Shane Fitzpatrick, President & Managing Director, Chase Paymentech ?Europe Limited

Chase Paymentech has been active for almost 28 years in this evolving marketplace. How do you ensure that your brand stays in the lead in an industry where new technologies abound, we have more data than ever before and more and more newcomers are joining the payments field?

Shane Fitzpatrick: Merchants are at the heart of everything we do at Chase Paymentech. The breadth and strength of our experience enables us to share best practices and benchmarking with clients, which can help them focus on growing their business in a fast, compliant, secure and customer-focused way.

As background, we are a global payment processing and merchant acquiring business, and a leading provider of merchant services. Our proprietary platforms enable integrated solutions for all payment types. By combining proven payment technology with a long legacy of merchant advocacy we can create quantifiable value for companies large and small.

What are some of the issues that you face leading Paymentech in Europe? What are some of the problems that merchants face that Paymentech can help solve?

Shane Fitzpatrick: In 2012, Chase Paymentech processed more than 29 billion transactions with a value of more than USD650 billion. In addition to the ability to authorise transactions in more than 130 currencies, we provide business analytics and information services, fraud detection and data security solutions.

As more merchants expand their e-commerce businesses globally, we offer a single integrated and secure payments platform. This makes it easy to accept payments in different countries without the need for multiple systems and acquirers, in addition to helping reduce complexity and administrative costs. It can also help merchants expand their business into new international markets by offering payment in the currency local customers would prefer.

The growth of e-commerce, cross-border payments, multicurrency and mobile payments have created new opportunities, but also challenges, for merchants relating to regulation, security and fraud. There are cultural issues to consider, as well as handling foreign credit cards and multiple currencies and dealing with exchange rates. We have the expertise and knowledge to advise merchants on these and other topics to help grow their businesses.

Right now, the word on everyone’s lips is mobile. Sales of tablets and smartphones are soaring worldwide. Smartphone sales are growing and tablet sales are predicted to overtake all other PC types by 2017¹. Not surprisingly, mobile is perceived as the biggest growth opportunity for e-tailers. What expertise can Chase Paymentech bring to merchants who want to get the best from their mobile offering?

Shane Fitzpatrick: Along with some optimistic predictions for mobile commerce, there are just as many myths and misconceptions. From a survey we conducted earlier this year of more than 1,000 online consumers about their online shopping experience and making payments online, we affirmed the importance of providing a mobile-optimised website as part of a seamless multi-channel shopping experience.

Here are two myths and advice for retailers to improve customer loyalty and help ensure fraud prevention.

First, “m-commerce renders other shopping channels obsolete.”
A priority for retailers is to help shoppers add and save items to their shopping cart from their mobile, enabling them to pay later using their laptop or desktop computer. Adding a simple login to an e-commerce website could enable customers to switch between multiple devices as part of a seamless shopping experience.

Second, “m-commerce is the easiest way to shop online.”
When it comes to their m-commerce experience, a massive 93% of tablet users we surveyed are left frustrated and this resulted in over two in every three of them abandoning an online purchase at the checkout stage. Mobile retailers must invest in order to provide a seamless payment process that is optimised for a smaller mobile screen.

International fraud is considered a significant challenge to CNP sales by 27% of International retailers². Fraud is now often perpetrated by criminal gangs and the tactics employed are highly organized and sophisticated. How can Chase Paymentech help the industry as a whole and their merchants individually combat fraud?

Shane Fitzpatrick: There is no simple solution to the threat of international fraud. We offer solutions and strategies to help retailers effectively and efficiently mitigate fraud. One example is unmasking even the most determined fraudsters, who sometimes use an internet proxy server to mask the location of each transaction. This makes it appear that the buyer is in the same country as the registered billing address for the stolen credit card.

But advanced technology such as ‘proxy piercing’ and ‘device fingerprinting’ can pinpoint the true location of every computer or mobile device used to make a payment. This allows retailers to compare a customer’s registered or shipping address in real-time with their current location, enabling the retailer to establish automated rules to immediately filter and block suspected transactions.

Merchants need sophisticated tools to identify today’s fraudulent transactions in real-time and a balanced view of fraud to avoid deterring genuine customers. Protection from fraud is vital, but so is ensuring that customers receive a seamless shopping experience across all channels.

We ensure that connectivity to our payment gateway offers security that is second-to-none while our advanced suite of SafetechSM Fraud Tools offers real-time protection against the latest fraud threats. We also offer advice on how to mitigate against the risk of data theft and minimise merchants’ PCI-DSS obligations with security solutions that will protect customers’ account details.

Big Data is daunting. We have more data than ever before but that doesn’t mean we have more knowledge. With the right tools and strategy, data can be turned into a strategic advantage. What advice can you provide to ecommerce merchants that will help create the best retail data strategy for their business?

Shane Fitzpatrick: We know that technology is influencing consumer buying habits. As we approach the holiday shopping season, now is a good time for e-tailers to assess their data strategy.

The rewards of customer loyalty and enhanced sales can outweigh the risk of missed sales and disengaged customers from not implementing the correct data strategy. As we deal with an evolving multi-channel environment, it is vital for e-tailers to assess their current data monitoring, including social data and tackle the challenge of analysing big data.

It is crucial for businesses to understand why their customers buy from them and incorporate this motivation into their messaging. Better data analysis can improve the marketing message and ultimately may lead to increased sales.

In addition, social media monitoring is now a valued source of business intelligence and can be used to identify, predict and respond to consumer behaviour. There are a myriad of tools available which offer different ways to analyse, measure, display and create reports about your engagement efforts. Mined intelligently, social media data can provide a wealth of insight about customers’ preferences, opinions and buying habits.

Incorporating insights from payments data into data analysis can also help to enhance profitability, customer experience and efficiency.

High-cost identity fraud is a recurring problem. Any recommendations for the prevention, detection and resolution of identity fraud?

Shane Fitzpatrick: Our experience has demonstrated that when it comes to maintaining data security in merchants’ environments, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for adhering to the industry’s global standard PCI DSS. We provide guidance to help European online merchants upgrade security and reduce compliance costs while protecting customers’ payment information.

Our guidelines are designed to enhance the security of payment transactions for both retailers and their customers. A comprehensive security strategy is paramount when it comes to ensuring the success of a business. That strategy will vary depending on the size, type and processing capabilities of the business. Additionally, as the sales channels and environment shift rapidly, strategies will need to accommodate this shift and evolve accordingly.

A few steps for merchants to help secure payments include ensuring clear policies are in place regarding the handling of cardholder data and technology usage in order to maintain secure data; creating a secure, seamless and compliant payment experience that is easy to capture sales, protect customers’ payment account data and providing a payment experience that inspires confidence; finally, using Tokenisation to help minimise the burden on IT resources and provide the ultimate flexibility to brand and design the customer payment experience.

We recently launched the Dynamic Hosted Payments Page solution that can make it easy for merchants to protect customers’ payment account data and provide a payment experience that instills confidence while helping to meet payment compliance standards.

¹ - Gartner: Forecast: Devices by Operating System and User Type, 1Q13 Update (April 2013)

² - Dynamic Markets: Putting Customers First? (March 2013)

About Chase Paymentech:
Chase Paymentech Europe Limited, trading as Chase Paymentech, is a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase Bank, and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Chase Paymentech, the global payment processing and merchant acquiring business, is a leading provider of merchant services. The company’s proprietary platforms enable integrated solutions for all payment types, including credit, debit, prepaid stored value and electronic check processing; as well as digital, alternative and mobile payment options. Chase Paymentech has uniquely combined proven payment technology with a long legacy of merchant advocacy that creates quantifiable value for companies large and small. Further information can be found at www.chasepaymentech.co.uk.