Connections and Collaboration: What Do They Mean For The Future?
Payments is a network business, which means that collaboration between a range of stakeholders is vital. With increased consumer expectation, new business models, and continuous innovations in payments technology – how the industry connects and collaborates shapes the future of Australian payments.
Join us at Connections and Collaboration: A Multi-Stakeholder Discussion on the Future of Payments, hosted by APCA in partnership with Women In Payments on Wednesday 17th August 2016. This is an opportunity to network with women in payments, and gain insights from our panel of payments experts who will share their thoughts on the importance of connections and collaboration to the future of payments.
We asked our panellists for a glimpse into their insights ahead of the evening.
Question: As our lives become more digital, are we likely to see increased collaboration and if so – in which areas?
Answer: Michele Bullock, Assistant Governor (Business Services); Reserve Bank of Australia
“Over the past few years we’ve seen industry move from ‘compete’ to ‘collaborate’ in a number of areas. The sharing and publication of fraud data is a good example of this and more recently NPP. In a similar vein, collaboration to understand and address cyber security risks needs to be a major focus. By collaborating, participants in the payments system can deliver a benefit to industry that is larger than if everyone went alone.
Industry’s view of regulation also needs to evolve. Regulators are often seen as “judges” and not included in industry discussions. But there are circumstances where they need to be considered as collaborators. This is particularly the case in the cyber-security area where participants should look to work with the regulator to improve the safety and resilience of the payments system.”
Answer: Chloé James, Group Media & PR Director; RFI Group
“I would say that going forward, collaboration is only going to become more important. There are more active market participants involved in payments now than ever before – technology providers (Apple, Google, Samsung etc.), telcos, FinTechs etc. When there isn’t cohesive collaboration, outcomes are seen in disjointed customer experiences and experiences that can only be enjoyed by particular segments of the population. When collaboration is working, the value proposition is significantly enriched and so too is the potential for the solutions being developed further. Going forward, I feel a key challenge for payment stakeholders will be differentiating and improving upon the experience to which customers are already accustomed. This involves further collaboration with loyalty providers, retailers and public transport providers, all being key areas.”
Answer: Dhun Karai, former Group Head of Financial Services and General Manager Woolworths Money
“We’ve seen terrific collaboration in some parts of the payments ecosystem. For example, there’s strong collaboration between the schemes and issuers on the one hand, and acquirers/processors and merchants on the other. We saw these two groups work together well to support the roll out of PIN Only credit and contactless payments in Australia and I think we will continue to see increased collaboration in the future. It seems likely that this is where the rapidly growing FinTech organisations will focus their attention, offering products direct to merchants with strong customer value propositions and global thought leadership.
Successful FinTech organisations are very agile and adept at observing market changes and identifying the gaps, and I think the new focus on the payments part of the retail supply chain by technology players is refreshing and a long time coming.”
Answer: Deanne Keetelaar, General Manager; Transaction Products and Payments; National Australia Bank
“I feel that there is more work to be done on data sharing. Within APCA we’ve just started focussed work in this area, having developed a response to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into Data Availability and Use. The APCA working group uncovered some useful insights and I feel that it’s a practical starting point for industry; there’s certainly a lot more to be done in this area.
I’m also passionate about the topic of women in payments. What’s interesting about working in payments is that it isn’t a very well established area – it’s not like accounting or something which has a recognised career path. Most people just fall into payments, they don’t pick it as a career, so I think it’s really important that we have structures that help guide us, given there’s no specific path. NAB recognises this and is developing support structures.”
Answer: Debra Taylor, Commercial Director Independent Data and Transaction Services; Stone and Chalk
“With the introduction of the National Payments Platform and the launch of digital forms of payments, we are seeing the biggest change in the payment space in Australia for 40 years.
Now more than ever, Financial Institutions (FI) need to be nimble and move much faster to keep up with these changes. Start-ups offer this agility and certainly over the past couple of years we have seen increased collaboration between FI’s and start-ups.
To me this means that the payment space is a very exciting space to be in as this collaboration grows over the next several years.”
Please join us on August 17th to share your thoughts on Connections and Collaboration. We’re keen to hear your views and for panellists to share more of their perspective.
