By Ben Carsley, Editor/Writer (@BC_PYMNTS)
It’s tough to serve as a follow up act to the likes of Warren Buffett, Al Gore and Rosie Rios. But as those who attended The Innovation Project™ 2013 can attest, Day One’s second panelists were up to the task.
Moderated by economist Steve Levitt, author of “Freakonomics,” and Don Kingsborough, VP of retail sales for PayPal, the panel tackled a wide variety of payments topics, ranging from practical to philosophical and everywhere in between.
Levitt led off the talk by cautioning that people “are incredibly bad at predicting their own futures,” and reminded everyone of the just how difficult it is to enact behavioral change on a wide scale. Instead of offering something completely new, Levitt said, payments innovations should improve functions we already do today.
“Innovations that succeed are most often invisible or seamless, and they allow people to do exactly what they are doing, in an easier and simpler way,” Levitt said.
Kingsborough followed with some broad thoughts on innovation of his own, and repeated a thought we’ve heard PayPal reiterate time and time again: technology itself is not enough to drive change.
“This revolution is not about technology trying to find consumers, it’s about us trying to keep up with the consumer,” he said. “Engagement doesn’t always begin in the store, it begins whenever and wherever the consumer chooses.
Its about payments going in the background, being invisible, and developing a consumer experience everywhere you have the ability to have contact with that consumer. It has to be consistent.”
Levitt and Kingsborough then opened up their conversation to the rest of the panel, consisting of: Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer at MasterCard, Alex Rampell, CEO of TrialPay, Troy Carrothers, head of financial services at Kohl’s, Dwaine Kimmet, treasurer and VP financial services at Home Depot, and Chuck Harris, president of NetSpend.
The discussion turned to retailers and their view of payments innovation, and the different perspectives offered by the panel were intriguing.
“We don’t know if the consumer will want to have multiple retailer wallets on their device, or one ubiquitous wallet. I think that will be dictated by the value propositions as they relate to each of those devices,” Kimmet offered. “Home Depot will take a balanced approach to that, because we know there will be people who want maybe not a Home Depot wallet, but a Home Depot app that will give people a seamless way to pay.”
Carrothers agreed with the sentiment that retailers don’t know which payments technology or innovation will prevail, but said that doesn’t mean they’re paralyzed in the mean time.
“One thing we sometimes loose sight of is we don’t necessarily need to wait around for some of these decision to be made. We’ve got some tools available to us that we can use as well, and that can be promoting your own products and your own form of tender in store as well,” Carrothers said. “Don’t forget that the big three brands that you frequently talk with or come to mind, don’t forget that they’re not the only ones out there. You’ve got options.”
After the retailers had their say, the conversation shifted back towards fostering those innovations that merchants will some day come to use. McLaughlin used his time to explain how MasterCard approaches innovation, using their new MasterPass platform as an example of impacting all involved with the payments ecosystem.
“This has to be how we’re creating more value … how do we provide better experiences, and I think for too long people have been simply looking at the transaction itself and not the entire value chain,” McLaughlin said. “Unless we’re generating or creating new value for merchants and consumers, we’re wasting our time here.”
That lined up well with Kingsborough’s own philosophy, as the PayPal exec restated what he thought was most crucial for payments innovation.
“Saving the consumer time or money – particularly at the beginning of the exchange – is vitally important,” Kingsborough said. “It’s only through the usage of these technologies that adoption becomes permanent.”
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