How Payments Execs Want To Recast The Value Chain

As the payments industry becomes more sophisticated, payments executives say they’re more interested in disrupting the payments value chain, including cutting out the number of middlemen involved in the payments process, according to results from a new report from ACI Worldwide and Ovum.

The Global Payments Insight study shares the perspectives of leaders in consumer finance, higher education, insurance and other billing organization executives, and shows that customer experience and cost structure of payments has led payments executives to realize they need to shift how business is conducted. This included, first and foremost, reducing the number of card networks in their individual payments value chain.

When it comes to payment strategies and how executives plan to invest in innovation of the value chain, the study indicates the following key metrics:

• 44 percent | The number of respondents who have prioritized reducing the number of fee collectors in the payments value chain.
• 41 percent | The number of respondents who want to invest more in targeted offers; 39 percent of those same respondents say they want to invest more in mobile as it relates to increasing cost structure efficiency in the value chain.
• 59  percent | The number of respondents who said they are reviewing direct connections with banks in order to cut out reliance on card networks (which would reduce fees).
• 85 percent | The percentage of banks who said they are willing to collaborate with organizations in order to reduce costs.

Outside of the transforming the cost structure, the survey also gave insight into what payments executives have to say about the customer experience as it relates to how they will shake up their value chain investments.

• 75 percent | Amount of organizations that said customers expect more payment options (92 percent from finance companies; 91 percent from higher education organization; 70 percent from insurance companies).
• 50 percent | Amount of organizations that said they are evaluating as many as eight new payment methods.

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