Edouard Billion, Managing Director at Edenred Payment Solutions, spoke to Payment Expert about why it’s crucial that firms continue to focus on personalisation when it comes to the payments journey.
Payment Expert: How vital is it that firms focus on a personalised approach for consumers in the current climate?
Edouard Billion: It’s incredibly important. Consumers have come to expect personalised and seamless financial experiences – an expectation that is driven by ever more sophisticated technologies, such as automation, AI and the cloud.
And it’s not just consumers that benefit from personalisation. The simple fact is that businesses won’t thrive with a one-size-fits-all approach. As the market continues to face a challenging economic environment, we will remain dedicated to designing effective and tailored products and services that support business continuity.
PE: How have digital banking solutions evolved in recent years to play a more important role in the payment ecosystem?
The financial services sector is experiencing wide scale digital transformation, accelerated by the growing adoption of digital solutions and services (to help keep up with the demands of tech-savvy consumers and support the on-demand economy).
But providing these services means building and maintaining a complex infrastructure, complying with ever-changing regulations, and juggling multiple vendors, which unfortunately isn’t feasible for many companies alone.
By leveraging our established and secure payment infrastructure, licences and orchestration services, our customers can bring products to market faster, reduce operational burden, and deliver modern banking-like services to their users.
PE: What type of role does Edenred Payment Solutions look to play in boosting the payment journey for consumers?
As a people-centric business that prides itself on balancing technological expertise with a human touch, user experience is always at the heart of everything we do.
Our range of functional APIs help brands seamlessly integrate financial services into their customer journeys by providing robust, compliant, and technical solutions that are tailored to their customers’ specific needs. A single integration provides access to accounts, payments, and card products, while resilient and diversified in-house processing supports card transactions and banking flows.
These highly configurable solutions are designed specifically to help build a unique payment experience for the end user, which will boost loyalty and provide our customers with a competitive edge.
PE: Do you believe current payment regulatory frameworks are hindering innovation and efficiency within the payment journey?
Whether regulation is enabling or hindering innovation in the financial services industry is still hotly debated. I think regulation needn’t hinder innovation – in fact, it has the ability to drive innovation when policymakers and regulators work closely with financial services providers to ensure efficient, secure and resilient digital transformation.
Nevertheless, half of the CEOs in IBM’s 2022 CEO study identified regulation as a pressure point, with the increase in laws and regulations to reduce risk and preserve privacy, security, safety and ethical standards making costly fines a constant concern.
Payments is certainly an area where there needs to be a balance between innovation and compliance, but the collaborative relationship between policymakers, regulators and financial service providers will be increasingly important over the next few years as new technologies continue to emerge.
PE: Are you able to tell us about the focus of the rebrand to Edenred Payment Solutions?
EB: Edenred Payment Solutions feels like the natural progression in our business evolution, and the focus is very much on empowering innovation and unleashing the potential of our new and existing customers.
As PPS, we were founders and innovators in prepaid cards, which in turn grew fintech services such as virtual cards, debit, credit and prepaid processing. We’re incredibly proud of that heritage, and it’s a solid foundation on which to build the new brand.
Ultimately, we’re here to create a user journey that’s not just about the mechanics of payments, but one that encompasses the whole payment experience.
We’ve combined the strengths of both PPS and Edenred Corporate Payments to provide Edenred Payment Solutions’ customers with an even more robust, yet simplified, suite of solutions that will enable them to create unique products and services for end-users.
We may have a new name and a new look, but we will continue to be known for flexible and reliable solutions across embedded finance, digital banking and payment card services. We’ll also continue to build on our successful track record that includes collaborations with renowned brands like Tide, Sainsbury’s, TUI and Oney.
Existing customers will see a seamless transition to Edenred Payment Solutions, and benefit from a refreshed approach that enhances customer relationships and offers an improved experience.
