Can you tell us a little about Opus Consulting and as a technology consulting company, what has been on your list of priorities for 2017?
We’re a technology services and solutions company focused exclusively on catering to the needs of the payments industry. 2017 has seen a great amount of innovation and disruption in payments instruments, regulatory and industry initiatives. We have been keeping pace well. Over the last few months, we have a renewed focus on building accelerator led solutions. This year has been particularly interesting because we moved our operations to Atlanta a few months ago. Everyone in the Fintech space acknowledges the value the presence in this region can bring. We are in the midst of technology beacons here and that gives us more access to innovation and a refreshed perspective of the payments industry.
Can you talk more about accelerator led solutions?
Our solutions are focused on leveraging the value of technology for fulfilling real business needs – think of it as putting next generation technologies to work for our clients today. We have put together defined frameworks for the challenges that a lot of payments businesses today grapple with and hinder their growth. Depending on the business landscape of our clients, we build bespoke solutions using these almost-ready solutions for helping them take their products to the market faster and delivering a better customer experience for their end users. These solutions are cloud based and built using our machine learning engine.
You mentioned about a new set of Cloud based and Machine Learning/AI based solutions for the payments industry. Can you give our readers some more information on this?
Today, innovation is imperative and I am glad that as an organization, we are focusing on the right areas to ensure we stay ahead of the curve. Our Payments Cloud is rapidly taking shape and it contains a set of exciting app driven solutions that can resolve a bunch of problems that the payments industry is grappling with. Our new age Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning engines are briskly powering new sets of real time analytics and workflow automation solutions. They are set to improve customer experience, reducing fraud and chargeback, thereby promoting efficiency and profitability. I am certain that these new areas of focus will definitely add great value to the work we do for our customers.
2017 saw a lot of start-ups in the Fintech and Payments space. What is your take on it?
That’s right. Start-ups are providing innovative solutions for big players like banks and small merchants alike. As the spending on technology increases, it is exciting to be in this space because emergence of so many players exemplifies the growing traction this industry promises and the trends we must look out for.
As we inch closer to the end of 2017, what do you think about the trends that will engulf the payments and Fintech industry in 2018?
Consumers will continue to drive change through the adoption new technologies in payments. Merchants are already switching to various ways of doing business that leave customers with a good experience and a sense of reliability. While we move to faster means of making payments, security will continue to be a vital space and we have more and more companies stepping up in this space to ensure they back these methods with a reliable framework that helps consumers rest assured about their credentials. The Fintech industry in evolving rapidly and so many players in the space continue to proliferate. Analytics driven solutions that can lead to automation of work processes will continue to get a lot of traction. The retail payments industry will continue innovate more to ensure a smooth in-store checkout experience is passed on to the consumers.
What sets Opus Consulting apart from other payment consulting companies?
We have been around for over two decades and we have catered to a myriad of issues in the payments industry – be it trading or core payments. We have strong, proven credentials in this space given our acumen in implementing mission critical systems, strong IP creation expertise and our focus on solving problems for the retail payments industry. We have done this for so many years and looking at where the industry is headed and what it has in store for us, I am sure we are in for exciting times ahead.