In economic crises, companies often reflexively clamp down on new product and market development, when in many cases such times can be exploited as springboards to growth.
Speaking with PYMNTS for the “Executive Insight Series: The Next Three Years,” PayU Global Payments CEO Mario Shiliashki talked about the payments service provider’s (PSP) own journey to expand into high-growth emerging markets, and what investments will best serve its clients on a three-year timeline.
“We constantly think about this,” Shiliashki said.
“Where do we continue to invest? Where do we prioritize investments in an industry that’s constantly changing? We’re already in some turbulent times for the world economy. When that happens, people tend to pull back and refocus on the basics and the core business.”
Rather than pull back, PayU is among more forward-looking PSPs that are instead hammering away at local payment methods, enhancing infrastructure to keep approval rates and fees optimal, improving transaction monitoring and fraud detection to reduce false positives, and other elements of differentiation that add up to “being a truly global provider.”
“We’re going through our annual planning process,” he said. “There are two main focus areas for us. One is our core payments business, continuing to invest infrastructure-wise on getting better at analytics and data, providing the best analytics both internally, as well as to our clients and merchants and partners.”
Additionally, PayU will continue investing “around fraud management. How do we make sure that we are best in class?”
The second part is “expanding to new products and new geographies. We’ll do it either organically or via partnerships” insourcing and outsourcing.
See also: BNPL Seen as Financial Inclusion Tool Across EMEA
Pilots and Partnerships
While strengthening its core, PayU is already working on new or improved services.
On the buy now, pay later (BNPL) front, Shiliashki said, “We have launched pilots and partnerships in a number of markets offering credit at the point of sale, whether it’s installment credit or buy now, pay later credit, which in many of our markets still is fairly nascent.”
In many emerging markets BNPL is “not the battleground as we see in the U.S. or Western Europe,” he said, “so we think there’s a massive opportunity there to expand.” It’s part of a long-term mission to offer virtually all payment options in PayU’s 20-plus markets.
Cross-border is on the whiteboard as well. “This is where it becomes exciting when we talk about crypto,” he said. “How can we leverage new rails rather than existing rails to implement instant or near instant cross-border settlements … using crypto rails rather than traditional rails?
“We’re investing there to experiment and see if we can actually stand something up that is really scaling. It’s one thing to do a test and a pilot. It’s another thing to scale an operation.”
Optimizing for new markets also factors into future growth for PayU and its clients.
Shiliashki said that when merchants reach out to PayU, “They’re looking at their approval rates and their costs in a market like … Argentina. They see that their global provider is getting [them] approval rates of 30%, 40%. Crazy numbers. We’re not talking 90% plus. That’s when they come to us and say, What can you do? Can you double that? Yes, we can. With local processing we can more than double these approval rates.”
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Managing for Complexity
Looking ahead to 2023 and beyond, Shiliashki said PayU will stay focused on serving merchants globally and regionally, using a single integration to access a host of services.
“Extending capabilities is something that we will continue to invest in. That means all the relevant local payment methods, all the infrastructure that make our approval rates and our pricing best in class.”
He’s also a keen observer of regulatory trends which he expects will become more of an issue for merchants, from the most developed economies to some of the least developed.
“We try to take that complexity out by having our own local experts in each of these markets. This is one of the reasons why global merchants and global eCommerce players work with us, is beyond the optimizing of the payments and transactions, is also that advice on how do you set up the local entity? How do you think about tax issues in the local markets?”
This is where PayU’s local presence, along with on-staff compliance and tax experts, are providing value to global merchants on crafting offerings for local populations.
“All of those questions become really important to someone that runs a global eCommerce business,” he said. “We try to take that complexity out by having our own local experts into each of these markets.”
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