Transactions 20½ – Thank you TSYS

One of our sponsors this year – TSYS

The Corona pandemic still has us all in its grip and the infection figures are not yet falling to the extent that we can give the all-clear. This also means something for us and our event planning. Contrary to all our hopes to see each other live and in colour again in February, the second half of the Transactions will again take place exclusively remotely – in a really good TV studio in the Palais in Frankfurt.

Advantage: by now (almost) something like routine

But hey! By now have experience in it. After all, before Transactions 20 in November, the Banking Exchange had already been affected by the change in sign. So do we already have something like a routine in planning online-only conferences? Well, sort of and so preparations are already in full swing for the second half of TRX on 2/25/2021. Stress levels are rising!

Transactions 20½ finally kicks off tomorrow, Thursday. At #TRX20½, the forward-looking trends of the payment and banking industry will be discussed for one day, but also insights into the current developments and concepts of the industry will be given. The focus is not only on the people on stage: Above all, the guests are also given space to exchange ideas with each other and with experts and impulse providers from the industry. All this is in most cases never possible without the support of people who believe in the format.

For those who do, however, we’d like to give them the space to briefly introduce themselves and share why they think an event like Transactions is worth supporting. We caught up with Rene Kruse from TSYS, a payments solutions provider on the worldwide stage that recently merged with Global Payments to create the Fortune 1000, leading pure-play payments technology company.  With an on-the-ground presence in Germany and a team of nearly 24,000 experts around the world, TSYS has a broad reach — and, not uncommon in today’s environment, we connected with Rene ‘virtually.’

Hello Rene, please tell us something about yourself.

I’m Rene Kruse, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of International Markets at TSYS, a Global Payments company, responsible for all Issuing businesses outside of North America. I’ve been in the payments industry for more than 25 years working in Europe, Asia, Middle East & Africa and Latin America.

I am originally from Hamburg and, prior to joining TSYS, I worked in various roles for Barclaycard International, latterly heading up technology functions to enable business solutions in markets across Europe, Middle East & Africa and India.

One of my first areas of focus after joining TSYS was Enterprise Change Management, and I’m a big advocate of a continuous transformation mindset in order to remain agile, competitive and innovative.  With TSYS as a global fintech leader, I put the same energy into engaging with financial institutions across our markets, though virtually in more recent times, to see how we can support our clients as partners and enable their continuous transformation and growth through our digital and API-first customer-centric approach.

How do you view the state of change in payments currently?

Quite dramatic, the pandemic appears to have acted as a catalyst for change, accelerating the use of digital payments channels and online spending with a rapid shift away from cash. Across some payments markets this equates to around 2-3 years of digital progress, and across some industry verticals the impact of COVID-19 equates to almost 6 years of acceleration. There is an evident shift in Germany where research reflects a 28% increase in use of digital channels & services in 2020 coupled with more cautious spending. And a more recent survey identified an up to 20% net increase in consumer intent to continue spending online post COVID-19, so it’s fair to say that we’re expecting this digital adoption trend to continue on a permanent basis both in Germany, and globally.

What opportunity do you see for Banks and FinTechs to better support consumers during this time?

Firstly, it’s important to support contactless payments, through contactless cards, mobile wallets, payments and wearables — to enable consumers to pay safely at merchant locations without ‘touch’ contact. Secondly, in line with changing customer behaviour as consumers continue to spend more online during lockdown, they need to focus on the customer journey and ensure frictionless customer experiences across all digital commerce channels, or through embedded payment applications. With the rise in mobile and digital banking adoption — or increased usage — during this period, there’s also an opportunity for financial institutions to continue to expand on their mobile banking services, such as card spend and authorization controls, and to focus on collaborations to create more value for cardholders with new customer-centric services.

Despite the increase of customer empowerment through mobile banking apps or digital banking websites, operational call centres still offer a valued human voice for the institution’s brand, especially in instances where banks may need to limit the accessibility of any physical branches.  And at TSYS, we’ve seen the importance of call centres when lockdown measures are in effect, and have experienced firsthand the need to quickly adjust to a flexible model to allow agents the space to do their jobs — often remotely — while still delivering a high level of customer service.

For example, during the pandemic, we’ve seen a doubling of chargeback transactions processed through our contact centres in 2020 – a 96% increase on 2019 volumes.  During this period, we also had to meet the challenge of upskilling nearly 100 employees to meet this increased call demand, so the ability to quickly adapt with successful working business models is also key.

Beyond COVID, what is TSYS doing to serve the German and International payment markets?

Today, we support both issuers and acquirers in the German market through an array of payment processing solutions with multiple business models, including full-service processing at our European data centers, and on-premise with application management. We’re able to pass onto our clients the advantages of economies of scale and, moreover, help reduce the ever-increasing burden of regulation and compliance for them, allowing them to refocus their time and resource investment to new customer propositions.

We’re also closely collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power our cloud processing services for those clients looking to leverage the benefit of a payments processing platform optimized for cloud automation. Benefits include optimisation of performance, availability, scalability and agility, reduction in operational expenses, faster time to market, and “pay as you grow” models.

We’re also heavily focused on building out our APIs, which is not a new activity for us. We have API-centric solutions and we’ve been recognized with an industry technology award based on some of our Mobile Banking – Cardholder Empowerment APIs, but we’re invested in transforming our clients’ digital capabilities and seamless customer journeys with RESTful API enablement. In past years we’ve actively engaged with the Berlin Group on their API market consultations and we continue to explore how we can enrich our clients’ payment ecosystems and customer-centric innovation with API-driven services.

As a partner to both Challenger banks and Traditional banks, what do you believe are key success factors in future-proofing their growth?

As the shift away from cash to digital payments accelerates with increasing consumer comfort of payment by smartphones and digital devices, all players need to be hyper-focused on customer centricity and the ongoing value they can bring to their customers going forward. It’s a hugely competitive market, and challenger banks have managed to gain footholds based on disrupter models that have offered advantages from frictionless digital experiences and satisfying customer experiences, fast onboarding, low fees and attractive digital finance offers. However, traditional banks are in an equal position to maintain and increase market share with an innovative mindset, the right enabling technology and an operationally efficient business model.

At TSYS, we’ve partnered with start-up challenger banks and supported their journeys to becoming credit card leaders in market but we also cater to and support large traditional banks that have successfully become first movers with digital and seamless customer experiences and products. So major success drivers come down to the client’s own orientation around customer-centricity and a prerequisite of advanced payment technology solutions to underpin their future growth journey.

This could translate to seamlessly integrating machine learning into fraud and risk ecommerce and scoring decisioning, or actionable insights from portfolio management solutions for dynamic decisioning and hyper-personalisation. Now with a partner like TSYS, these solutions could be pre-packaged from our connected partner ecosystem, but they can also be integrated on a client’s own initiative leveraging our integration layer and API toolkit or developer portal. Either way — with our digital technology framework — industry players have the option to compete, or collaborate, to grow their marketplace with innovative services that are both personalized and bring additional value to their customers.

For longevity in the market, all these businesses also need to run at optimal operational efficiency to remain agile while they continue to grow. That’s why at TSYS we offer different business models, pay-as-you-grow services and API product flexibility. We’re committed to delivering services that enable our clients’ growth objectives; and are passionate about partnering with them to deliver the future path to payments in the evolving German market.

After the great guests is before the great guests

Following our November guests Dan McCrum, Verena Pausder and Sascha Lobo, we are once again bringing national and international stars and hidden champions from the business world to our “digital” Transactions stage in February. Who’s all this? We’re simply picking up where we left off at Transactions 20 in November, and look forward to guests discussing the important issues facing the industry and providing an outlook on current developments. We welcome, among others, Aya Jaff, who will reflect on “Get Green or Die Tryin'” in her keynote, as well as Tom Dapp, Kristina Walcker-Mayer, Verena Thaler, Imke Jacob, Alexander Bechtel and many many more.

Bam! Also remotely connected will be Edward Snowden, who not only has his own opinion on the topic of data protection, but will also provide exciting insights.

Good news: There are still tickets available – be there!

Be part of it!! Lucky is who already has his ticket for the event. They retain their validity and can be redeemed again without any problems. If you don’t have a ticket yet, we have excellent news for you – there are still some available here: https://www.eventbrite.de/e/transactions-2012-teil-2-tickets-130009216065.

And if you get a ticket now you will automatically have access to the past Transactions 20½ lectures. In other words, get a ticket and you’ll get the concentrated load: Sascha Lobo, Verena Pausder, Aya Jaff, Edward Snowden and many, many more! You can find the complete line-up as well as all speakers at www.transactions.io!

We’re bringing the Transaction 20½ online stream right to your door.