losing revenue at the moment of payment on these social platforms?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Totally agree, Greg.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a massive growing area, like other kind of streaming platforms like Twitch, for example, they've all integrated these type of payments.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest revenue killer for yourself, if you're wanting to choose that particular channel, is redirection, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you get someone happy to buy something on Instagram or Twitch, and you redirect them off the particular platform that they're on.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: It loses the trust with the consumer because they're going to a site that they don't know and can't verify.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: They also are kind of getting kicked out and then subsequently potentially having to re-enter all of their card details, choose a new payment option, go through that whole basket journey again, which is uh leads to dropouts.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Merchants really prioritize the native in-app checkouts within these platforms.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, they take a cut with every purchase, but the revenue and kind of probably the uptick that you're getting from these platforms and having the payments embedded in, say, Instagram or Twitch or TikTok, for example, is far more promising and kind of from a consumer perspective, a lot more trust because they see that it's not leaving the site, they have all their payment details already stored, and it makes conversion a lot better for yourself in the end.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you really have to move consumers away from the particular platform that they're on, then making sure that you're displaying one-click checkout options like the wallets, click to pay, which is really growing.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if a social shopper needs to kind of type in their card number, then you've lost them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is kind of conversational commerce.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the other part that we're really successful in with it within global payments is kind of supporting a pay-by-link product.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So as consumers agree to purchase something from Instagram, then they can give them a link.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And straight away that link will be to a payment page that has all of their details saying, Yep, you know, Greg, you purchased this particular t shirt, this is all the details, and kind of one click at checkout.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the kind of thing that you're wanting to provide if you really want them to redirect off.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're now, I think by the end of 2026, I just don't think it will be only social feeds, it'll be Live stream videos, so as I mentioned, like Twitch, they're embedding payment stores within the kind of streaming service today, and content creators will have AI capability to kind of surface if someone is interested with maybe a particular merch merchandise that they're providing or new particular products.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a lot of live stream will have a big significant play in terms of purchasing journeys.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's talk now about international or cross-border payments.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: So for merchants that are selling or planning to sell internationally, payments can get pretty complex very quickly.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what are some of the biggest mistakes you see businesses make when it comes to cross-border payments, local payment methods, and things like currency conversion or even tariffs?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So when working with multiple merchants and back in my implementation role and kind of merchants wanting to expand from, say, the UK to kind of Poland, the lack of kind of or expectation of what's going to be really there is getting really challenging.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think what merchants assume is they can just copy and paste their websites from the UK entity to, let's say, Poland, and it's going to be successful.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Domestic mirroring, assuming that it's going to work for, say, Germany or Poland, it's really a local game in terms of providing international commerce, making sure that you have the appropriate acquiring setup so you can get everything in one view from a reconciliation perspective.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it goes back to that payment option piece.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: If a customer in the Netherlands doesn't see ideal or a Poland shopper isn't offered blick, they won't just be annoyed.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: They'll leave.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Up to 13% of shoppers abandon carts because they don't see a familiar local payment method.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: The other pieces that merchants need to be considerate of is the FX tax, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So many merchants use a standard gateway to everything and don't set up the appropriate acquiring connection with their payment service provider, which often hides up to 2-5% markup on currency conversion.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you're losing money instantly just for setting up.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're already spending the cost of getting a new website up and running, and then you're having to pay that particular currency conversion.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you get the local acquiring connection so you're not getting that surcharge.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And savvy businesses use multi-currency accounts to collect like a local.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's also fragmented reconciliation, right?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: So managing 10 different local bank accounts is a liquidity trap.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're kind of managing loads of different funds into one.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of payment service providers, including global payments, put that all into one view for you.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes it a lot easier to see where your money is going, when it's going to be paid out to you, and kind of looking at how you can kind of manage your cash flow better.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: If you are doing this this kind of expansion this year, don't go for 30 countries in one go.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just focus on two to three and really look at the payment options that are popular there, localization as much as possible, and really kind of getting your reconciliation all sorted.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the kind of key parts in terms of expanding if you're looking at it.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about AI.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: You've mentioned Agentic Commerce a couple of times, and AI is everywhere right now.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's in every conversation that that I have on this podcast, and it's especially coming up a lot in e-commerce conversations.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: So from a payments and checkout perspective, what AI use cases are actually relevant today?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: And which ones do you think are kind of still more hype than reality?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I think where we are at the moment is a lot of people just using it for kind of chatbots or like helping from a kind of enhancing what you're searching for in Gemini today.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I think specifically in payments, it's an optimization phase.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: So there's three kind of key areas that payment service providers are looking at using AI.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: So one is intelligent payment routing.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So AI can detect very quickly if there's a latency switch acquiring provider in the background if needs be.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: If it's kind of not getting the best acceptance rates for whatever reason, again, it can switch over in milliseconds to ensure it's improved.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So decline recovery, helping with resiliency, those kind of things is one area.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: The other part is hyper-personalized checkout.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm talking about the kind of discovery or the relevant choice for consumers based on geography.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: But AI can start recognizing when you're starting to go to that cross on the top right or top left and start offering you personalized offers, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of recognizing Alex is going to start dropping off the checkout here.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start offering him something that he can't kind of go away from.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: The last piece is adaptive fraud detection.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the more traditional fraud, uh payment fraud tools are if-then kind of rules that you set up.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: But now it's saying using AI to kind of understand behavioral biometrics.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So is it definitely my fingerprints?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're holding the phone a certain way, if you're typing in a certain speed, it could actually be a bot.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So those are all the kind of mechanisms that the likes of the new kind of fraud AI tools are bringing in with payments.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Where the hype is, and probably where most of the social media is at the moment, is the fully autonomous AI agents, where to the average consumer or merchant, this is really not accessible.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we've seen with OpenAI, you can now go to their agent, say, I would like XYZ's products, and that'll display a product carousel with Etsy, and then embedding that payment journey to kind of buy from Etsy directly.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: The level of efforts for the merchant, the payment service provider schemes to all support that technology is very heavy lift.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still a way for our mid-market retailers or small business merchants to have that kind of facilitation or technology.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting there, but it's not at a kind of zero-click stage for everyone just yet.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I see in 26 is really the continuation of that relevant payment choice and the predictive discovery checkout.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure it's relevant to you, utilizing AI to make sure that you're getting the best offers possible, and displaying the payment options that you're going to definitely use from site to site.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, let's talk about the future a little bit.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: So looking ahead as online payments continues to accelerate, what should e-commerce leaders be prioritizing now to future-proof their checkout and payment strategy?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the key part is really building a secure and strong payment infrastructure that is agile and flexible.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: As you kind of said, the future of payments is evolving very, very quickly, in some cases too quickly, with AI, new regulations, shifting consumer habits, to be locked into a single provider or a rigid all-in-one system is probably going to really stagnate or kind of even kill your business in the long term.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: E-commerce leaders need to be able to plug and play new payment methods or fraud tools in hours, not months.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're wanting to take a few actions, I would say embrace payment orchestration and tokenization where possible.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Get away, if you are today, from storing real card numbers, the PCI headache, the security that you're opening for yourself in terms of storing that real data is really challenging.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Really start to utilize tokenization, or if at the lowest means, leverage the payment service provider tokenization.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Start looking at building out your own payment orchestration platform or kind of finding one off the shelf to connect into multiple payment methods, multiple payment providers, and this will give you more choice.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're seeing latency in one provider or you're wanting to expand into a new region, or you're wanting to get better approval rates, you have that flexibility with that orchestration system.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Another part is moving from siloed retrospective reporting to real-time and AI-driven insights.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: So to really understand your consumers, how they're paying and how long they're taking on each page, this kind of stuff will be really invaluable.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: That business intelligence of saying this particular product's doing well, they're spending this amount of time on the on the product page.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you that optimization or kind of A-B testing of how you can improve your products and your kind of merchant site over time, and you can help predict when a customer is also about to abandon, right?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of business intelligence is key to help make sure that you kind of retain the customers that aren't window shopping.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: The last one is kind of prioritizing the kind of PSD3 and kind of looking at emerging regulation with all this kind of AI technology.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's going to be new rules of regulation with identity, age verification, and enhanced security to make sure that when autonomous payments do come in, it's definitely yourself or you've kind of given consent to those agents to make payments.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Alex, as we wrap up the show for today, for those e-commerce and online business leaders listening today, what's the one key takeaway you want them to remember when it comes to building a modern, high-performing payments and checkout experience?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you only remember one thing, let it be this.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So in 2026, your payment experience is your products.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have moved past the era of payments where it's just the utility at the end of a journey.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Today, the speed and visibility of your checkout are as much of your brand identity as the goods you sell.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: So stop asking what more can you add and start asking what can you take away.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remove the passwords, replace them with biometrics, remove the manual forms and get tokenized identity, and remove refund anxiety for your consumers by offering instant refunds.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: The most successful brands in the next two years won't be the ones that have the ones with hundreds of payment logos on their site.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be the ones who make the act of paying as seamless as possible, where customers don't even have to think about it.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: The goal for every leader today should be zero-click commerce.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: The closer you get to a world where customer intent survey and completion of payment happen at the same time, the more you'll win.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, Alex, thank you so much for all your insights today.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for being on the show.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate it, Greg, and thank you for having me.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: And until the next story,