Payments Integration Without The Friction

Which thing on this list is the hardest to do?

Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

Running the Boston Marathon in two hours

Beating Korean Grandmaster Lee Sedol at Go

Integrating payments into the point of sale

If you ask developers these days, they’d probably pick payments, since not only is it getting more complicated — thanks to the number of payments options and channels they need to integrate — but getting it wrong can cost them a customer relationship.

But Vantiv Chief Strategy and Product Officer Daniela Mielke says it really doesn’t have to be that way, particularly since developers ultimately see payments as a utility that they want to be able to quickly grab and integrate into their environment and be done with it.

“Innovators and developers today want to have easy and fast integrations, and they don’t want to become payments experts,” Mielke explained.

Now, Mielke is the first to admit that enabling an ever-growing number of payments may never be simple, but it can get a whole lot easier. That was, she says, the inspiration for the pilot launch of Vantiv’s new developer platform, DevHub. This one-stop platform is intended to improve the developer experience by making it easier for developers to integrate payments functionality by accessing modernized APIs and a new environment for testing, prototyping and certification.

“What we are really doing is acknowledging that the developer is one of our key stakeholders and really creating a valuable experience for that stakeholder segment,” Mielke said.

Mielke added that the platform is hoping to extend Vantiv’s reach into new developer segments that have not really been addressed in the past.

Being different, she acknowledges, is critical, particularly given the growing number of developer platforms all competing for the same developer. Offering an exceptional experience is key, while also ensuring that the capabilities are there to back it up.

“Everyone can create that experience, but you need to have something more,” Mielke emphasized. “That’s what we are doing over time, really bringing our online, then omnichannel capabilities and value-added services behind that experience.”

While DevHub will naturally serve as a platform where Vantiv can offer its own products, services and capabilities, Mielke confirmed that the company’s focus on openness will also mean easier and tighter integrations with third-party services as well.

“DevHub is not like the Apple App Store, where you can find 500 different to-do list apps but none of them are integrated. What we are going to do is really curate what business and marketing services we will expose through the platform and ensure they are really integrated with our solutions,” she said.

Miekle also believes that this curation, wrapped around a heavy layer of payments insights garnered by Vantiv, will make DevHub more than just an “apps store.” DevHub is designed to help developers not only integrate payments into what they might be doing but the services around payments that will add value to the consumer and business interaction.

Vantiv’s DevHub will serve as the single place where those platforms will reside over time, including Element and Mercury, both of which operate developer platforms geared towards offline POS developers,

“DevHub is extending that concept of an open platform to other developer segments. It’s a natural extension of who we are already. We are recognizing that there are very different developer segments with very different needs out there, and we are catering to those needs,” Mielke stated.

For now, the DevHub environment is offering online or eCommerce capabilities in its beta pilot; later this year, there are plans to incorporate the omnichannel capabilities as well. Future enhancements of the DevHub are also said to include certification and onboarding automation and the inclusion of value-added services related to fraud, communities and support.

For more on software development trends, download the March edition of the PYMNTS.com Developer TrackerTM, powered by Vantiv, a monthly view into the breadth and depth of eCommerce and commerce-related software developers.