On 14-16 May 2018, the Merchant Risk Council welcomed more than 600 attendees, 70 speakers and 45 exhibitors to their European event MRC Dublin, a comprehensive global conference focused on digital payments, web fraud, risk and technology for ecommerce merchants, solution providers, card brands, issuers, and law enforcement.
The attendees had access to insightful educational sessions covering the most relevant information within the online industry, open to professionals of all experience levels. The addressed topics which revolved around ecommerce payments and fraud have been approached from the emerging markets’ perspective as well. Another key aspect was the diversity in commerce verticals, the present merchants operating in fields such as gaming, gambling, airlines, digital goods, luxury goods, digital vouchering, travelling, marketplaces etc.
There was a high interest in the role of machine learning, the power of analytics and the valuable use of data in streamlining the fraud prevention solutions, optimizing the customer experience and reducing customer attrition. Nowadays, merchants have the power to create their own free payment analytic tools. They are able to create authorization reports, split by country or customer group, and data reports which help them understand the costs of transaction processing and how to optimize it. Further, machine learning and artificial intelligence and human-led decisions are an effective power-combo to fraud management. The concept of augmented intelligence came in, shadowing the idea of human versus robots, as AI should be created to boost human intelligence not to overpower it.
2018 MRC Global Payments Survey - winning through ecommerce payments management
The Merchant Risk Council, in partnership with Cybersource, highlighted the findings of the Payment Management Strategies of Forward-Thinking Global Merchants, commenting the challenges merchants face, the best practices they employ, the benefits they are realizing and other insights.
The panel discussion was carried by Markus Bergthaler from Merchant Risk Council together with Joe Salerno from CyberSource as well as Paul Kuykendall Ticketmaster/Live Nation and Natalie Dunne from Paddy Power Betfair.
In order to contribute to the development of ecommerce environment, merchants should consider payment management as an inherent part of strategic decision-making. At the same time, merchants should be aware of the value of payments methods in fueling business growth, improving customer experience and reducing risk. Customer experience also influences merchants’ decisions about the options they offer on their checkout pages. The survey’s results show that customer experience has become a top priority, 64% of merchants add payment methods with the scope of improving it. The second top reason—adopting mobile payment methods (51%)—goes hand-in-hand with improving the customer experience for mobile users.
“Forward-thinking merchants who strive to improve the ecommerce checkout experience know that formulating the right mix of payment options should be dictated by the needs of individual customers”
At the same time, forward-thinking merchants address the current challenges posed by fraudsters and regulatory frameworks. Only 15% of all merchants ranked regulatory impact as a top-three challenge, and among European merchants, that percentage was just 5%, which means that European merchants are ready to implement PSD2 compliance. Overall, the impact of PSD2 is reflected in the fact that 34% of merchants believe that PSD2 brings more complexity in the number of payment options and 47% believe it brings complexity in authentication/fraud conversion.
In terms of payment-related challenges, the survey reveals the following:
Ecommerce fraud 44%
Cost of payment 35%
Acceptance of Alternative Payments 34%
Security (PCI, DSS, tokenization) 32%
The innovation in ecommerce is an outside limit
Traditional commerce and technology are converging to a greater degree than we have ever seen before, in order to manage the insatiable demands of the consumer marketplace. Internet of Things, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence are now commonplace tools in brick & mortar retail businesses, which are bringing digital marketplace technology solutions to the high street experience. The digitalization of commerce is an innovation in itself and at MRC Dublin the scene was set for more developments and improvements in the ecommerce landscape. However, there is always room for progress, as consumers and regulations seem to push merchants in doing their best to meet convenience and compliance, while challenging solution providers in helping merchants in doing so.
About Anda Kania
With a high interest in the latest news of the payment and fraud industry, Anda has used her position of senior editor at The Paypers to discover and analyze the hottest topics and to discuss with the top thought leaders in the domain, in order to get the pulse of the fraud and digital identity industry. With a Master’s Degree in International Relations and National Security Studies, Anda is in a constant search for the upcoming trends and the best way to comprise it in words for our readership.
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