Latest / Leaders In Payments / Anytime Anywhere Payments Series: Debbie Guerra, Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide | Episode 273

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Anytime Anywhere Payments Series: Debbie Guerra, Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide | Episode 273 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: This special series of the Leaders in Payments podcast, titled Be Solid, is brought to you in collaboration with NMI, the fully integrated payment solution built to scale.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: In this six-part series, we'll explore the ability to accept payments anytime, anywhere, using any device.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We'll dive deep into mobile acceptance via contactless tap-on phone, qr codes and digital wallets.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Merchants and their customers have expectations around Omnichannel commerce, and we'll explore how we got here and what is coming in the future.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: As we know, covid accelerated both mobile and Omnichannel commerce.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But now what?
• 0:49
  Debbie Guerra: In a world full of squares and stripes, the solid as both technology and payment opportunities have evolved, consumers have really driven and pushed merchants to be able to accept other types of payment and for a while they were separate channels.
• 1:07
  Debbie Guerra: So you think online e-commerce, and then you had mobile payments, and then you had wallets and you have new types of payments coming on board.
• 1:15
  Debbie Guerra: So I think now we tend to think about Omnichannel as having some combination of multiple channels in play, supporting multiple payment types across those channels and fundamentally being able to meet the consumer and accept the consumer's payment preferences where and how the consumer wants to shop.
• 1:41
  Greg Myers: That was Debbie Garra, the Chief Product Officer of ACI, and she is my special guest on this episode, episode 273 of the Leaders in Payments podcast, and I'm your host, greg Myers.
• 1:50
  Greg Myers: As we continue our deep dive into the Be Solid campaign brought to you by NMI, debbie and I discuss Omnichannel commerce as part of our six part series on Anytime, anywhere payments.
• 1:59
  Greg Myers: Debbie and I talk about the history of Omnichannel commerce, where it's heading in the future and the role ACI is playing in the payments ecosystem.
• 2:07
  Greg Myers: We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started.
• 2:09
  Greg Myers: Hi, debbie, and welcome to this episode of the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we're going to be talking about Anytime, anywhere payments and, of course, the concept of Omnichannel commerce is a big part of that.
• 2:26
  Greg Myers: So thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 2:29
  Debbie Guerra: Thanks, Greg.
• 2:29
  Debbie Guerra: It's a real pleasure to be with you today.
• 2:31
  Greg Myers: Great.
• 2:31
  Greg Myers: So let's start out by having you tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe a little personal and professional background information.
• 2:38
  Debbie Guerra: Sure well, I'm Debbie Garra, Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide.
• 2:43
  Debbie Guerra: I have more experience, I think, in consulting IT services, financial technology and payments than I'd like to admit to, but that encompasses really understanding payments, not just in North America but in Latin America, where I've had the opportunity to lead some merchant acquiring businesses.
• 3:02
  Debbie Guerra: I've worked with some of the largest processors and now at ACI, I'm really honored to be able to lead product strategy and product marketing and management for the original Fintech, a company with more than 45 years of experience in providing payment solutions to the world's largest financial institutions, processors, enterprise merchants and here in the US also two direct billers.
• 3:29
  Greg Myers: Okay, and do you want to tell us a little more about ACI and what ACI does?
• 3:33
  Debbie Guerra: Sure.
• 3:33
  Debbie Guerra: So, as I mentioned, I like to call us the original Fintech in payments, because our software solutions have really powered for the last 45 plus years the abilities for financial institutions to switch to process, to authorize and to settle payments across multiple channels.
• 3:55
  Debbie Guerra: For enterprise merchants, we offer OmniCommerce payment orchestration platforms.
• 4:00
  Debbie Guerra: We are not an acquirer, we don't move money for merchants, but we do provide orchestration solutions that help them achieve and deliver the experiences that they want for their consumers in the most effective way.
• 4:13
  Debbie Guerra: And then also in North America, we have a direct biller business.
• 4:18
  Debbie Guerra: We're one of the largest bill pay providers for a variety of corporate organizations.
• 4:23
  Greg Myers: Okay, and what makes ACI unique in the marketplace?
• 4:26
  Debbie Guerra: I think ACI is unique in that, given our experience and how embedded we are across so many different payments capabilities, we have the scale, the reliability, the performance and the knowledge of complex payments that really is unrivaled.
• 4:44
  Debbie Guerra: At the same time, because of our history, we are at the forefront today, for example, in driving real-time payments globally.
• 4:54
  Debbie Guerra: We are very adept at how to rapidly shift our solutions so that we can accept new payment methods, new channels, new structures, and that we're highly integrated across various participants in the payments infrastructure.
• 5:11
  Debbie Guerra: I like to think of us as the network for networks, right in terms of all that we can enable in the payment space.
• 5:19
  Greg Myers: Okay, all right.
• 5:20
  Greg Myers: Well, let's dive into the topic at hand and you mentioned it, which is Omni-Channel Commerce.
• 5:25
  Greg Myers: So can you give us kind of that 50,000-foot level definition of Omni-Channel Commerce?
• 5:30
  Debbie Guerra: Sure, when we think about Omni-Channel Commerce, it really is, and more focused, I would say, on merchants, but it is that ability for a merchant to be able to engage with their consumers across modes so think in person, online, via mobile, right at a kiosk, accepting whatever payment method that consumer chooses to engage with, and to then be able to provide a common experience for the consumer across the channels.
• 6:05
  Debbie Guerra: Additionally, being able to safely, securely route that payment transaction to the appropriate end point so that the merchant themselves is able to process and settle revenue funds and to do so in a way that really is secure, allowing them to have the highest levels of authorization and the lowest level of losses due to fraud and charge backs.
• 6:30
  Greg Myers: Okay, great Thanks for that definition, and you mentioned it earlier and, like me, we've both been in payments for a few years now.
• 6:37
  Greg Myers: Can you give us sort of a quick history lesson on Omni-Channel Commerce, sort of how did we get to where we are today?
• 6:43
  Debbie Guerra: Yeah, I think the origins of the concept around Omni-Channel really started with the in-store experience of consumers paying right, and for many years that was our only way to pay, whether it was cash or card.
• 6:58
  Debbie Guerra: But it was an in-store, in-person experience.
• 7:01
  Debbie Guerra: But as both technology and payment opportunities have evolved, consumers have really driven and pushed merchants to be able to accept other types of payment and for while they were separate channels.
• 7:15
  Debbie Guerra: So you think online e-commerce and then you had mobile payments, and then you had wallets and you have new types of payments coming on board.
• 7:23
  Debbie Guerra: So I think now we tend to think about Omni-Channel as having some combination of multiple channels in play, supporting multiple payment types across those channels and fundamentally being able to meet the consumer and accept the consumer's payment preferences where and how the consumer wants to shop.
• 7:45
  Greg Myers: Okay, and I recently read on your website and, by the way, I love this quote and I love this positioning that says today's consumers don't see channels, they see brands.
• 7:55
  Greg Myers: So can you kind of speak to that concept?
• 7:58
  Debbie Guerra: Sure, in our primetime for real-time report, which is something ACI publishes annually based on some primary research, we're really looking at the shifts in consumer preferences and in this idea of brands.
• 8:12
  Debbie Guerra: As a consumer, I think you know, if I'm engaged online, I may want to pay with, say, amazon Pay, right On my mobile.
• 8:19
  Debbie Guerra: I may want to do more of my payments through Apple Pay or through wallets, right.
• 8:24
  Debbie Guerra: So this idea of brands, you know customers or consumers are looking to engage with familiar brands and that could be a retail brand, a travel brand, a grocery brand, and they want a common experience with their interactions with that brand.
• 8:42
  Debbie Guerra: So they don't always think about it, as I'm going to go shop today online for grocery delivery from Albertsons, right, and I want to have that delivered by a third party to my home.
• 8:56
  Debbie Guerra: My interaction, my experience, is with the brand, but it might have multiple participants in the way I engage and I may want to pay one time with Apple Pay, another time I'm going to put it on a debit card.
• 9:09
  Debbie Guerra: In the future I may want to use real-time payments.
• 9:12
  Debbie Guerra: So when we look at the consumer, we're really seeing how are they approaching their commerce experience and their engagements with brands, right?
• 9:21
  Debbie Guerra: They don't think, oh, I'm going to go today and make a mobile commerce purchase right, right, so they don't think of the channel.
• 9:29
  Debbie Guerra: They really think of the experience.
• 9:30
  Greg Myers: Yeah, and I mean, it wasn't too long ago that your experience in a store and your experience online it was like it was the same brand, it was the same company, but it was almost like two different companies because the experiences were so different.
• 9:43
  Greg Myers: And then, how do you return an item when you buy it online versus in store, and so there's so much of that that has changed over the years.
• 9:51
  Greg Myers: And you bring up another point it's not just the retail versus mobile versus online, it's also how do you want to pay, right?
• 10:00
  Debbie Guerra: Exactly, and I think too and you just mentioned this, greg is the different use cases, and what's also interesting is globally, we're seeing different trends in different countries, you know, and what we see in Europe might be more focused on click and collect right.
• 10:16
  Debbie Guerra: In the US it might be buy online, pick up in store right.
• 10:19
  Debbie Guerra: You now have to be able to have common experiences for a consumer across the channels so I may shop be in my mobile, right.
• 10:29
  Debbie Guerra: I may order online, I may pick up in store, I may have things delivered to me, but I want to return it in store, and so it becomes really important that that consumer experience across the actual channels is something that can be seamless, and what is required underneath the workings of the payment solution to make that viable is not magic, right.
• 10:53
  Debbie Guerra: It's a lot of hard work, and one of the things that we see with our payment orchestration solutions is that token right.
• 10:59
  Debbie Guerra: That token that actually can help us identify a shopper, a card or a payment method and then will allow the merchant to orchestrate unique payment journeys right For their consumers is really really important.
• 11:17
  Debbie Guerra: It's a rapidly changing complex underpinnings in order for a consumer to have the best experience.
• 11:24
  Greg Myers: Yeah, and you kind of mentioned this earlier, but want to dive a little deeper into it and it's sort of this was it driven by consumers?
• 11:33
  Greg Myers: Was it driven by merchants?
• 11:35
  Greg Myers: How big did COVID play a part in this?
• 11:38
  Greg Myers: I mean, it's gone from when you just think of the restaurant vertical right Just used to go inside and eat and now order online, pick up, pay at the curb, pay in advance on mobile, on your phone.
• 11:49
  Greg Myers: I mean, there's so many different experiences to your point.
• 11:52
  Greg Myers: So do you feel like the consumers really drove this because of COVID or do you think the merchants drove it?
• 11:58
  Greg Myers: What's your kind of view on that?
• 12:00
  Debbie Guerra: Yeah, I mean I think we had started to see a lot more robust omnichannel opportunities occurring prior to COVID.
• 12:08
  Debbie Guerra: I think COVID acted as a catalyst, particularly on a more pervasive deployment of contactless payment types, of the quick and rapid shift to e-commerce for many merchants that hadn't as fully adopted e-commerce solutions for their customers.
• 12:26
  Debbie Guerra: I would say that we also saw COVID as a catalyst for third party aggregators or intermediaries.
• 12:34
  Debbie Guerra: You know, think delivery solutions as an example that worked with many of the merchants to expand their reach right, I think, post COVID.
• 12:44
  Debbie Guerra: So that was an accelerator and I think we don't see that fundamentally turning around.
• 12:49
  Debbie Guerra: I think consumers are happy now to have a in many situations, an in-store shopping experience and with the acceleration that came with COVID and, I would say, the new Fintechs offering unique payment options for consumers, it's creating a lot more opportunity for merchants to differentiate and reinforce their brand, their experience and their business with a consumer by being able to quickly adapt to changing consumer trends.
• 13:22
  Debbie Guerra: Fundamentally, we also see the mobile phone and some of the younger demographics and how mobile forward they are, you know, and all they do, and that has really been a driver not just in North America but really globally in terms of changes in shopping behavior.
• 13:39
  Debbie Guerra: I think it's a combination of factors.
• 13:42
  Debbie Guerra: Consumers, definitely a driver.
• 13:44
  Debbie Guerra: Covid was an accelerator.
• 13:45
  Debbie Guerra: Merchants now, as they look to reinforce their own brands, their own loyalty programs, their own engagement with a consumer and to differentiate between their competition, they are looking at payments as a component of that.
• 13:58
  Greg Myers: Yeah, I recently saw some statistics.
• 14:00
  Greg Myers: That's quite interesting.
• 14:01
  Greg Myers: The Gen Z group 98% of them have a smartphone, which that probably surprises no one.
• 14:09
  Greg Myers: 91% of them had a smartphone before they were 16 years old.
• 14:14
  Greg Myers: So you're talking about a group of consumers that everything is done on their smartphone.
• 14:21
  Greg Myers: But the interesting thing, I think, from a payments perspective, is those are future business owners and business leaders right.
• 14:27
  Greg Myers: So there's that expectation that that's how people want to buy things and interact with brands.
• 14:32
  Greg Myers: So I don't know if your research is seeing that too, but I thought that was an interesting stats that I found.
• 14:39
  Debbie Guerra: Absolutely, and I think that all of us often feel shamed by our children that are younger, that are beating us to the punch in terms of their digital fluency right, but I don't see that it will be going backwards in payments, whether they're getting embedded in the way we engage with businesses and merchants.
• 14:56
  Debbie Guerra: It's only becoming more and more seamless, and it's part of your experience and you expect it to be easy right, yeah, absolutely.
• 15:05
  Greg Myers: Well.
• 15:05
  Greg Myers: What do you think is next for Omni-Channel Commerce?
• 15:07
  Greg Myers: So, maybe?
• 15:08
  Greg Myers: What do you see happening in the next five to seven years?
• 15:11
  Debbie Guerra: We see it in probably maybe three pretty key trend lines.
• 15:15
  Debbie Guerra: The first, I would say, is really around as we see more of a shift to digital engagement.
• 15:22
  Debbie Guerra: That is creating an opening, unfortunately, for a lot more fraud, and I think it is becoming more and more essential that effective fraud detection and prevention solutions are in place, leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning and, at the same time, appropriately addressing digital fraud.
• 15:46
  Debbie Guerra: So being able to ensure who is that buyer, what is their digital identity and how does a merchant optimize their authorizations because that's important to their revenue flows but at the same time, do so smartly so that they can minimize chargebacks and fraud losses.
• 16:05
  Debbie Guerra: And that becomes more and more important when you see the shift from that in-person, in-store, card-present engagement to a more digital world.
• 16:16
  Debbie Guerra: So I think this focus on fraud and then particularly having fraud solutions that take advantage of the strength of a lot of AI and ML, becomes important.
• 16:25
  Debbie Guerra: The second trend we're seeing and it's already more pervasive in some other global economies, but in North America now, with the launch of FedNow for account-to-account real-time payments, what was already in place but now is getting a little bit of a boost with the clearinghouse, I think, the opportunity for real-time payments, whether it's pay-by-bank or request-to-pay, that can be available for merchants is going to be a game changer.
• 16:54
  Debbie Guerra: There's merchants and we hear a lot about what's happening today politically in how much merchants spend related to interchange costs.
• 17:04
  Debbie Guerra: The high cost of credit and debit is something that is on merchants' minds, and so, as we see some demographic shifts and uptake of real-time payments and the ability for those to work at them, for a consumer to business payment, I think that's going to be another important trend and I think we're going to see merchants enabling it as a new payment method as there's more and more adoption, expansion of the account-to-account real-time options.
• 17:35
  Debbie Guerra: And then I think the third trend that we're seeing is really something that we call intelligent payments orchestration.
• 17:41
  Debbie Guerra: It's how do you accept securely let's call it orchestrator route a payment transaction to the appropriate endpoint, and that could be based upon cost authorization, speed choice, you know, and how does a merchant take more control through orchestration of their options?
• 18:04
  Debbie Guerra: So those, I think, are three of the big trends that we're seeing in the Omni-Channel space.
• 18:09
  Greg Myers: Okay.
• 18:10
  Greg Myers: Well, let's circle back to ACI on these three trends.
• 18:13
  Greg Myers: So can you talk about fraud, real-time payments and this orchestration concept?
• 18:19
  Greg Myers: Can you talk about those and what ACI is doing and plans to do around those?
• 18:23
  Debbie Guerra: Sure.
• 18:24
  Debbie Guerra: So I think you know.
• 18:25
  Debbie Guerra: First, on the fraud space, we have an industry leading merchant fraud solution very focused on card not present fraud.
• 18:33
  Debbie Guerra: We have some of the highest payments acceptance rates in the industry, outperforming averages across various industry segments.
• 18:42
  Debbie Guerra: And you know, once again, as I mentioned, underpinned for years now with AIML models and even some patented incremental learning models that extend the life of a lot of the rules, engines and decisioning that is adhered to those solutions.
• 18:56
  Debbie Guerra: So, from ACI's perspective, our investments over the last 10 plus years in the fraud solutions is now paying dividends, particularly as we see the shift to digital payments, real time, as I mentioned earlier on.
• 19:10
  Debbie Guerra: I would say we are the leader on globally in real time payments and that shows up in several ways, you know.
• 19:16
  Debbie Guerra: One is we enable many central banks and central infrastructures with the infrastructure to support account to account real time payments, we enable low value real time payments.
• 19:28
  Debbie Guerra: So banks that connect to real time payment infrastructures and we are already a leader in the think of it as the high value money transfer business and what we see is all of that is coming together to be delivered via payment hubs.
• 19:43
  Debbie Guerra: So how does that relate to merchants?
• 19:45
  Debbie Guerra: You know.
• 19:45
  Debbie Guerra: So, first you have to get the structures in place.
• 19:47
  Debbie Guerra: You have to get the capabilities available for financial institutions and for consumers to take advantage of real time payments.
• 19:56
  Debbie Guerra: So we're at the heart of that and when we look at that in the merchant space, we have launches for instant payments, both in North America and Europe that have happened in 2023.
• 20:06
  Debbie Guerra: And we're going to be at the forefront of working with our enterprise merchant customers so that they can enable their solutions, at the right time, to take advantage of account to account real time payments.
• 20:17
  Debbie Guerra: And then I think, in terms of intelligent payment orchestration, this is really in the merchant space, that is the crux of our solutions and we really serve merchants that want to own, orchestrate and and really take control of their payments infrastructure.
• 20:34
  Debbie Guerra: And when you think about things like being able to do multi acquiring, to embed that common consumer experience across channels, to leverage point to point encryption and tokenization all through the orchestration engine and to link that to the fraud solutions, you know that's the core of some of the things we're doing today.
• 20:54
  Greg Myers: Okay, and on that orchestration thing, I mean, it's always been intriguing to me.
• 20:58
  Greg Myers: Does it also give the merchants the ability to add more payment methods and to add in like if they, or if so, that's one question.
• 21:06
  Greg Myers: And then also, does it give them the ability to more easily go into other countries or other regions of the world?
• 21:12
  Debbie Guerra: Absolutely.
• 21:13
  Debbie Guerra: I think the first thing is payment methods.
• 21:15
  Debbie Guerra: They're proliferating now wallets, alternate payment methods.
• 21:19
  Debbie Guerra: It's not just the standard card payments that have been the bread and butter for many of the acquiring processors for years, but also the proliferation of alternate payment methods and the connections that support those, as well as the mobile wallets.
• 21:34
  Debbie Guerra: Right and when you look at orchestration, right now cross border commerce is becoming a bigger deal and very often we look at our merchant business within a single geography.
• 21:45
  Debbie Guerra: But increasingly, particularly in the retail space, some of the services areas travel, transportation, hospitality becomes very important to support a lot of cross border commerce, which means you've got to be able to expand to other countries and know how to route the right payment method, the local payment method, to the local acquire as appropriate right Right.
• 22:06
  Greg Myers: Okay.
• 22:07
  Greg Myers: So, debbie, we've obviously covered a lot of ground about ACI and what you're doing in this space, and obviously about on the channel commerce in general.
• 22:15
  Greg Myers: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up the show?
• 22:18
  Debbie Guerra: Well, I think I would encourage anyone that's interested to tap into ACI's prime time for real time report.
• 22:25
  Debbie Guerra: There's some just great primary research and really looking at the trends for the proliferation of real time payments by country, by demographic, by size of financial institution and where we see the trends going for merchant adoption.
• 22:40
  Debbie Guerra: So that might be of interest.
• 22:41
  Debbie Guerra: And I would just also encourage those as we come up on peak season in the next month in North America to look out for our holiday predictions and I would give you a heads up on three of them, in that we are expecting about a 14% increase year of a year in globally commerce transactions, with the gaming sector really leading that growth.
• 23:04
  Debbie Guerra: We think by now paid later transactions are going to triple this year, particularly as consumers are looking to stretch dollars under inflationary pressures and unfortunately, we do see fraud attempts expected to grow to about 3% of all transactions, with friendly fraud making up about 20% of that.
• 23:23
  Debbie Guerra: So be on the lookout for some of the trends that are expected in the 2023 holiday season.
• 23:29
  Greg Myers: Okay, great, I appreciate you sharing those and look forward to seeing that.
• 23:33
  Greg Myers: So, debbie, thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 23:35
  Greg Myers: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here.
• 23:38
  Debbie Guerra: Well, thanks, greg, it's a pleasure.
• 23:40
  Greg Myers: And to all you listeners out there.
• 23:41
  Greg Myers: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode in our special series Be Solid, brought to you by NMI, the fully integrated payment solution built to scale.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: For more information on any time, anywhere, payments and this episode, please visit nmicom.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Forward slash resources, forward slash podcasts.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And remember, in a world full of squares and stripes, be solid.