The payment industry is built on partnerships and collaboration in order to maximise the best service for the ultimate end goal of ensuring the customer has a seamless experience.
Worldline and Online Payment Platform (OPP) is the latest example of this, recently launching their new embedded payment solution, which was discussed at large in the first part of Payment Expert’s conversation with Marc-Henri Desportes (Worldline, CEO) and Richard Straver (Founder, OPP).
In part two of our conversation, Desportes and Straver spoke to Payment Expert Senior Journalist Callum Williams on the long-term macro benefits of integrating embedded payments such as their own, how Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) has impacted consumer flexibility, and what the next iteration of embedded payments looks like 10 years from now.
Callum Williams: So, we’ve talked about the micro-benefits of integrating the embedded payments solution. Once that customer journey is finalised, what do the macro-benefits look like for a merchant or for a marketplace embedding this solution into their framework for long-term revenue growth?
Marc-Henri Desportes: The marketplace itself will of course benefit from such an embedded payments solution. But, for the merchant, there is a huge opportunity to scale their business and drive growth in a faster and easier way.
If the merchant’s solution and the user experience they offer is really good, whether it is organising a sports competition or ordering food, then embedded payments will really drive that scalability.
So, for their growth, the macro benefits are clearly there. The merchant is leveraging a platform that has optimised the access to the market – access to a wider community. Small merchants and sometimes even consumers selling goods and services are in contact with a much wider accessible crowd through the platform. That’s something they typically can’t do on their own.
They might have intermediaries that offer certain payment solutions, but building that into their journey takes a lot of energy. With this embedded payment solution, we create and deliver all of this.
We materialise the access to the market, the financial onboarding and KYC elements, and then get rid of the cumbersome claims and dispute management issues that for a small merchant can be terrible for their bandwidth. So it’s a win-win.
Richard Straver: The platform will always try to think what’s the most important thing for them and user stickiness is really one of the key parameters. By integrating payments in a super seamless way, it increases user happiness and therefore increases user stickiness.
By using the flexibility of our multi-splitting engine and escrow, you can create more compelling, valuable user journeys that provide more security and more efficiency.
For example, say you have a marketplace where you’ve got a number of wine merchants and you want to have one bottle from that winemaker, a different bottle from a different winemaker, and another one from a third, etc. Then, when you make the purchase, you only want to do one transaction. With some of our competitors, you have to make each purchase individually with each different winemaker because their multi-split engine doesn’t facilitate that level of complexity, or they are not splitting funds in a compliant setup from a scheme and regulatory point-of-view.
What this example demonstrates is how payment technology has a very pragmatic impact on the user journey. Because, in some cases of what I previously illustrated, the buyer will abandon the checkout, realising they have to execute multiple payments to complete the order because they don’t feel like making six transactions for one case of six bottles, they just revert to, ‘I’ll just buy six bottles for this one merchant, forget the rest’.
“If you look 10 years from now, it is about making a global solution.”
All these things may seem small, but that actually makes the difference for the end user and for the merchant. All these things will add value to the platform, and I think that’s where we’re at.
Callum Williams: With the embedded payments solution, there’s a lot of facets that go into this solution, one of them being split payments. Otherwise known as Buy Now, Pay Later, this type of payment method has taken off in recent years.
What is the Worldline-OPP partnership looking to bring differently to split payments that will differentiate it from the rest of the other providers within embedded finance?
Marc-Henri Desportes: I will say this and will leave the rest to Richard. We provide the usual methods linked to Buy Now, Pay Later options. What OPP brings on top is huge flexibility in terms of payment handlings and offers marketplaces the ability to go one step further in allowing different kinds of splits between them and the different sellers on the platform.
Richard Straver: Our multi-split engine is an altogether different use case than your traditional BNPL order value splitting which is purely for the payer. If you look at what our multi-split payment engine can do and what I have seen so far, I think it is the most flexible, because there is no limit to the amount of splits with the different merchants in the commerce value chain.
Of course, we cannot go beyond one cent, but you can have an unlimited amount of splits. Then, each one can be handled individually. Each one could have its own escrow date or not, and each its own settlement speed.
So, one split could be an instant payout, the other split could be added to a settlement that’s a monthly settlement, and the other is actually in escrow until release.
Then, each split can have its own fee that the partner wishes to take, because this one may be a business merchant, this one a consumer merchant, while this may be a merchant that’s in a high-value category and you may want different fees per-split that you take. It’s all up to the platform to decide. That’s the widest range of flexibility that we have seen.
Callum Williams: Lastly, and we really appreciate you both taking the time to speak with us. Within the next 10 years or so, where do you feel like the next iteration or the next innovation within this field is going to happen?
I know we now have social media platforms turning into payment destinations like X/Twitter. What is the next evolution for embedded payments? What does that look like?
Marc-Henri Desportes: Like Richard, I’m a big believer in the circular economy. I think the transaction between people, reusable goods, services, second life of objects, all that is going to develop over time tremendously.
With the European diversity and landscape, we expect a larger amount of smaller marketplaces rather than only very large ones. With embedded payments, we are ready from a technology perspective to support these platforms and marketplaces in their local geographies, this has huge potential.
For ourselves, clearly it is first all about being successful in the European market. If you look 10 years from now, it is about making a global solution. Trends from the US across innovation and consumer behaviour are coming over to Europe and at Worldline, we are ready to support those in a fragmented European market as I mentioned before, whilst adhering to every bit of regulation and compliance needs around servicing such business models in Europe.
I would not be surprised that the development of a very strong circular economy is something that will be even greater in Europe in the next 10 years, compared to the rest of the world.
Richard Straver: I completely agree there. The fact that you can now, with the implementation of embedded payments, launch a payment product as a software platform or a marketplace within a couple of weeks, is remarkable.
We’ve even seen platforms integrate everything within six days. That capability basically provides a company the opportunity to run their own mini-payment service provider, at scale and in record time. That’s groundbreaking and has not yet been seen in the market.
It’s super exciting to see how this will evolve in the industry over the next few years. I think a huge part of it is the fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands of marketplaces and platforms, being launched every year.
Now, with this technology, we’ll be better equipped than ever before, so we’re really looking forward to welcoming the new visionaries and supporting their growth.
Callum Williams: Most definitely, it appears that it isn’t going to slow down anytime soon. Marc-Henri and Richard, thank you again for your time.
