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WEBINAR OVERVIEW ACI Worldwide on making payments pay in the journey to retail reinvention

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In a recent InternetRetailing webinar, Making payments pay in the journey to retail reinvention, we heard from Chris Andrews, head of online retail, Europe, at ACI Worldwide, and Michel Yvon, treasurer at Decathlon 

Here’s a bulletpoint overview of the event. 

• Chris Andrews opened the webinar with an introduction to the changing payments industry and to research into this published as an InternetRetailing white paper, Making Payments Pay. 

He and Michel Yvon went on to discuss:

Payments as a revenue generator

  • New channels and payment options fuel spending. 35% are looking at alternative payments, 29% at buy now, pay later and 20% at in-app payments.
  • Payment priorities for Decathlon over the next 12 months: expansion via finding the right payment method for the market and optimising existing solutions.
  • RFID to enable scan and go solution, developed in house
  • How in-app purchases improve customer experience and conversion.
  • Decathlon’s ‘Try before you buy’ initiative and how that is influencing payments in France. “It’s very important to create confidence with the customer,” said Michael Yvon of Decathlon. “The goal is to test in a real-life situation products that haven’t yet been paid for.” The system creates an authorisation on the card and if the customer is happy they can then pay seven days later – without having to come back into the store.
  • How Decathlon is testing solutions ahead of using them. “It’s really important to have easy implementation each time.” AB testing is great when you want to test the real impact on conversion rates. You have the right feeling and will of the customer. Each time we are very flexible – we don’t think we have the right answer but prefer to test and let the customer decide. Different experience when testing bikes or tennis racquets. 

Decisions around data

  • Chris Andrews, ACI: “Be ruthless – big data sounds good but if there’s lots of data that isn’t adding anything to your business it could detract from what you’re trying to achieve  it could be overwhelming.”
  • Using data to improve the customer experience. Find out what goods are returned and why. Learn from the customer experience. Michel Yvon: “We can have a lot of data but if it’s not used correctly it’s better to have none. In the past we used too much data that’s not very useful – better to use tokenisation. We can save data without any personal information.” Importance of being transparent with the customer – why information requested and what it will be used for.
  • Balancing security and customer experience: the white paper showed 63% saying that security and fraud is a must, no matter the effect on the customer experience, while 30% say it’s only important as long as it doesn’t slow the purchase experience.
  • PCI DSS: Michel Yvon: This was a big constraint years ago when had to certify every transaction. Now more confident we can use more information without too many constraints. A real opportunity for us as a retailer.

The role of tokenisation

  • How does fraud prevention help in the customer journey? Michel Yvon: New payment technologies create fraud where it didn’t exist in the past. Bringing some online transactions into store means have to be very careful about fraud. Eg test and buy, the in-store kiosk: generates new parameters for fraud. Very important to identify that we have a new risk – and to respond to that risk. 
  • Very important to synchronise people – operational teams in store and online, finance, IT – around the new payments. New payment can increase purchase but also creates fraud issues. Must look at every aspect. “It’s always very difficult fo the customer when you propose something and then change your mind because more frustration than pleasure for customers.”

The rise of the ‘phygital’ buying experience

  • Mobile payments (30%) / mPOS (15%) / payment kiosks (11%) to be introduced by retailers in the next 12 months. A third (33%) believe the checkout will be obsolete in the next five years.
  • Focus on the experience and how people can use online payments in-store.
  • Michel Yvon: New payments technology enables retailers to pay online or at the till. “There are only positive impacts of all this new technology. I think there isn’t enough time to test everything we want to test – there are too many topics, which is marvellous.” Compared to five or 10 years ago, the payments experience is totally different – what can be put forward just depends on your creativity.

The presentation closed with a summary of key learnings, and was followed by a half-hour Q&A session covering questions including simplifying the customer journey, boosting conversion, training staff on in-store payments and PSD2. To watch the webinar again, click here

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