Latest / Leaders In Payments / Special Series: The Trust Advantage with Brock Robertson, Chief Revenue Officer at Payroc | Episode 480
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: The strongest partnerships in payments are built on trust.
- 0:04SPEAKER_00: When trust is there, it creates differentiation, fuels growth, and leads to better outcomes for partners and merchants.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Trust Advantage Podcast series brought to you by PayRock.
- 0:18SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.
- 0:21SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Greg Myers.
- 0:22SPEAKER_02: This is the second episode in our three-part series called The Trust Advantage, and is being brought to you by Payrock.
- 0:28SPEAKER_02: Today I'm honored to have as my special guest Brock Robertson, CRO at Payrock.
- 0:33SPEAKER_02: In this episode, we're talking about how the payment strategy for software platforms may be shifting once again.
- 0:39SPEAKER_02: For years, the push toward owning more of the payments experience, but many companies have learned that greater control also brings greater complexity.
- 0:48SPEAKER_02: Brock and I will explore why trusted referral and partnership models are re-emerging, what that means for software leaders today, and why trust remains at the center of making the right long-term decision.
- 1:00SPEAKER_02: So, Brock, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
- 1:03SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the invite, Greg.
- 1:04SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to doing this.
- 1:05SPEAKER_02: Great.
- 1:05SPEAKER_02: So before we dive into the topic, let's talk a little bit about you and PayRock.
- 1:09SPEAKER_02: So tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe your professional journey and your role at Payrock.
- 1:14SPEAKER_01: All right.
- 1:15SPEAKER_01: It's been a long journey.
- 1:16SPEAKER_01: I'll try to package it up in a nutshell here for you.
- 1:19SPEAKER_01: I've been in, you know, payments for 20 plus years now.
- 1:23SPEAKER_01: And essentially throughout my career, I've been primarily focused on delivering technology solutions and services.
- 1:29SPEAKER_01: What I've learned over the course of this career is that selling and supporting high-value technology is a place I was really comfortable and I knew I brought value.
- 1:38SPEAKER_01: So that really has kind of brought me to what is hopefully the final stop on my journey here at PayRock and the opportunity we have in front of us today.
- 1:46SPEAKER_02: Okay, so for those that may not be familiar, can you give us a quick overview of what PayRock does and the role it plays in the payments ecosystem?
- 1:54SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
- 1:54SPEAKER_01: At a high level, PayRock is a payment and fintech platform that helps our partners bring payments directly into their software and the experiences they take downstream to their customers.
- 2:04SPEAKER_01: And what that does is that positions PayRock and our go-to-market strategies with a set of capabilities that distribute throughout software companies, banks, ISO agent partnerships.
- 2:15SPEAKER_01: And basically our role in these relationships in total is really to kind of power the infrastructure behind the scenes.
- 2:22SPEAKER_01: So that means like offering payment processing, security, compliance, but also a host of other value-added services or what I call tools that really kind of involve marketing, sales, access to our data repository, delivering business intelligence to a specific partner's specific portfolio, allowing them to be more intelligent and allowing us together to develop better strategies and to be more successful within that partnership.
- 2:49SPEAKER_01: So with that said, those capabilities are really important.
- 2:53SPEAKER_01: But the key differentiator at Payrock is our capabilities to enable our partners to kind of reach the needs not only of Main Street, but all the way up and through our global enterprise merchants that our partners have to address.
- 3:06SPEAKER_01: This is a significant market advantage for us and something we're really proud of.
- 3:11SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 3:11SPEAKER_02: Well, let's dive into the topic at hand for the day.
- 3:14SPEAKER_02: So over the past decade, and you know this as well or better than I do, we've seen a major shift in how software platforms approach payments.
- 3:22SPEAKER_02: So, from your perspective, how is the relationship between these software companies and payment providers evolved?
- 3:29SPEAKER_01: Well, really good question.
- 3:30SPEAKER_01: The evolution of this goes back to when I got into payments.
- 3:34SPEAKER_01: And kind of before I talk about the history of the world here and how it's recalibrated since I've been in it a couple times, I'd like to talk about really how we approach it here at PayRock and kind of the mentality we put around these partnerships.
- 3:50SPEAKER_01: We're very upfront and honest about who we are and what role we play.
- 3:54SPEAKER_01: And Greg, I'm going to challenge you.
- 3:57SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's any software company on the planet that wakes up any day of the week and says, Boy, I sure hope I get to talk to a payments guy today.
- 4:06SPEAKER_02: I will agree with you.
- 4:07SPEAKER_01: Right?
- 4:08SPEAKER_01: So we are that necessary evil, especially inside software companies who really want to spend their day, should be, focusing on their core features and functionality.
- 4:18SPEAKER_01: So look, understanding our role, our mantra inside Payrock throughout, and that includes sales, obviously product, tech, and operational teams, is we really strive to take the pain out of payments for our partners.
- 4:32SPEAKER_01: And as we succeed in doing this through each phase of our partner and merchant experiences that we can deliver, we see our teams winning more and more outstanding relationships.
- 4:43SPEAKER_01: The higher quality software companies are coming in because of this.
- 4:47SPEAKER_01: And obviously it makes sense because by building greater trust and confidence with our partners, they reward us with greater access to their customers.
- 4:56SPEAKER_01: And ultimately that's the game.
- 4:57SPEAKER_01: So we take that thinking, we take that belief system, and we apply it to where we were in the early 2000s, which were look at a payments solution was a bolt-on utility for software companies, let's be honest.
- 5:12SPEAKER_01: That quickly started to evolve into embedding directly into a user experience.
- 5:17SPEAKER_01: And those early adopters at that point in time got a real taste of how to monetize payments and more importantly, how it can fuel their growth going forward.
- 5:26SPEAKER_01: So that was a critical moment where we realized that we really had something going.
- 5:32SPEAKER_01: That shift, though, was really, really important in the relationship between software provider and payments company.
- 5:38SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is we quickly shifted from being just a vendor, that bolt-on utility, I called it, to a very strategic partner because we were becoming a very critical revenue item that was fueling that growth, like I had said.
- 5:53SPEAKER_01: So it really changed the dynamic and perception of payment providers.
- 5:58SPEAKER_01: And it also drew it out as to how important that payment partner choice that software company made was to the success of their own software.
- 6:07SPEAKER_01: So that was the earliest stage.
- 6:10SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 6:10SPEAKER_02: There was a time not too long ago that the industry narrative was that every software platform should become a payfack.
- 6:17SPEAKER_02: And you know, pay VAC has a specific definition, right?
- 6:20SPEAKER_02: So why did that idea of every platform should be a pay fact?
- 6:24SPEAKER_02: Why did it gain so much traction?
- 6:25SPEAKER_01: Well, I think we could thank the investment community for convincing a lot of software companies this was the most important thing they could do strategically to grow their business.
- 6:35SPEAKER_01: Look, I think the underlying principles were really, really solid.
- 6:39SPEAKER_01: To become a pay fact, it meant you were going to get greater control over that experience.
- 6:43SPEAKER_01: And at the time, payments companies were just trying to understand what an embedded relationship was.
- 6:49SPEAKER_01: And that experience from the payment side of the house was evolving.
- 6:54SPEAKER_01: And they found a shortcut.
- 6:56SPEAKER_01: They could get greater control, you know, as a pay fact and really kind of control that experience and develop the one they felt was strongest for their software solution.
- 7:06SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, that doesn't just involve merchant onboarding, you know, that's a payment lifecycle that involves underwriting, compliance, disputes, fraud monitoring, the whole enchilada, right?
- 7:19SPEAKER_01: Well, look, that infrastructure that is required to deliver that is not just people, it's systems.
- 7:26SPEAKER_01: And that is a very, very expensive proposition.
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: So while yes, they got a greater piece of the economic pie and becoming a PayFAC, that burden that followed, I don't think was totally understood when they were getting into it.
- 7:41SPEAKER_01: But look, in the last three years, we've seen a kind of that awakening and the reality of what those expectations were.
- 7:49SPEAKER_01: I think, and especially in the conversations we're having with those software companies that are kind of rebooting, resetting, recalibrating, whatever you want to call it, they're realizing in this path to pay fact and control, what they did is they really kind of lost their brand identity and their focus, which should have been and has always been their feature and functionality set within their software.
- 8:14SPEAKER_01: And that transition into becoming a payments company kind of lost focus for them.
- 8:18SPEAKER_01: So we're now engaged in these relationships where they'd like to go ahead and come back and settle to the advantages of being a pay fact.
- 8:26SPEAKER_01: Where can I get that control?
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: Where can I keep that control, but not have the cost burden and the operational burden of being a pay fact and try to go ahead and get as close to that economic realization that we set out and started, we thought we were going to get as a PayFAC.
- 8:43SPEAKER_01: So it's a real interesting time, and uh PayRock and its capabilities have really kind of put itself in a great position to have those discussions within those software companies and our existing partnerships.
- 8:55SPEAKER_02: So do you think that it was kind of like the reality set in that payments is really complex and they weren't really expecting that when they started down this path to PayFAC?
- 9:03SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 9:04SPEAKER_01: I mean, forget the fact.
- 9:05SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think it was good for people in the payments industry because there's a lot of payment professionals that went over to the other side and got paid a lot of money to be the payment experts inside these software companies.
- 9:15SPEAKER_01: But look, payments is complex.
- 9:17SPEAKER_01: We all know that.
- 9:18SPEAKER_01: There's nothing easy about this.
- 9:19SPEAKER_01: I think the reality that it is a regulated financial institution that you're trying to go ahead and create within your software company was a burden that I don't think was completely understood.
- 9:30SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't take long to figure that out.
- 9:31SPEAKER_01: And if you're a software company with any kind of global expansion plans, the complexity and regulation just tenfold.
- 9:40SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there was a lot to it.
- 9:42SPEAKER_01: And now, when something goes wrong and you were a payfact, that software platform's reputation is on the line.
- 9:49SPEAKER_01: For most of them, it meant that you didn't have a payments company to blame because you were the payments company.
- 9:55SPEAKER_01: I think that reality settled in.
- 9:57SPEAKER_01: And it started about three years ago.
- 9:58SPEAKER_01: And, you know, some of the conversations are pretty funny.
- 10:01SPEAKER_01: And I think there's, you know, some real honest uh self-evaluation.
- 10:06SPEAKER_01: I had one software company say, hey, it was a wild ride, but a complicated one is a payfack.
- 10:14SPEAKER_01: But that brings us to today, right?
- 10:16SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 10:16SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 10:17SPEAKER_02: So what do you think is driving that shift?
- 10:19SPEAKER_02: I mean, when you're talking to these people every day, the ones that are kind of rethinking that approach, what's really driving that shift?
- 10:25SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
- 10:26SPEAKER_01: The conversation usually starts where they've self-evaluated where should we really be truly focusing our resources, right?
- 10:35SPEAKER_01: Many realized right up front, as they kind of had swallowed the frog, it became a pay fact, that their software product was no longer the differentiator if you looked at the resources and you looked at the focus.
- 10:48SPEAKER_01: And um, that shouldn't have been the case.
- 10:50SPEAKER_01: It should have been our their software product all along.
- 10:53SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, you're trying to maintain a healthy participation in the revenue associated with it.
- 10:59SPEAKER_01: So I think you had an inherent conflict between this thing called payments is overtaking our focus or at a minimum is a distraction, it's definitely draining our resources.
- 11:09SPEAKER_01: How can we go ahead and kind of rationalize or rebalance that go-to-market strategy to where we honestly, where they can get the best of all worlds?
- 11:20SPEAKER_01: And once you get into that thinking with a partner, then that's when you can really move forward and design what we like to think is, you know, the optimal partnership with the optimal business model.
- 11:32SPEAKER_01: And it takes a certain type of payments company to be positioned to deliver that kind of flexibility and those capabilities at scale to where they want to go ahead and maintain that healthy margin that they were able to get or at least tried to get as a PayFec.
- 11:48SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 11:49SPEAKER_02: So it sounds like we're almost coming full circle.
- 11:52SPEAKER_02: So what does it kind of mean in practical terms that we're almost back to where we started?
- 11:56SPEAKER_01: Well, back to how they kind of want to thread the needle.
- 11:59SPEAKER_01: You know, how can we maintain that control in the experience?
- 12:03SPEAKER_01: And the good news is payment providers like PayRock have been able to go ahead and deliver the innovation and be able to go ahead and deliver not only the experience they want between their payment provider, but more importantly to their customers.
- 12:18SPEAKER_01: And I think they're looking at it and kind of rediscovering that the old referral partnership model wasn't all that bad.
- 12:26SPEAKER_01: But some like to go ahead and maintain that little bit of control where they are actually going to market with their own sales folks.
- 12:32SPEAKER_01: And of course, you know, that's something that we can adapt to and support as well.
- 12:37SPEAKER_01: You know, with that, obviously they have the ability to capture a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to the economics, but some have just literally said, get me out of this payments room.
- 12:47SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be the software company.
- 12:48SPEAKER_01: We'll let you be the payment experts.
- 12:51SPEAKER_01: And can you bring to the forefront your resources to enable that?
- 12:55SPEAKER_01: It's an exciting time.
- 12:56SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk a little bit about sort of the software companies and their maturity when it comes to payments, because let's say a newer company doesn't start out doing a billion dollars in transactions, right?
- 13:06SPEAKER_02: So they're they start small, they may have 10, 20, 100 customers and they're growing that.
- 13:11SPEAKER_02: So how have you seen sort of that partnership model where they're taking on over time more responsibility?
- 13:18SPEAKER_02: Is that sort of how it, you know, it kind of matures as they get bigger or kind of what are your thoughts on that?
- 13:24SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a good question.
- 13:25SPEAKER_01: Look, you know, the profile of a successful payrock partner usually falls within a consistent set of parameters.
- 13:34SPEAKER_01: Those partners really want to focus on looking at a secure payment relationship, and they want that fintech platform that they can look to to scale.
- 13:44SPEAKER_01: So back to how can you enable me to scale?
- 13:47SPEAKER_01: What that means is you, as a payment provider, like PayRock, has to deliver this powerful technology with something that is not just the technology.
- 13:57SPEAKER_01: And this is what we're seeing increasingly more in the marketplace.
- 14:00SPEAKER_01: What they want is what PayRock consistently is delivering, which is real people supporting a real partnership.
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: But most importantly, it's built around our partners' growth strategies.
- 14:11SPEAKER_01: So when you hear us talk in the halls of Payrock about what does it mean?
- 14:15SPEAKER_01: Who are we?
- 14:16SPEAKER_01: We'll continue, and we've had a lot of success in actually delivering on this.
- 14:21SPEAKER_01: We're really a partner-driven, global and scale, people-powered organization.
- 14:27SPEAKER_01: And so no matter if you're a small, mid-size, or large enterprise ISV, there is something in there that we as a company can come in and plug into your business and allow you to realize the growth expectations that you're striving for.
- 14:43SPEAKER_01: So you have to be flexible.
- 14:46SPEAKER_01: And what we see is if we can go ahead and agree that both of us are going to invest in the partnership, who cares how long it takes for that partner, that software company, to go ahead and evolve?
- 14:58SPEAKER_01: And they don't have to go ahead and get to the point where they want to control everything.
- 15:03SPEAKER_01: They may be very comfortable to just go get to the point where you're the payment specialist and professionals inside our organization.
- 15:10SPEAKER_01: We just want to refer you our business, and uh, they're more than happy to settle right there.
- 15:15SPEAKER_01: But those who want to be more aggressive, who want to go ahead and uh capture greater revenues and take greater control, we're there to evolve with them.
- 15:24SPEAKER_01: And I think that's key for payment companies right now.
- 15:27SPEAKER_01: You have to have that ability to be that flexible, and you have to have a set of capabilities to enable it, or else it doesn't work.
- 15:33SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 15:33SPEAKER_02: And you've mentioned referral models a couple of times.
- 15:36SPEAKER_02: And I think 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, in this kind of vertical SaaS space, you know, that referral model, those words were seen as kind of passive, right?
- 15:47SPEAKER_02: But now we're evolving back to where these referral partnerships are stronger again.
- 15:51SPEAKER_02: So what does kind of a modern day strong referral partnership look like?
- 15:55SPEAKER_02: And what separates the good ones from maybe the not so good ones?
- 15:59SPEAKER_01: Good question.
- 16:00SPEAKER_01: The referral model can be as innocent and as passive as here's our customer base, go talk to them.
- 16:08SPEAKER_01: Not having any kind of consistent understanding of what their technology is, you know, think of it in a bank relationship.
- 16:15SPEAKER_01: They can be in any vertical on the planet.
- 16:17SPEAKER_01: So that takes a different type of approach when you talk about that referral model.
- 16:21SPEAKER_01: That's where our direct sales force would go out and have to do discovery on site, have a general sense based on the vertical they're in, but then go ahead and perform an effective discovery and back them into the right solution that that that particular business needs.
- 16:35SPEAKER_01: But when you get into the software side of it, there's consistent DNA in the merchants they're going after, right?
- 16:41SPEAKER_01: I mean, these business management software companies, they have a very specific vertical, you know, they could have small to medium-sized companies involved within there, or maybe they're on the larger, mid to large enterprise side, but it's still there's consistent DNA.
- 16:58SPEAKER_01: And what that allows you to do as a company, as our highly skilled team at Payrock, allows us to go in and customize what that go-to-market strategy should be.
- 17:07SPEAKER_01: And that involves marketing, that involves sales.
- 17:10SPEAKER_01: And again, surprisingly, some want that passive relationship to say, hey, great, here's our customer base.
- 17:16SPEAKER_01: Do you mind having one of your payment specialists pick up the phone?
- 17:19SPEAKER_01: And of course, we've got a whole strategy and script, you know, built around that to make sure we're representing that software company's brand.
- 17:27SPEAKER_01: And then others is we're actually doing it from the inside and helping them go ahead with their own sales folks and take that referral, keep it inside, and then go control that experience all the way till the end to where they'd have their customers convert into merchants.
- 17:44SPEAKER_01: So it spans all the way across the, you know, the spectrum of referral from the early days passive to a little bit more control and complexity.
- 17:53SPEAKER_01: But at the end of it, what are you doing?
- 17:55SPEAKER_01: You're helping out a software company deliver within their brand a strong, reliable, and secure payment solution.
- 18:02SPEAKER_01: And that never changes.
- 18:04SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 18:04SPEAKER_02: Well, this podcast series is built around the idea of the trust advantage.
- 18:09SPEAKER_02: So why does trust matter so much when a software company is choosing a payments partner?
- 18:14SPEAKER_01: The recipe we have around here, and it's something that we strive really hard to achieve.
- 18:19SPEAKER_01: And look, it's it's common sense.
- 18:21SPEAKER_01: The greater amount of trust you can build in this partnership means the more confidence your partner's gonna have in you to go ahead and properly represent you and introduce you ultimately into their customer base.
- 18:33SPEAKER_01: And that's where we always say that if we can go ahead and build the appropriate trust, we'll go ahead and gain the confidence, which means we're gonna go ahead and get access to their customers.
- 18:42SPEAKER_01: They're gonna give us the privilege to go ahead and approach their customers on behalf.
- 18:46SPEAKER_01: Why does that matter?
- 18:48SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously, payment sits in this intersection between money, risk, customer experience.
- 18:55SPEAKER_01: These software companies come to us to embed and they take a leap of faith putting their brand behind that provider.
- 19:02SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, it's really important to build that trust from the onset by being not only a strategic partner, but you know, pushing forward the transparency around the economics, your operation, your support.
- 19:16SPEAKER_01: And that always ends up with everybody around the table investing in a long-term alignment, not some short-term transaction.
- 19:24SPEAKER_01: So, look, we're able here at Payrock to have our partners invest in our relationship and trust us to help them grow.
- 19:30SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, that's our secret sauce.
- 19:32SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 19:32SPEAKER_02: Well, two final questions.
- 19:34SPEAKER_02: So, first one, if you're a software leader and you're evaluating your payment strategy, what are the biggest factors that you should consider before deciding how much you want to get involved in payments?
- 19:43SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously, you're gonna do your homework.
- 19:45SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's gonna start with that payment provider's brand reputation.
- 19:51SPEAKER_01: That'll quickly migrate to what is their experience in the software space, the integrated space.
- 19:58SPEAKER_01: Obviously, that usually ends up with the technology team of that software company reaching out and looking at what are your APIs, what is the referral portal look like?
- 20:09SPEAKER_01: Essentially, what is the technology and the capabilities, like I had talked about before, that this payment provider can go ahead and deliver?
- 20:16SPEAKER_01: Well, that's gonna translate right into whether or not they're gonna be able to go ahead and understand is that the experience we want for our customers.
- 20:23SPEAKER_01: And if you can check all those boxes, then you know, at that point, you're just going ahead and you're, you know, divvying up the economics and you're building the right go-to-market strategies and the right business model that fits on the level of control you want and the type of experience you want to deliver.
- 20:39SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 20:39SPEAKER_02: Well, one final question.
- 20:41SPEAKER_02: If you had to boil this episode down into one key takeaway for the listeners, what would that key takeaway be?
- 20:47SPEAKER_01: Key takeaway.
- 20:48SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty certain what I'm gonna tell you is not gonna make any Smithsonian, but hell, let's give it a shot.
- 20:54SPEAKER_01: Look, the industry has spent the last decade experimenting with different models of partnerships.
- 21:00SPEAKER_01: There's no question about that.
- 21:02SPEAKER_01: What we're seeing now is a more mature perspective, I would call it, where software companies are recognizing they don't need to own everything to create value within their own company.
- 21:12SPEAKER_01: And it's apparent the smartest strategies that are out there today within the software companies we're talking to and that we're seeing succeed are the ones that just partner with someone they trust, right?
- 21:24SPEAKER_01: And that's really it.
- 21:25unknown: Okay.
- 21:26SPEAKER_02: Well, Brock, this has been a great episode, and I think that was a great way to wrap up the show.
- 21:30SPEAKER_02: So I know your time is very valuable.
- 21:31SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate you being here today and being on the show.
- 21:34SPEAKER_02: Nice meeting you, Greg.
- 21:35SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
- 21:35SPEAKER_02: All right.
- 21:35SPEAKER_02: And to you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
- 21:38SPEAKER_02: And until the next story.
- 21:40SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Trust Advantage podcast series.
- 21:44SPEAKER_00: To learn more about Payrock, please visit www.payrock.com.