Visa: Issuer Customer Lifetime Value Hinges on Personalization and Real-Time Experiences

It would be understandable to ascribe certain characteristics to the best-in-class issuers.

The PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa DPS report “The Best-In-Class Modern Card Issuer: Driving Customer Lifetime Value Through Innovation” surveyed 451 executives who weighed in on what separates the best from the rest in the pursuit of high lifetime values of their customers. The usual suspects would be size and digital prowess.

However, as PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster mused, “What we found was that it’s a mindset — a willingness to explore and invest.”

Any issuer who chooses to think differently about their customer base will need to find new ways to strengthen their relationships with cardholders. As Webster noted to

“We all have multiple cards — and so we all see different experiences that force a top-of-wallet decision,” Webster told Neil Mumm, senior vice president and head of Visa DPS.

The drive to create new experiences and invest in the infrastructure and go-to-market strategies is a tough balancing act, Mumm said.

“So much of it all comes down to constrained resources, and everyone has to allocate their resources in the appropriate ways … you can’t chase every shiny object,” Mumm said. “You have to prioritize.”

The Here and Now

Some efforts need to be in the here and now, regardless of the issuer, and regardless of the size of the issuer, Mumm said.

“You need to place your bets somewhere — and place them in personalization, in real-time experiences and in improving fraud performance,” he said.

But beyond those non-negotiables, “an understanding of your customers and the data that they are delivering to you through the interactions that they have … [gives you] an opportunity to deliver something that they’re going to feel is not a ‘sell’ to them,” he said.

Data helps make those real-time interactions personalized.

Monetization of the relationships may not occur at the outset of a relationship but will come over time, Mumm said. Visa DPS, which works with issuers across the spectrum, has seen success come from relatively smaller players such as community banks and FinTechs. Success comes from using data to target outreach and make the customer want to deepen the relationship — offering a new card or credit limit increase at the most opportune moments.

Artificial intelligence has been instrumental in supercharging the collection and analysis of data to deliver results that might have seemed impossible just a year or so ago, he said.

“[Visa has] invested pretty heavily in AI and our data analytics platform right now, and we are pretty excited about some of the things we’re going to be able to roll out there in the months and year ahead,” Mumm said.

In addition, API connectivity helps issuers plug into other providers to speed innovations to market, he said.

Some of Visa’s most recent innovations fall into the invest-for-today and invest-for-tomorrow camps. Mumm said the introduction of the Flexible Credential can and should be used by issuers to improve the lifetime value of customer relationships. Consumers value the ability to shift their spending across debit, credit, and buy now, pay later (BNPL) as the situation warrants, while keeping all of those transactions within the issuer/banks’ brand and ecosystem.

“Flex Credential’s been born out of customer feedback,” he said, adding that the credential simplifies the ways in which a customer interacts with different types of payments.

The Easy Button

Looking ahead, Webster contended that just about everybody wants an “easy button,” where integration is a streamlined technical lift.

“You want to have partners you can work with who can kind of bring many of those pieces together for you … with the idea of building a best-in-class offering,” Mumm said. “And when I think about Visa, and DPS more specifically, that’s exactly what we are striving to do.”

Featurespace is now a part of Visa, ServiceNow partners with the payments network, and through those linkups, Visa can “plug” issuers into better dispute management flows and battle fraudsters, he said.

“These are the tools that can allow you to start having more frequent interactions with your customers,” Mumm said of the best-in-class issuers, and “surprise and delight them … Architecting and re-architecting your product suite takes time, but doing these things along the way ensures you are top of wallet with your customers.”