Connected Consumer Data Provides Solid Growth Strategy for Merchants

Businesses that use data strategically can unlock opportunities, fuel growth and reduce risk, Jeff Pomeroy, SVP and head of Omnicommerce at Carat from Fiserv, writes in the new PYMNTS eBook, “The Implications of Uncertainty.”

In the face of uncertainties, data is emerging as a business’s most powerful ally. Organizations that treat data as more than just a collection of numbers and consider it a strategic driver are equipped to move quickly and efficiently, unlocking new business capabilities and driving meaningful innovation for their customers.

A core part of our Carat strategy at Fiserv is to develop solutions that make it simple for businesses to view and understand the payments data flowing through their business so they can strategically build for the future. Through cloud-agnostic solutions, businesses can seamlessly connect their payments data to supplier, customer loyalty, workforce and other data sets to create new insights. Here are a few data-driven trends we see transforming payments innovation in the future.

Data Sharing Between Merchants and Issuers

Merchants and issuers each hold valuable pieces of payments intelligence. By making it easier for these entities to share data across their ecosystems, both parties can make better decisions that help fuel growth, reduce risk and power innovation. Central to this strategy is enabling seamless, real-time data exchanges. By empowering more businesses with robust merchant and issuer intel, payment providers can better combat fraud and reduce operational costs through real-time risk monitoring and dispute management that leverage the best data our industry has to offer.

Leveraging Conversational AI

The adoption of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) in data analysis is a significant advancement from traditional methods, which often require specialized training and expertise. By offering intuitive interfaces and user-friendly interactions, conversational AI democratizes the ability to query data, empowering users across all levels of an organization to make data-driven decisions without being hindered by technical barriers.

As it relates to payments, conversational AI can facilitate real-time data exploration and visualization, allowing businesses to almost instantly query data to gain a deeper understanding of trends, patterns, and anomalies within data sets. Whether it’s sales performance metrics, customer behavior patterns, or market trends, businesses can use AI to obtain insights on the fly, enabling agile and responsive decision-making in dynamic business environments.

Insights Outside of Payments Data

By leveraging a diverse range of data sources, businesses can augment existing payments datasets to create more comprehensive insights. A few simple examples of this may include:

Aggregating payments data within similar categories and verticals allows businesses to understand their market position and identify opportunities for growth. Whether it’s assessing market share trends, evaluating customer loyalty or optimizing strategies, share-of-wallet insights facilitate more informed decision-making.

Performance benchmarks: By analyzing metrics such as transaction times, success rates, and processing costs against broader datasets, businesses can identify areas for improvement and benchmark their performance against industry standards.

Out-of-store customer behavior Understanding where shoppers are engaging before and after a purchase delivers greater insights into shopper behavior and can inform broader marketing and customer journey strategies. With these insights, merchants can determine the best way to reach their customers and identify adjacent products and services that could become part of their offerings.

In many ways, data powers innovation. Whether it’s real-time cloud sharing to accelerate funding cycles, fueling risk models or augmenting customer and loyalty data with payments behaviors, businesses have more opportunity than ever to unlock value through insight.