PaymentGenes Quarterly FinTech Magazine

PAYMENTGENES QUARTERLY MAGAZINE - EDITION 2 - SUMMER 2017

Quarterly FinTech Magazine

Robert Bueninck on Klarna's succes Computop’s Peter Zeman talks product management Visa: innovation is a daily business

Welkom to the second PaymentGenes Fintech Magazine issue Dear readers,

Welcome to the second edition of the PaymentGenes Fintech Magazine, where we aim to inspire and update you about different interesting topics within the fintech & payments industry.

In this edition we are delighted to bring you interviews and long reads on which we have collaborated with some of the most innovative companies and outstanding professionals in the industry.

For this issue we sat down with Robert Bueninck, General Manager Netherlands, France and Belgium at Klarna, to talk about their disruptive approach as a payment solution company. We also had a chat with Visa’s Donald Kohen about their global Innovation Centers and Computop’s Peter Zeman about his role as Product Manager.

PaymentGenes’ consultant Quinten Boertien also gave us his vision on the top qualities a Product Manager should have. Furthermore in this issue: an update on PSD2 by Paul Rohan and an insightful long read by Dimebox about the developments within the acquiring industry.

Happy reading from the PaymentGenes Team!

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Visa: innovation is a daily business

In this issue

3 Why Klarna is one of the most innovative fintech companies

5 How PSD2 is changing the global payments landscape

10 9 PaymentGenes Meetup - Throwback

17 Merchant Acquirers stepping out of the commodity corner

13

5 Things an employer expects from a Product Manager

VISA: INNOVATION IS A DAILY BUSINESS

Visa: Innovation is a daily business PaymentGenes sat down with Donald Kohen, Business Development Manager Central Europe at Visa. The payment brand is innovating payments technologies and services every day.

Donald elaborated on how Visa is doing this and how it manages to stay ahead of the curve in the fast paced Fintech industry.

Donald, please tell us something about your position at Visa.

As a business development manager for the Central European region (Benelux, Germany, Austria and Switzerland), my main task is to add value to our products by combining them with new features in line with market requests. We put the consumer at the center of everything we do; translating technology and product features into faster, more secure ways to make transactions.

What other challenges does Visa face?

We see opportunities rather than challenges. First of all, an obvious one: many transactions are still settled in cash. Even in the Netherlands, where we are digitally advanced and have more electronic payments than cash transactions, there is still room for further improvement, finding ways to simplify and streamline consumers’ daily lives. Our expectation is that we will eat away from that combined cash transactions amount, as the percentage of electronic and digital payments of all payments combined are still growing.

As an example we have implemented our Simply One solution in the Netherlands, which is a card combining Visa and V PAY on one plastic, giving consumers the convenience of one card.

Secondly, we expect the almost exponential growth of mobile and contactless payments to continue.

Acceptance is increasing significantly, and the more people see how convenient these payments are, the more they will adopt this new way to pay. To end, and coming back to your question, I can mention a challenge: on the one hand we invest heavily - time as well as money - in keeping the infrastructure for these new ways to pay safe and secure. On the other hand we are opening up our network to stimulate developers to sandbox and develop in a simple and innovative way. It is a challenge to combine this openness with a high level of security – and the latter is always the number one priority.

The payment and FinTech industry is growing strong with new startups emerging every day.

What is your view on this trend and what are the challenges for an established company like Visa?

Every day, Visa is innovating payment technologies and services. We closely work together in the fintech ecosystem – partnering with promising startups, tech giants, telco’s and traditional financial institutions. We nurture our relationships with small fintech startups and see a clear win-win here: they support us with innovative solutions, we bring them the scale and reputation they need to grow their client base.

3 Payment trends according to Donald Kohen: Further rise of mobile payments New authentication methods Collaboration with developers in Visa’s Development Platform 3

VISA: INNOVATION IS A DAILY BUSINESS

Could you tell us something about Visa’s innovation centers? Why where they established and what problems are they solving?

Our Innovation Centers are immersive environments where Visa can work side-by-side with financial institutions, merchants and other partners to develop the next generation of payment solutions. As the payments industry shifts from plastic to digital and new entrants join traditional stakeholders in payments, Visa’s mission is to ensure that every Internetconnected device, appliance or wearable can become a secure place for commerce. Visa’s global network of innovation centers are an important part of this mission by fostering innovation and creating an environment that enables Visa to engage, experience and collaborate with a broad range of partners and clients.

5 years from now, how did the innovation centers change the world?

The idea of innovation is that you don’t know in advance what it is going to bring – at least, not in detail. Therefore, we can only speak in general terms here. We believe the Centers will bring or help facilitate new technologies in the fields of, for example: authentication, IoT, geolocation, and mobile payments.

Needless to say: all of them in line with the latest security requirements.

A few examples of what might be common in day to day life within five years: you could voice-order a pizza and Alexa (Amazon) can tell you which company is making the pizza, which ingredients it has and when it will be delivered. You will be able to control house lighting, lock doors, feed your pet, turn on/off air conditioners with mobile devices and IoT. The future is coming quickly. There are 3 billion cards, 7 billion mobile devices with 8 billion connections today with an expected 50 billion IoT connections in the near future. One of the great things about Visa is that we are working hard to make it easier for financial institutions and merchants to connect to each other through our network and IoT.

In the innovation Centers, we are focused on the future. Whether it’s the next generation retail experience, the future of banking, what mobility will look like, how we can support charitable organizations, and even how we confirm our identity through new methods of authentication.

4

INTERVIEW WITH KLARNA

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INTERVIEW WITH KLARNA

Klarna about their state-of-the-art technology and ‘open door’ company culture Klarna is one of the most innovative and fastest growing fi n t e c h companies at the moment, and offers safe and easy-to-use payment solutions to e-stores. The Swedish e-commerce company, backed by investors such as Sequoia Capital and Atomico, is one of E u rop e ' s te c h unicorns and constantly evolving. Time to have a chat with Robert Bueninck, General Manager Netherlands, France and Belgium, about Klarna’s successful approach.

Robert, please describe Klara in 50 words or less.

Klarna was founded in Stockholm in 2005 with the goal to simplify online payments. With our online payment methods, customers receive their purchases first before they make a payment. Klarna subsumes the credit and fraud risks of online retailers. We cooperate with over 70.000 webshops and serve over 60 million customers worldwide.

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INTERVIEW WITH KLARNA

mind, who are energetic and highly-motivated.

Evidently, they have to have a specific skill-set, but in terms of mentality they have to be the kind of person for which the glass is half-full and not half-empty. We are in a highly-competitive environment, so our team members have to believe in winning and making an extra effort to do so.

Why are people eager to work at Klarna you think?

We are a dynamic and innovative company with an international presence. Working at Klarna means that you’re in a place where you can make a difference and work with people from all over the world in a business environment that is rapidly changing. I think this is something that appeals to the types of people that we want to be a part of our company. Also there’s a lot of room for new ideas and personal initiative within our company. We encourage people to embrace new challenges, even if they have to get out of their comfort zone.

According to Klarna, webshops are losing sales due to inefficient checkout processes. How are you solving this issue?

Klarna developed Klarna Checkout, or KCO. The platform replaces the check-out environment of individual online stores, thus making an online purchase extremely simple and fast. Any online shopper using Klarna Checkout for the first time only fills out his e-mail address and postal code. Every subsequent purchase from any webshop using Klarna Checkout can be completed with a single click.

“We understand that technology has one main purpose: to help serve your clients better.”

PaymentGenes is proud to have a collaborative relationship with Klarna, could you tell us something about your experience?

T h e p r i m a r y b e n e fi t o f c o l l a b o r a t i n g w i t h PaymentGenes is access to their network. Not only does PaymentGenes have many high-quality payments candidates on their roster, they are also well-connected within the wider payments business.

That is one of the reasons we have sponsored the most recent PaymentGenes Fintech Meetup, which brought together professionals from leading fintech organisations for an evening of industry updates and networking.

Klarna appears in different lists as one of the world's hottest fintech companies. What’s your secret?

At Klarna we understand that technology has one main purpose: to help serve your clients better. I believe we are - rightfully - perceived as a ‘hot fintech company’, because of the fact that our products and services have a direct and measurable impact on the way retailers are performing and how their clients experience online shopping.

Company culture is a main topic these days within companies. How would you describe the culture at Klarna?

We are a relatively flat organization with an open door policy. We believe it’s important that you are able to reach out to everyone within the company in order to get the best possible results.

Did you miss our last PayementGenes Fintech Meetup? Not to worry, become a member of our Meetup page and be the first one to know about the upcoming get-togethers! Feel free to email us at julia@paymentgenes.com if you wish to team up with us for the upcoming editions.

What do you look for when hiring new employees, what are the do’s and dont’s?

At Klarna, we are looking for people with an open

7

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A career move to The Lowlands?

Vice President Sales Amsterdam International PSP

Sr. Technical Support Amsterdam International Fintech

BDM - Point of Sales Belgium International PSP

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Key Account Manager Amsterdam International Fintech

PAYMENTGENES FINTECH MEETUP - THROWBACK

B e i n g a fi n t e c h c o m m u n i t y , PaymentGenes organises meetups for fintech & payments professionals on a regular basis. The last time we teamed up with SimpeldCard. It was a special and insightful gathering with industry updates by Donald Kohen (Visa) and Bart Damstra (EMS). Interested in joining our next meetup? Become a member of our Meetup page!

PaymentGens Fintech Meetup - Throwback

9

HOW PSD2 IS CHANGING THE GLOBAL PAYMENTS LANDSCAPE

How PSD2 is changing the global payments landscape Paul Rohan is an Irish researcher, management consultant, executive educator, speaker and author on business strategy in financial services.

He specializes in examining the potential impact of PSD2 and Open Banking on market structures in global financial services. Paul’s advisory customer base straddles the potential “Apps” in an Open Banking Ecosystem (fintechs, Credit Monolines, Price Comparison Sites, Challenger Banks etc.) as well as Incumbent Banks that will evolve from product businesses to platform businesses. through a third-party payment initiation service.

Hi Paul, please explain what PSD2 and Open Banking are – and how they are connected?

Paul Rohan: Open Banking is an emerging concept and business model in financial services. There is a “market forces” definition of Open Banking. It refers to the use of Open APIs that enable third party developers to build applications and services around banks that act as a platform.

There is also a “regulatory” definition of Open Banking, focused on greater transparency and choices for bank account holders that is being enforced by regulators. The regulatory definition is very much of European origin.

The EU has identified Open Banking as one potential remedy to an area of slow innovation and market development that seems to be holding back the competitiveness of its trading bloc.

European regulators intervened in late 2015 and adopted a second Payment Services Directive (“PSD2”) that compels banks to connect their digital assets to entities outside their organisations through a standard API interface. Elements of the new EU law become active in EU Member States in January 2018 and mandatory industry standards for the banks’ API will be in place in early 2019.

Why would Merchants find this business model an attractive alternative to card payments?

Paul: By relying on bank security, this method of payment is hard for fraudsters to replay elsewhere.

Retailers will not handle the digital credentials of customers in the form of card details, so they will not have to comply with a PCI security standard that could bankrupt their businesses with fines and penalties. The speed of ACH payments is moving towards “immediate” across the world, which merchants will value. There is also an irrevocable payment to the merchant. Unlike a credit card, the method does not offer any repudiation mechanism and does not facilitate reversals or refunds. There is a simplicity and predictability to ACH pricing, in contrast to an array of fixed, variable, tiered and once-off card charges Why would Merchants be wary of this payment type compared to cards?

Paul: If the customer pattern moves towards bank-tobank credit transfers rather than cards, Merchants will want to see the same share of sales being funded by unsecured consumer credit.

Overdrafts on bank accounts are not a pure substitute for the type of structured credit agreements customers are used to with card limits, minimum monthly payments and interest-free periods.

Why should card specialist businesses outside the EU track the evolution of Open Banking?

Paul: One intention of PSD2 is to create a new distinct species for retail digital payments in the EU. Shared by traditional banks and regulated third party payment initiators, there will be a customer-triggered Credit Transfer for transferring funds from a customer’s account to that of the Merchant providing the goods or services. This is a radical intervention in market structures because the new law forces that banks charge the same, whether the payment instruction comes through the bank’s own-brand channel or

Card payments are supported by schemes with great brands that are recognised globally and entice consumers from all locations. Merchants will value the 50 years of brand equity and customer acceptance in card payments.

10

HOW PSD2 IS CHANGING THE GLOBAL PAYMENTS LANDSCAPE

transactions rely on the card scheme provider’s technology to handle the transaction execution and banks have no role at that precise stage of the process. With PSD2-type services, it will be a bank’s own infrastructure executing the payment. The customer will be using the bank’s service directly in real time to authenticate themselves and authorise the payment. The bank’s involvement at this stage presents an opportunity for the bank to tie together the customer’s financial position and immediate purchasing behaviour. The market position of a bank will be less threatened by the Acquirers, Acquiring Processors and POS/Gateway providers who gather data along the cards value chain. However, a use case is not a business case.

How likely is this new model to spread to the US? Paul: I think that card specialist companies in the US need to look past the idea that US regulators might copy the EU’s intervention. While there are entities that will lobby for mandatory Open APIs in US banks, let’s assume that the headwinds from the White House against perceived excessive regulation rules out any US intervention. It is possible that free market forces cause Open Banking models emerging in the EU to become de facto industry standards in the US. In a totally free US market scenario, there is evidence of customer demand for Open Banking. Online Banking services are being methodically screen-scraped by non-bank services on the customer’s behalf to help provide account information services. This willingness to allow screen-scraping, despite obvious concerns about the security risks involved, can be considered to be passive-aggressive customer-led demand for Open Banking.

Will Open Banking receive the same regulatory push in the US? Paul: Since 1958, the US has been the home of the credit card. Its market position has been unrivalled.

Disruptive business models tend to travel from the US towards the EU and the not the other way around. We can assume that Open Banking will not receive the same regulatory push in the US. Nevertheless, the PSD2 model in the EU could take root and set a global benchmark. EU banks and vendors could start to regard the US as a growth opportunity. The opening of bank APIs on a competitive basis in the US, albeit for partners and perhaps only for account information-type services, will start to lay the physical foundations.

For the first time since 1958, card payments could have a credible rival at point-of-sale, which will put pressure on margins to be shared across all participants in the cards value chain.

15

Do you see particular US initiatives in response to this new European model?

Paul: Some US banks are entering into bilateral partnerships with partners to replace screen-scraping with partner APIs. To offer account information services through a partner using APIs, a US bank has to design and implement new processes covering the sharing of authentication procedures, encrypted communication sessions, session management, secure data storage by the partner, client consent management and partner contract management. The extension of a partnership from account information to include payment initiation services for ACH payments can be regarded as a relatively smaller step.

How can US-based payment and risk professionals track these developments in Europe?

Paul Rohan’s blog posts on PSD2 and Open Banking are followed by thousands of market professionals through his LinkedIn profile. Paul is also the author of “PSD 2 in Plain English”, available on Amazon in both paperback and eBook. It is a succinct primer text on PSD2 that was awarded a “Plain English Book Mark” for clarity.

Paul has been interviewed by: www.elenavandesande.com This Interview was originally published by US based PSP

Can you give another example of a scenario in which the US bank benefits from the PSD2 model?

Paul: There is a use case for US banks to consider an alternative to card scheme payments. Card

goEmerchant via http://blog.goemerchant.com/psd2-changing-globalpayments-landscape/

11

JOBS UK

Interested in a new challenge in The UK? VP International Sales London Leading eCommerce Solution

Head Of Compliance & Risk London International PSP

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Head of eCommerce London International PSP

MERCHANT ACQUIRERS STEPPING OUT OF THE COMMODITY CORNER

Merchant Acquirers stepping out of the commodity corner

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MERCHANT ACQUIRERS STEPPING OUT OF THE COMMODITY CORNER

There have been many developments in the world of payments in the past few years, as companies have consolidated and expanded into other parts of the value chain.

Acquirers are feeling pressured to move out of the commodity corner, yet the response is often not adequate.

There are acquirers that have ventured into the PSP domain by purchasing other platforms, but these have resulted in solutions “bolted and molded” onto each other, thus still not delivering the seamless endto-end solution they were hoping for. Other acquirers are attempting to deliver additional services of their own, such as reconciliation, billing, and data analytics. However, as the majority of these acquirers use third-party processors, they are dependent on the quality of the data they are receiving from these legacy platforms. Most processors are operating on 20-year-old technology and are therefore unable to deliver data on such a granular level that it would create an opportunity to truly offer value towards merchants.

The acquirers risk (financial) consequences if their merchants do not meet the requirements set by the card schemes.

Infrastructure Besides the different corporate cultures, acquirers are facing substantial technical and infrastructural challenges. Most acquiring platforms do not allow for speedy technical integrations with their gateway/PSP partners by design. This makes for lengthy and complex projects, time and time again.

Acquiring commoditized Consolidation among acquirers has led to large, inflexible organizations that tend to have multiple legacy systems in place. This in turn has led to high maintenance costs and has slowed down innovation.

Further down the value chain, payment gateways started off mostly as an integration layer but slowly began to offer more and more value- added products and services, such as fraud and risk management, merchant onboarding, data analytics, and their own billing and settlement engines. These enhancements have resulted in increased merchant loyalty while commoditizing acquirers in the process.

Acquirers traditionally process and collect card payments for their merchants and are responsible for aggregation and reconciliation. The rising number of PSP’s, combined with increased regulatory pressure on merchant service charges, has reduced merchant acquirers to price fighters with small margins. Acquirers have outsourced the technical processing almost without exception and are proving to be less techsavvy, innovative and capable of rapidly deploying new solutions into the market than payment service providers. This has led to acquirers holding only their principal membership and licenses: not the merchants and their loyalty they desperately need.

Gateways are fundamentally different from acquirers in their setup. Gateways are sales organizations in essence, aimed at expanding the number of connected merchants as fast as possible. In terms of culture, payment gateways clash with traditional acquirers, considering the fact that acquirers are the ones with contractual obligations to the card schemes.

14

MERCHANT ACQUIRERS STEPPING OUT OF THE COMMODITY CORNER

Additionally, there is only a handful of acquirers that have the in-house capabilities to do the technical transaction processing; most acquirers use a thirdparty processor such as TSYS or First Data. They are thereby forced to work with the information coming from these external processors who are not able to deliver the granularity in the data that is required to truly offer value added services. At the end of payment value chain, it is the merchants that are suffering from these limitations. They have to rely on the PSP’s ability to leverage the data from the acquirers’ external processing engine in their analytics module.

has developed its own independent systems has resulted in a lack of harmonization and has been slowing down innovation in the card processing industry significantly, as new solutions would have to be developed for each processor separately.

This underlines the enormous opportunity for those acquirers that succeed in developing their own processing engine capabilities. Having your in- house processing engine directly integrated into the schemes will open the door to optimally leveraging interchange management for instance. This allows acquirers to bring significant cost advantages to their merchants, and as such, delivering all payment intelligence to their merchant channel through a single API presents a unique opportunity to claim loyalty and expand customer base.

The acquiring-processing landscape is a true oligopoly with 10 to 15 processors controlling 80- 90% of the business. This has not exactly forced these parties to innovate and to upgrade their platforms and capabilities. Processing architecture is mostly old and cumbersome and not built to supply parties that want to offer innovative and real-time data insights towards merchants. In turn, merchants that are looking for new business models and for access to detailed and realtime transactional data will be disappointed, as they have to muddle through the inflexible chain that is currently in place.

Acquiring 2.0 The position in which many acquirers find themselves nowadays shows that the payments industry as a whole has been in the shadow of many other aspects of the financial services industry, such as lending, investments and corporate finance. This again has everything to do with the idea that a payment is a mere commodity, but this view on payment processing is too narrow. The information that can be leveraged from each transaction can help merchants learn more about customer behavior, issuer behavior, success rates and popularity of different payment methods and endless other information-rich data points that they can use to their advantage.

Because the industry has been deprived of radical innovation for such a long time, there is so much to gain and so much up for grabs. Innovative players like Adyen offer the full end-to-end solution, including their own in-house processing capabilities. They are able to deliver all of this through a single API and have been very successful at claiming the loyalty of the largest merchants in the world. Rome was not built in a day however, so for the acquirers that find themselves being forced to make a move, the eternal dilemma of “build or buy” will apply.

Challenge means opportunity The technical misfit with many of the acquirer’s gateway partners forms a challenge, but it also harbors an opportunity. Acquirers that succeed in wrapping a modern API around their existing infrastructure will be well positioned to expand connectivity rapidly, and this is what some acquirers in the market have indeed been doing. Layering a modern API on top of the existing platform, however, is not yet a full-circle solution.

Investing in technology both on the front-end and on the back-end and subsequently being able to offer a truly seamless end-to-end solution will deliver an unparalleled level of granularity to the information that these organizations are able to deliver to their merchants. Value added services like these are exactly what is going to help acquirers step out of the commodity corner.

An acquirer is typically associated with one or more external processors, which means that most acquirers are consistently leveraging legacy processing technology. The fact that every third- party processor

15

JOBS DACH

Looking for opportunities in the DACH area?

BDM Geneva Payments Company

Finance Business Partner Dusseldorf International Fintech

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Head of mPOS Bavarian Region Payments Company

5 THINGS AN EMPLOYER EXPECTS FROM A PRODUCT MANAGER

5

Things an employer expects from a Product Manager according to PaymentGenes’ Consultant Quinten Boertien Quinten Boertien has started his career at PaymentGenes two years ago.

Since then he developed himself into an expert when it comes to working on technical roles within the payments industry in the DACH area. He is the goto guy if you are looking to build agile teams or searching for a Product Specialist role at a leading company within the fintech and payments space.

We asked Quinten to shine a light on one of the hottest jobs at the moment: Product Manager.

1. Great communication skills A Product Manager should be able to work and thus communicate with different levels; from management to marketing, sales and the end users (target group.)

Communication is the most important skill when working on a product.

Name: Quinten Boertien

Position: Payments Consultant DACH Joined PaymenGenes: 2015 Expertise: Product Management Roles

2. The team comes first An effective Product Manager is a true team player and has experience with the Agile and Scrum methodologies. Working with different stakeholders and other product managers requires a lot of flexibility and the ability to participate in brainstorm sessions with all team members. This is the way to push the entire product forward.

4. Always have the end user in mind To steer the ship forward a Product Manager should always see the full vision of the product, this includes the needs of the end user. A great Product Manager is able to feel joy and pain the customer feels when he uses the product.

3. Passion The Product Manager creates the vision of the product in line with the company. For this reason not only should he be knowledgeable of all aspects of the company, but also intensely passionate about creating the best product possible. With no passion, no energy and motivation will be passed on to the development team.

5. Not afraid to say ‘no’ The Product Manager should be able to manage the feedback that is given about the product and guide the development team. It is not necessary and desirable to develop every idea, this is why the Product Manager should not be afraid to say no, as he will do that most of the time. If every idea would be developed, the project would lose focus and the outcome might not necessarily solve the problem.

“If every idea would be developed, the project would lose focus.”

17

A PAYMENTGENES SUCCES STORY

A PaymentGenes

Succes Story For this edition we sat down with Peter Zeman to discuss the different aspects of his role as a Senior Project Manager, but also to know more about how he experienced our services.

Name: Peter Zeman

Born in: Bratislava, Slovakia

Peter has been working at Computop for over a year now. It all star ted when he got contacted by our Payments Consultant, Quinten Boertien, about the role of Senior Product Manager at the global Payment Ser vice Provider. It was an instant match and Peter and Computop are still going strong.

Current location: Bamberg, Germany Current Position: Senior Product Manager at Computop

to be “connecting the dots” within the company and acts as an intersection between business and development.

Why did you decide to join Computop and what was Quintens role in the decision making process?

The decision was mainly the combination of two factors: company and role. From Company perspective, I knew Computop as a strong PSP with 20 years of experience, covering not only European market but also with strong international reach.

Computop has developed the true omni-channel solution, where all payments from all channels are processed via one single platform. As I had previous experience in e-commerce and POS, this was a perfect fit.

How do you determine the success or failure of a product or feature launch?

It is all about the impact. Many teams celebrate the deployment of a product or feature, but this is not the real success. Real success comes when you see the KPI’s (e.g. 10% decrease in drop off rates or 15% decrease in chargeback rates), which you defined before building the actual product, start moving towards the targeted values. Only then the product or feature can be classified as successful.

From a role perspective, I was looking for a position where the Product Manager can directly interact not only with customers, Marketing and Sales, but also with the Development Team. As Computop has the full development team in-house, it made this even more a perfect fit. Adding to that, the interaction with Quinten was very delightful, he was bringing the overall good feeling about my decision to join Computop.

What challenges do you come across in your role?

As a Product Manager at a PSP, providing connection to more than 200 payment methods and acquirers, active in e-commerce and POS and covering the full lifecycle from merchant onboarding to reporting, I would say the biggest challenge is the complexity.

Fintech is also a very dynamic environment, so keeping up with all the trends is sometimes tough. But as one of the traits of a good Product Manager is also curiosity and willingness to learn new things, this can become just another opportunity to broaden your horizons.

What aspects of your job do you like the most?

The ability to make real impact and contribute to the success of the company when Product Management is done right. As Computop is acting internationally, I really enjoy the possibility to come across many interesting products or partners, which many times can spark a new idea or be a great inspiration.

What does a Product Manager do?

In my opinion, a Product Manager, fully and in detail defines the product to be build, is responsible for overall success of the product and needs to know the product inside and out. A good Product Manager needs to make sure the product that is being build, will bring value to the company and will be something that customers really want even before the development starts. The product also needs to have great user experience and be feasible to build by the development team. In Product Management there is a horizontal role, a good Product Manager needs

18

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PaymentGenes Consultancy Services Our custom designed, boutique approach to consulting enables us to provide strategic oversight in a practical, no nonsense manner. We engage with your business efficiently, in order to provide practical and future proof solutions for your organisation. We help you increase revenue and create an edge in a highly competitive market.

Managed services

Interim management

We are experts in Digital Transformation and constantly support PSPs, Acquirers, Banks and solution providers in developing and implementing future proof products.

We help our clients with major changes and transitions they undergo by providing interim management skills and sharing our years of experience in managing payment firms.

Vendor selection

Strategic recruitment

Our vendor selection practice focuses on serving the payment-related needs of retailers. We support merchants by helping with RFI, RFP’s and through the implementation process.

Our Recruitment team has developed a large network and a vast understanding of the skills needed to succeed in this industry, to be able to find the best candidates for your roles.

Strategy consulting

Payment consulting

We deliver strategy consulting services to players in the value chain, focusing on helping clients on a range of regulatory, financial, strategic and operational projects.

PaymentGenes helps merchants and corporates to better manage their payments operations. Our tailored “Quick Scan” projects focus on increasing conversion and reducing fraud.

We consult

Acquirers

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info@paymentgenes.com

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