Worldpay to Provide Food Retailer Kroger With Payment Processing Services

Worldpay will power payment processing for the in-store, online and mobile transactions of Kroger, the food retailer that serves 11 million customers a day under a variety of banner names.

The payments technology company signed an exclusive agreement to provide Kroger with these comprehensive payment processing services, it said in a Monday (Oct. 20) press release emailed to PYMNTS.

Worldpay will provide the retailer with its full suite of payment solutions, according to the release.

“As payments methods continue to evolve, we look forward to helping Kroger keep at the leading edge of commerce innovation,” Jason Pavona, general manager, North America at Worldpay, said in the release. “Time and time again, industry leaders like Kroger continue to choose Worldpay as their preferred payments provider because of our collaborative approach and deep expertise in optimizing the payments experience.”

Worldpay processes over 50 billion transactions a year across 174 countries and 135 currencies, per the release.

The PYMNTS Intelligence and Worldpay collaboration “Big Three: How Choice, Confidence and Convenience Drive Payments Optimization” found that payments optimization is a battleground for businesses aiming to maintain a competitive edge in the evolving digital landscape.

Choice, confidence and convenience represent the core prerequisites for any successful payments optimization initiative and are pivotal for maximizing revenue and enhancing customer engagement, according to the report.

These three elements encompass choice in payment methods, secure environments, and speed and convenience of transactions and refunds, the report said.

Together, they influence shoppers’ decisions on where to spend their money, per the report.

Payment processors are pivoting from pure infrastructure providers to strategic enablers, and the new frontier is customer-centric value-added-services, John Winstel, vice president of product management at Worldpay, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in April.

These include consumer optimization, cost optimization, conversion optimization and risk optimization, Winstel said. As merchants demand more value from their payments partners, processors are responding with advanced analytics, fraud tools and seamless user experiences.

“Some of these types of solutions were offered by the card schemes in the past,” Winstel said. “But we also see ourselves as being a distribution partner for some of those products.”