How do consumers and executives differ in their views of the payments landscape?
It’s a question that’s difficult to answer unless you go straight to the executives themselves. That’s what Vantiv has done in its recent white paper, “Executive Thinking On Payments: Disconnects and Opportunities,” which offers rare insights into how those at the top view the dynamic payments industry.
What’s most concerning to these industry executives, and where do they see the most opportunity? PYMNTS.com spoke with Lorena Harris, VP of corporate marketing at Vantiv, to find out.
“We compared consumer thinking with industry executive thinking, which is an angle I don’t think has really been explored in the marketplace before. And it came about after we saw that in 2012, our customer research results indicated that consumers have a really strong expectation that mobile payments are coming, and coming within two years, that they’ll be using them,” Harris explained.
“That didn’t sync with what we knew about industry readiness, so, in the second quarter of 2012, Vantiv and Mercator conducted interviews with 35-plus executives at financial institutions and tier one merchants.”
According to Harris, the executives polled cast a more cautious light on the future of mobile payments. Many experts expressed concern over NFC, the lower revenues generated by FIs thanks to regulations like Durbin and the looming U.S. EMV deadlines, among other factors.
Harris went into particular depth describing the paper’s EMV findings, highlighting how those involved on all sides of the ecosystem were concerned about its ramifications on the payments industry.
“It’s fair to say that it’s a source of high anxiety for merchants, in particular. As you might expect, they’re focused on the EMV mandates, and the shift of fraud liability to them. They’re also worried about the cost of implementation, about the complexities of leaving EMV deployment into their point of sale technology update cycle,” Harris said.
“On the other side, financial institution executives are also concerned about EMV. They don’t have a clear mandate for the networks to guide their transition to issuing EMV cards, and many see it as a significant expense with unclear benefits.
Also, our research showed that some financial institution executives have doubts about the eventual enforcement of mandates for merchant acceptance, and about whether a complete installed base of EMV terminals will emerge after this. “
To hear more Harris on Vantiv’s findings, listen to the full podcast below.
*If you have trouble with the audio player above, click here.
Lorena Harris
Vice President of Corporate Marketing for Vantiv
Lorena Harris, Vice President of Corporate Marketing for Vantiv, has more than 20 years of marketing experience with large business service companies. Her expertise is in designing research-based Thought Leadership programs for brand building and demand generation.
During the last decade, Lorena has built revenue-generating Thought Leadership programs for $B+ B2B service companies such as Donnelly (directory publishing services), ADP (payroll/benefit services), Convergys (contact center services) and Vantiv (payment processing services). She currently directs Vantiv’s brand and digital marketing efforts, overseeing brand development, content marketing, lead generation, and sales support strategies across new and traditional channels.
Since earning her MBA from Duke University, Lorena has been active in the Raleigh, Atlanta and Cincinnati marketing communities, and often speaks about content marketing at CMO conferences. She is on the Board of Directors for the Cincinnati American Marketing Association and President-elect for 2013-14. Her customer experience marketing blog, thecustomerbitesback.com, is syndicated via Customer Think. More background on Lorena Harris is available on linkedin.com/in/lorenaharris.
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