Faster, Smarter, Better FI Innovation

Conventional wisdom would say that delivering a solution that’s faster, better and smarter is impossible since you often sacrifice one or two of those attributes to get the other(s). But Fiserv’s SVP of Emerging Payments, Ginger Schmeltzer, says that all three are, in fact, what banks must do in order to capitalize on the trends that are reshaping the world around them. Schmeltzer sat down with MPD CEO Karen Webster to get her take on how Fiserv is helping its FI customers add value to consumers by delivering faster, better and smarter solutions that respond to the trends that are changing the banking experience for their more than 70 million consumers and thousands of banks around the world.

KW: Fiserv is a provider of technology solutions to the financial services industry worldwide. That’s a very broad space and certainly a very broad remit. So why don’t we get started by having you tell us what you guys are focused on today and why?

GS: As you say, Fiserv has got a very broad remit and we serve the broader financial services industry – anywhere from core banking services to account processing platform services to digital channels and payment solutions and much more. But I thought today I’d focus on the digital channels and digital payments capabilities that we offer and talk about what we are working on there. We serve over 70 million online banking users and more than 10 million mobile bankers, and we handle 24 billion digital payment transactions totaling about $1 trillion each year.

KW: Wow. So it’s a lot of numbers and different services and capabilities. Given what you just described, what are the things that you have your eye on with respect to the trends that you think are really going to transform the mobile banking integrated payment space over the next 3-5 years?

GS: Some of the bigger trends we are looking at are obviously the move to mobile interaction for nearly everything in our lives. Consumers and businesses want more control over all aspects of their lives, including their finances, and they want it on the go wherever they are. Their mobile devices, phones, and tablets give them that access.

We are also watching the digitization of everything. Records, bills, correspondence, you name it, everything is going digital. Financial institutions and consumers are doing far less on paper and in person. More and more activities are remote and much more in demand via digital devices. We are working on ways to facilitate that for our customers.

Another positive development we’re seeing happen is a more seamless user experience, particularly in integration across all those different applications and devices that consumers are using. They want a seamless transition between devices, channels, and interactions, with all the information following them wherever they go. That information needs to conform to the specifications of whatever channel the consumer is using, whether it’s voice, a mobile device, or a website.

In addition, we’re looking at changes in the way consumers are paying overall. From the Apple Pay launch this fall to the move to EMV this year, the play around whether or not NFC is going to happen given Apple Pay, as well as what other players are working on in mobile and retail payments. So we are tracking this space closely, and monitoring how consumers and merchants are really adopting the changing methods and interfaces of payments.

The last trend is real-time. Consumers live in a real-time world, where everything is on demand and available whenever they want it. They have very little patience for the time constraints of legacy banking systems, wanting their finances to be as on demand as the rest of their real-time world. We are working very hard to help make that happen.

KW: You and I have had many opportunities to talk about these trends over the years, and I’m curious to get your perspective on two things. All of these things are in fact what Fiserv has to accommodate to serve consumers and certainly to enable merchants. But which of those things have moved faster than you anticipated, and which of them moved slower?

GS: I wish I had a crystal ball to lay all of that out. I would say that we have seen a much quicker move to the mobilization of everything. The first big trend is mobilization/digitization and that kind of seamless user experience moving very quickly – and we see it now happening outside of the financial services industry. Consumers are just used to using their devices for messaging and sharing information. You look at these fitness apps and health trackers and how those all share information across the various apps; consumers just expect it all to be updated. We are seeing that happen at a very rapid pace and it’s going to continue to go that way as new capabilities and interfaces come along that really drive consumers to expect more out of their devices.

What’s moving more slowly is real-time. It’s a growing expectation and consumers want it but I think the industry itself has a lot of challenges to get there. While we know that it’s important, there are a lot of legacy hurdles, regulation and the like, to overcome to get to where consumers and businesses expect it to be.

KW: I would agree with you. I think we all thought that we would be running around using our phones to pay for things in stores perhaps with a little bit more regularity than we are. Although, it is a very complicated thing to enable. Will Apple Pay change that in your view?

GS: You know, I’d like to see Apple Pay change that. But I think at the very least Apple Pay has really driven more visibility and awareness among consumers that you can use your phone for a lot more than what they have ever thought about. So I think what it’s done is created awareness and interest on the part of consumers to do more on their mobile device. We’ve watched all the past attempts by many industry players trying to do this; they were never as seamless from a user’s perspective, and most were just complicated and clunky for consumers and for merchants. Apple Pay is really pretty easy and the more we see that happen I think the more consumers are starting to go, “You know I think there’s something to this whole mobile payments thing.” I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know who is going to win. But I do think that Apple Pay has started to create some momentum in moving the mobile payments market towards reality.

KW: I would agree. I think it’s gotten everyone focused on getting serious about making it real although I think as we both acknowledged, it’s a complicated thing to do. Let’s switch to something I know Fiserv is focused on and I think you, in particular, are focused on. That is this whole idea of reimagining the financial services experience. You addressed a number of different trends around mobile and digitization. But how are you actually bringing this to life for your customers?

GS: We are looking closely at changing consumer expectations, knowing that consumers want things to be faster and more convenient. And really, if you look at it, so much of what we as an industry have done historically in payments and channels has been taking what the banks do and just pushing it directly to consumers. We collectively hadn’t really given hard thought to the fact that it’s the consumers who use these services ̶ consumers who don’t understand the complexities of the banking system. Heck, a lot of bankers don’t understand it. So the fact that we have pushed that complexity to the consumers historically has created a lot of challenges.

One of the things we are really looking at is that user experience. We want to make it less “what do you need us to do for you?” and more proactive as in “here’s what we can do for you.” We want to anticipate and understand what consumers are trying to accomplish and we want to make it easier for them to do so. And in parallel, we are working toward making transactions real-time. So, not only do we want to make it easier for you to accomplish things but we want to make sure you can get them done in real-time and get on with your life.

Our recently launched Now Network is a great example of that. It takes the experience of paying a bill or a person, and reimagines how that can work faster, smarter and better for the consumer and for the banks and billers that facilitate it.

KW: So one of the things that’s dominant in every conversation now, regardless of what aspect of financial services or payments we talk about, is security and reducing fraud. That obviously is something that until this time last year none of us really thought that deeply about, even though it was very much a real part of what the industry was focused on. It’s now making headlines every day.

I know you have done things around mobile card management, and things like that provide a mechanism for consumers to more easily manage those kinds of things, and the banks to facilitate that on their behalf. I would like to get your perspective on the issue of fraud and security. How you think we need to tackle it as an industry, whose responsibility it is, and again, what are you guys doing to move the ball down the field?

GS: I think I would rephrase what you said a little in that I think there are a lot of people that are actually watching the fraud and security situation very closely. But I think we have trained consumers to be a little less concerned about fraud. It doesn’t mean they’re not at all concerned, it just means we have made them less concerned than they might have been otherwise. But I think there’s a growing acknowledgment in the industry that the more consumers are aware of and focused on managing their data, the safer it is for everybody in the whole value chain.

What we look at is how we can empower consumers to manage their card data, and really proactively control their cards. We recently launched a product called CardValet that enables consumers to consider “Here’s where I want to use it and where I don’t.” If everyone in the value chain is focused on securing that data, the data will actually be more secure. And consumers will have more control over what’s happening to their cards. Everybody wins in that situation.

KW: It sounds like you’ve been up to a lot of things focusing on ways to mobilize, digitize and make real-time the portfolio of services the consumers are looking for from their financial institutions. We always like to ask, what’s next? What’s on the roadmap?

GS: I already talked about our Now Network that has been really improving our money-moving capability for our consumers via the FIs that we serve. We’re working to anticipate what consumers want and enabling all our FI clients to deliver it via a robust user experience across mobile and online banking. We launched a mobile capture product called Snap to Pay for bill payments, and we are looking at other applications for mobile capture applications; there are a lot of opportunities there. We’re also focused on helping consumers to use the device in their hands to save time in getting to the final transactions. We are looking for more ways to improve the cardholder experience, working on ways to improve our online banking and mobile banking offerings, and how to pull everything closer together — so that a seamless experience is what consumers can expect from their banks that use Fiserv products.

Ginger Schmeltzer
Senior Vice President, Emerging Payments, Fiserv 

Ginger Schmeltzer joined Fiserv as Senior Vice President, Emerging Payments, Digital Payment Solutions, in 2012. In this role, Schmeltzer leads the development and execution of enterprise-wide initiatives to facilitate the delivery of new payment services, with an initial focus on the rapidly evolving mobile payments market.

Schmeltzer is a seasoned financial industry professional with significant experience spanning both digital channels and payments. Most recently, Schmeltzer was senior vice president of Digital Channel Management at SunTrust Bank where she oversaw online banking, mobile banking and digital money movement technologies, in addition to online sales and the SunTrust.com website.

Previous to this, Schmeltzer spent eight years at Edgar, Dunn & Company, where she led the development and growth of the firm’s mobile financial services practice. She also has an extensive international background, including international sales and global marketing experience.

Schmeltzer is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with Bachelor of Arts degrees in international business and Spanish. She also holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

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