The following is a transcript of the podcast episode between Matt Wilcox, SVP of Market Strategy of Innovation at Fiserv, and PaymentsJournal, where we discuss the First Data Fiserv acquisition and what this means for bill pay.
PaymentsJournal
Welcome to the PaymentsJournal podcast. I’m your host, Ryan Mac, and on today’s episode we’re going to be talking about payment capabilities. To help me with this conversation, I have Matt Wilcox, who is the SVP of Market Strategy and Innovation at Fiserv. During this conversation, we’re also going to be diving into the First Data Fiserv acquisition. This recording was done at the Money20/20 event in 2019. Now there’s certainly a lot to unpack here in this episode, so without any further delay, let’s start the show.
Matt, thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode. Fiserv has been growing its presence in the payments space, and even more so with your recent combination with First Data. What is behind this growing focus?
Matt Wilcox
Being able to move and manage money is essential to people’s lives. They’re thinking about short term things, like “do I have enough money in my account to buy a new outfit or fill up my gas tank?” They’re also thinking about long term things like buying a first home or saving for retirement. At Fiserv, we aspire to move money and information in a way that moves the world, which is a recognition of the role that payments play in business and consumers’ lives. Payments is also an incredibly dynamic space with payment types changing and proliferating, and the emergence of capabilities such as real-time payments. It’s an area where we think we can bring our technology and expertise together to make a difference in how people live and work.
PaymentsJournal
Excellent, I certainly think that’s great here. If I could sum up what you’re saying, and feel free to correct me here, is that this combination really allows for both organizations to innovate on top of each other to really bring payments to kind of that that next level Do you think that’s a correct assumption?
Matt Wilcox
Yeah, I think the innovation from the people and skill sets of both legacy companies brought together, the original Fiserv and the original First Data, and also the various technologies and different roles that each company has played in payments, really brings together a holistic view of payments. This is true whether you’re talking merchant or small business consumer or commercial payments, and the innovation that you can have within payments far exceeds what each company could do on their own.
PaymentsJournal
Excellent. Now, as we kind of take a look here in terms of the payment capabilities that are available today, from your standpoint, what should financial institutions be thinking about when it comes to offering payment capabilities to their customers?
Matt Wilcox
Consumers today expect to be able to access services when and where they want, and they want their financial institutions to be able to demonstrate that they know them, and that there is value in that relationship. In some cases, the technology behind payments really hasn’t advanced alongside changing expectations. If you think about the best digital experience you have on any given day, like getting rerouted around traffic so that you’re on time to work or to your kid’s ball game, for example, that is an experience that makes your life better. We’re looking at the same standard when it comes to payments. People want payments to be easy, fast, and secure. We want them to be in the same category of the best digital experiences that people have every day.
PaymentsJournal
I’m certainly glad that you brought up the experience part of it, you know, and taking a finer scope here, an area that’s been getting a lot of attention in terms of the experience is around bill pay here. So bill pay has been an area of payments where financial institutions have historically had a strong presence. From your perspective, what are some of the key trends that you’re seeing in bill pay?
Matt Wilcox
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I do think that financial institutions still have a strong hold on the bill pay environment. If you look at the expectations and experience survey that Fiserv does, roughly 65% of consumers have used bank bill pay or online bill pay in the last 30 days, and roughly half of those cite convenience as their motivator. So again, going back to my previous answer, it’s giving them convenience through fast and secure ways to manage their money. But we recognize that it’s a competitive space, and so we have to evolve in that. With that, we’re working on delivering next generation payment capabilities to really help customers and consumers pay when and how they want and stay on top of their bills. And we’re really putting the financial institution at the center of that, so that the financial institution is creating a financial wellness money management capability, while allowing the consumer to manage their payments in a convenient, electronic way with their financial institution.
PaymentsJournal
Excellent, that’s certainly very interest. Well, we’re on the subject of Fiserv products now, and Fiserv recently announced a launch of a CheckFree Next. Can you tell me about CheckFree Next?
Matt Wilcox
CheckFree Next is an enhanced bill payment solution that incorporates a suite of AP’s that really empowers financial institutions to seamlessly access our biller network and improve the consumer bill pay experience. There’s a couple of components to that, but we’re really positioning CheckFree Next to enable the financial institution to act as the advisor. So, I previously mentioned helping the financial institution demonstrate and showcase value to the consumer, and there’s a couple of ways that this does that. It helps the customers by simplifying the bill pay experience, offering intelligent suggestions on how to manage finance, when to pay bills, how to pay bills, and putting more automation into the bill pay process. One of the key highlights in CheckFree Next is our Bill Discovery feature, which can automatically identify and connect consumers to their biller, who they have to pay money to, and to their accounts and then establish that biller as a payee when there’s a match. So Bill Discovery allows for more advisory experiences by reducing and eliminating, in many cases, manual entry of the payment data. We think that’s going to reduce the friction of setting up a new bill payment, and that’s the real fundamental idea for CheckFree Next. It really makes the payment experience at the financial institution much more convenient, and brings forward data in a meaningful way.
PaymentsJournal
Excellent. For my last question here, I’d like to bring back a couple of the key points that you brought up earlier and kind of tie those into CheckFree next. So earlier, you mentioned the importance of payment speed. How does CheckFree Next help deliver faster payments?
Matt Wilcox
CheckFree Next equips the financial institution with tools to facilitate faster bill payments. We can connect to more billers with our billing network that I previously mentioned than any other bill payment provider. It is really a core component for Fiserv, which is only going to get stronger with the acquisition of First Data. This connectivity facilitates faster payments and enables consumers to sign up for a range of notifications, so moving money, and information to let them know when a bill has been delivered, when an unpaid bill is due, and when a payment has been completed. In the future, CheckFree Next is also going to allow bill payers to receive enhanced notifications that allow payments to be made in real time and instantly reflected in their accounts. So, a core critical component of CheckFree Next is real time movement of information. We think that goes back to meeting consumer expectations, and ultimately having a positive impact on the lives by enabling them to move and manage money in a real modern way. So we’re really enhancing CheckFree Next to move at the speed of consumer expectations.
PaymentsJournal
Excellent. Well, thank you, Matt, for taking the time today for speaking to me about bill pay trends and CheckFree Next, and I hope to have you back on the podcast real soon.
Matt Wilcox
Thank you so much. I really look forward to it.
