Making Lifetime Value the Daily Metric for Modern Payments

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The future of payments is not being built on shiny apps or clever interfaces.

Instead, it is being built on reliability, scale and data. It is also being measured by how those building blocks are used to design products that deepen trust and expand customer lifetime value.

That was the theme of a conversation between PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster, Current Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Trevor Marshall, and Visa DPS Vice President of Product Innovation Judy Jensen.

Marshall and Jensen told Webster that the defining advantage for payments platforms is whether they can deliver flawlessly on everyday interactions while using that stability to innovate. Loyalty is won or lost in the smallest moments. Customer lifetime value can’t just be treated as a quarterly outcome.

“Zero mistakes can’t be a long-term aspiration,” Marshall said. “It has to be a daily metric.”

Marshall was not talking about the big failures that make news. He was talking about the experiences that decide whether customers stay or leave.

A paycheck that posts on time. A card that works at the gas pump. A fraud attempt that is blocked without adding friction. A dispute that is resolved quickly and with clarity. These are the moments that matter. Expectations are unforgiving.

“Customers increasingly expect those things to happen instantly, invisibly and with zero tolerance for mistakes,” Webster said.

Reliability as the Foundation of Innovation

Reliability is not only a technical goal; it is the foundation for product innovation, Jensen said. If the plumbing breaks, nothing else matters.

Visa DPS is building for “operational excellence at scale,” making it possible for issuers and FinTechs to innovate without fear of losing customer trust, she said. Stand-in processing, near real-time risk thresholds and redundant systems keep money moving even when parts of the network falter.

“If we go down, somebody can’t pay for their gas on the way to work,” she said. “That’s why five nines of reliability matter. That’s why [Visa DPS] invest[s] heavily in infrastructure. Clients depend on us to move fast on new use cases, but it only works if the system underneath is dependable.”

The paradox of payments innovation is that the most critical products are invisible when they work well. Customers do not cheer when a card is authorized or a deposit clears. They only notice when it fails. Reliability is not table stakes; it is the competitive edge on which everything else depends, Jensen and Marshall said.

Turning Infrastructure Into Growth

That foundation allowed Current to rethink banking for what Marshall called “progress seekers,” or customers who are employed and ambitious but do not fit neatly into traditional banking models.

“Our customers aren’t holding high balances,” he said. “They’re moving money through the system, not letting it sit.”

To serve them, Current builds products that solve real problems, including offering banking, liquidity and credit products, such as spending accounts featuring paychecks delivered up to two days faster, fee-free overdraft, a secured charge card and paycheck advances to qualified customers.

None of this would have been possible without modern processing standards. By adopting ISO 20022, Current can attach more context to each transaction. That makes risk models sharper and customer experiences smoother.

“Infrastructure dictated the speed of innovation,” Marshall said. “When the platform got stronger, our product cycle got faster.”

Productizing Friction Points

Marshall and Jensen said even negative interactions can reinforce trust if they are handled with speed and transparency.

“Our biggest interface with customers is card payment flows, and it should just work,” Marshall said.

Risk detection is another case where transparency and speed matter. By deploying advanced account takeover detection, Current saw a dramatic decrease in losses in a single month. What used to be a source of customer frustration became a proof point that the platform can be trusted.

This is why reliability and innovation cannot be separated, Jensen said.

“Every second matters when someone is trying to buy groceries or gas,” she said. “When you process trillions of transactions, the responsibility is enormous. When you get it right, you create customer confidence that translates into lifetime value.”

Data as the Multiplier

If reliability is the foundation, data is the multiplier. Richer transaction detail enables more precise risk models, predictive services and tailored products.

“Understanding the customer is the most important thing when you’re looking at how to drive your business and build something that will last,” Marshall said.

Jensen added that issuers who track performance and profitability daily outperform those who wait for quarterly reports.

“The data does more than automate processes or set risk thresholds,” she said. “It gives insight into what products customers will value and use.”

Data turns payments from a commodity into a driver of loyalty. When platforms use insights to anticipate needs and prevent friction before customers notice, they shift from service providers to trusted partners. That is the essence of lifetime value.

Lifetime Value as the North Star

Marshall and Jensen agreed that modern payments platforms must treat customer lifetime value as the organizing principle. Every decision, from system architecture to fraud prevention to product design, should be measured against its ability to strengthen CLTV.

Firms that embrace this will not only move money faster; they will build deeper, more durable relationships.

“Every day, every transaction, every interaction feeds into lifetime value,” Marshall said.

Jensen added that the firms that succeed are those with a culture “willing to partner, willing to fail and willing to invest in the future.”

The modern payments platform is no longer just about processing transactions. It is about embedding reliability, data and product innovation into every touch point with the customer. Those who treat CLTV as their North Star will define the next era of payments.

PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster is one of the world’s leading experts in payments innovation and the digital economy, advising multinational companies and sitting on boards of emerging AI, HealthTech and real-time payments firms. In 2009, she founded PYMNTS.com, a top media platform covering innovation in payments, commerce and the digital economy. Webster is also the author of the NEXT newsletter and a co-founder of Market Platform Dynamics, specializing in driving and monetizing innovation across industries.

Judy Jensen is the vice president of Product Innovation at Visa DPS, which provides payment processing, risk management and customer engagement solutions, and handles over 40 billion transactions yearly.

Trevor Marshall is the chief technology officer and co-founder of Current, a FinTech that focuses on building integrated solutions to solve needs that stand between U.S. consumers and their financial goals.