Today’s episode is recorded at the Smarter Faster Payments 2019 event for Nacha. Now during this conversation, I get to speak with Laura Clary who was the product manager at Fiserv. And on our conversation, we’re going to be talking about real-time payments, but not just about the speed of real-time payments, but really what the payment enables. So without any further delay, let’s start the show.
Ryan
So here at Nacha’s Smarter, Faster, Payments 2019 event you conducted a session about the three principles underpinning the future of payments. Now, could you explain to our audience what those three principles are?
Laura
Yes, the principles I discussed were in the context of creating smarter, more intelligent payment processes. The first principle being the move to real time. And then the second was about information and money, moving together. And finally, there’s a focus beyond the payment to what the payment enables.
Ryan
Okay. I’m glad you brought that up here, could you break down what it is, you mean by what the payments enables?
Laura
Absolutely. When people make a payment, they’re not thinking about the payment itself, they’re thinking about what they’re paying for what they’re buying or the experience that the payment will enable. When is my bill do, do I have enough money in my account to buy that new pair of shoes or go out on Friday night? Or even longer-term goals such as how am I doing saving for my home down payment or for my kids college fund? Payments are an intrinsic and essential part of people’s everyday lives. And if we can deliver payments in such a way that they fit more seamlessly into people’s lives, then they will be successful, then we will be successful as payments providers, and you know the same goes true for payments on the business side, making it easier for corporate treasures, or even small businesses to manage the money that flows in and out of their business, by thinking about what they want to accomplish and helping them do that. Rather than just thinking about the payment itself or having to be payments experts.
Ryan
I’m really glad the particular point that I liked that you made here is that the end user success is our success there I really liked that statement because then it kind of just drives home the core values that you have. Jumping to the next question. You know I really like this new and I’m using air quotes and I know great for podcast here to be doing that narrative that people are pushing. And when it comes to the newer payment rails people are so focused on the word faster that sometimes they forget to see the additional value of data that comes along with it. So let’s talk about the data. What better data, am I going to be seeing with faster payments and why is this new data important?
Laura
You know data has always moved along the payments. You have to know that the payments going to be that kind of thing and other basic transaction details, but as demand for data grows and more companies recognize the value of payments data, there’ll be more demand for that than just the basics, they’ll want to know what are people buying, how much, when who’s buying it? How can this be used to boost feature sales, what can this data, tell me about future behavior? And there’s also a security component at play with, where is the payment coming from what time of day is it being made is this typical is this out of norm is this a secure payment. So, ultimately, it’s the data that can make payments, more intelligent and secure.
Ryan
During this event, I’ve had multiple conversations about how it is going to take, everyone’s efforts in the payments industry to ensure that faster payments is a success. So can you tell me what it is that Fiserv doing to help?
Laura
Fiserv is uniquely positioned in the payment space, creating connections between financial institutions biller corporate consumers and networks. It’s this type of connectivity, that’s essential to speeding payments. Specifically, some of the initiatives I’m involved in relate to creating customer advisory groups we have our dovetail real-time payment clearing offering payments platform, and it’s working with clients collaboratively and in partnership to understand how they are developing their real-time payments offering services, and also understanding what kind of challenges they’re facing and coming up with ways that we can help them tackle those problems, whether it’s through better liquidity management better visibility into data predictive analytics. So I would say that we work hand in hand with our clients as partners to work through and promote their ability to offer real-time payments.