PAYMENT SOLUTIONS
“ THE ONLY ROUTE FORWARD IS TO PARTNER WITH A DIGITAL PROVIDER TO ADOPT THIS PLATFORM-BASED APPROACH ”
left behind in terms of cybersecurity , data analytics and aggregation and real-time solutions . Donald believes these companies need innovative technology partners more than ever because they need to protect their data , must offer customer-centric services and operate with the speed of smaller , agile startups .
“ I would absolutely advocate virtual partners for established companies . Incumbents do not move at the pace of fintechs . Therefore , if they go with the old school approach to bring in big companies to work with big companies , that will actually slow down the pace of change ,” he says .
Uittenbogaard says that with traditional financial institutions experiencing average abandonment rates of between
70 % and 90 %, leveraging a digital partner that can not only provide a platform that is managed and hosted for them but can engineer a forwardthinking solution with the customer front of mind can be the difference between “ sinking or swimming .”
Meanwhile , other experts point to a reimagining of the whole business ecosystem and the customer experience .
Paul Crerand , Field CTO EMEA ,
MuleSoft , says rather than interacting with each stakeholder individually , customers will come to expect a unified experience , “ where products from multiple organisations are delivered as part of a single digital journey .
In this model , each organisation ceases to ‘ own ’ the customer , in favour of becoming part of a wider digital value chain .”
Crerand believes the most effective way to make this a reality is for fintechs to re-define their offerings as a platform underpinned by APIs because it enables them to unbundle and re-package all of their customer data and digital assets as a set of capabilities that are exposed for other organisations , such as retailers and insurers , to pick up and re-use .
He adds , “ By taking this approach , every digital capability becomes a product that can be exposed to third parties via APIs , enabling other companies to incorporate fintech services into their own offerings .
“ The more open fintechs become , the more opportunities they have to expand their ecosystem and improve the customer experience , taking advantage of new revenue streams in the process .”
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