Consumer, Merchant Appetite For Efficiency Drives 2nd Wave Of Payment Orchestration

Payments regulation can feel like a new entrant on to the global scene, given the sheer number of headlines it has suddenly started turning up in over the last few years. But the truth of the matter, Payoneer Chief Operating Officer Keren Levy told Karen Webster in a recent conversation, is that what we are actually seeing is the second phase of payment orchestration taking off worldwide.

Orchestration itself has been around for quite a while, but phase one was mostly invisible to most people, she noted. That’s because it was defined entirely by the in-house construction efforts of a handful of truly global industries, like airlines, that need to be able to smoothly move money through many jurisdictions.

The second phase going on now, said Levy, is defined by the growing number of merchants that have gone global and digital over the last 18 or so months. They are now realizing they need more sophisticated global payment solutions and are looking for partners to help build it for them instead of attempting to do it themselves. As Levy noted, global payments isn’t a simple business these days, as payment methods are seemingly growing by the day, and regulatory schemes in various jurisdictions can change — even more important for merchants to get their payments strategies right, which ultimately could impact revenue.

“This is where the orchestration plays a role — in helping those merchants build something that intermeshes between the different providers and gives them some level of flexibility when they want to ride those trends of being more global,” she explained.

The Rising Second Wave

Integrating with payment service providers (PSPs) is difficult work that can take months — and second waves are rising quickly as merchants are getting through two, three or even more application programming interfaces (APIs) and realizing this isn’t something they want to be doing. Integrating, managing, updating and running payment infrastructures is an area that requires outside expertise from a third party.

But second-wave payment orchestration does more than eliminate the pain of self-orchestrating, said Levy — it also makes the process more informative and useful to the merchant deploying it.

“We offer the ability to see across different providers and have more control in terms of comparing between the different PSPs and understanding how well a specific PSP is performing,” she said. “And all of this gives the merchant the ability to make better decisions when creating a global payments setup.”

Merchants may not want to have to hand-manage a host of PSP relationships and optimize them in-house, noted Levy, but they care very much about optimizing their payment setups as much as possible to maximize their completed conversions. A payment orchestration layer — and the advanced analytics and dashboards it introduces — allows them to simplify the number of relationships they have in a data-driven, maximally efficient way.

What’s Next 

As for what is yet to come with the second wave of payment orchestration, Levy’s simple one-word answer was “growth.” The wave is rising, she said, but nowhere near cresting, as an increasing number of merchants all around the world are realizing that payment orchestration isn’t a “nice to have” for global merchants, but a genuine “need to have” in the modern global marketplace.

In terms of what it’s about, Levy expects to see it expand beyond reach into merchants. Risk management, she noted, is in many ways as fragmented as a global payment service between massive global and niche local players, and it’s another area where the move to consolidate and more smoothly route the experience for merchants would be genuinely valuable.

“We see this segment evolving toward being more inclusive of everything,” she said. “Everything that helps merchants optimize their setup and be more agile, to make better decisions on the experience they’re offering to their customers, while preserving the internal happiness of their teams on the back end.”

[TW]

消費者和商家對效率的渴望推動了支付編排的第二波

鑑於支付監管在過去幾年中突然開始出現在大量頭條新聞中，支付監管可能感覺像是全球舞台上的新進入者。但是，Payoneer 首席運營官 Keren Levy 在最近的一次談話中告訴 Karen Webster，事情的真相是，我們實際上看到的是全球範圍內的支付編排的第二階段。

她指出，編排本身已經存在了很長一段時間，但大多數人幾乎看不到第一階段。這是因為它完全由少數真正的全球性行業（例如航空公司）的內部建設努力定義，這些行業需要能夠在許多司法管轄區順利轉移資金。

Levy 說，現在正在進行的第二階段的定義是，在過去 18 個月左右的時間裡，越來越多的商家走向全球和數字化。他們現在意識到他們需要更複雜的全球支付解決方案，並正在尋找合作夥伴來幫助他們構建它，而不是嘗試自己做。正如 Levy 指出的那樣，如今的全球支付並不是一項簡單的業務，因為支付方式似乎每天都在增長，而且各個司法管轄區的監管計劃可能會發生變化——對於商家來說更重要的是正確地制定他們的支付策略，這最終可能會影響收入。

她解釋說：“這就是編排發揮作用的地方——幫助這些商家建立在不同供應商之間相互配合的東西，並在他們想要順應全球化趨勢時為他們提供一定程度的靈活性。”

崛起的第二波

與支付服務提供商 (PSP) 集成是一項艱鉅的工作，可能需要數月時間——隨著商家通過兩個、三個甚至更多應用程序編程接口 (API) 並意識到這不是他們想要的東西，第二波浪潮正在迅速上升正在做。集成、管理、更新和運行支付基礎設施是一個需要第三方外部專業知識的領域。

但第二波支付編排不僅僅消除了自我編排的痛苦，Levy 說——它還使這個過程對部署它的商家更加有用和有用。

“我們提供查看不同提供商的能力，並在比較不同 PSP 和了解特定 PSP 的表現方面有更多控制權，”她說。 “所有這些都使商家能夠在創建全球支付設置時做出更好的決策。”

Levy 指出，商家可能不想手動管理大量 PSP 關係並在內部對其進行優化，但他們非常關心盡可能優化支付設置以最大限度地提高已完成的轉換。支付編排層——以及它引入的高級分析和儀表板——使他們能夠以數據驅動、最高效的方式簡化他們擁有的關係數量。

下一步是什麼

至於第二波支付編排尚未到來的事情，Levy 的簡單回答是“增長”。她說，這一浪潮正在上升，但還遠未達到頂峰，因為世界各地越來越多的商家意識到，支付編排對於全球商家來說並不是“值得擁有”，而是真正的“需要擁有”現代全球市場。

就其內容而言，Levy 希望看到它擴展到商家之外。她指出，風險管理在許多方面與大規模全球和小眾本地參與者之間的全球支付服務一樣分散，而且這是另一個領域，為商家整合和更順暢地傳遞體驗將是真正有價值的。

“我們看到這個細分市場正在朝著更加包容一切的方向發展，”她說。 “一切有助於商家優化設置並更加靈活，以便就他們提供給客戶的體驗做出更好的決策，同時保持後端團隊的內部幸福感。”