In an over saturated industry, only a few payment service providers are able stand out. GlobalCollect is one of those firms.
While providing industry leading payment solutions, GlobalCollect also provides complementing high end business solutions.
We were fortunate enough to interview GlobalCollect’s Head of Professional Services Nick Tubb to discuss the firm’s current solutions, GlobalCollect’s new BI solution Elevate, and his thoughts on the industry in general.
Payment Magnates (PM): Could you please tell us about GlobalCollect? How it got started and your place in the industry?
Nick Tubb (NT): GlobalCollect started in 1994 as a division of TNT in order to add value to its distribution services by enabling international publishers to invoice worldwide as well as to accept payments in local currencies. As a result, GlobalCollect managed to establish a unique worldwide financial network, which enabled customers to outsource their entire collection and reconciliation process.
In the intervening period GlobalCollect has had to adapt rapidly with the explosion i global Ecommerce and has spearheaded entry into emerging markets such as South America and Asia.
Today, GlobalCollect is one of the world’s leading cross-border Ecommerce payment processing and knowledge service providers. In addition to gateway and full service processing, GlobalCollect leverages its flow volumes, its expertise and its local presence on five continents to provide a host of payment knowledge services, including Business Intelligence, Managed Fraud Services and payment consulting services to global, tier-one Ecommerce companies.
PM: GlobalCollect recently launched a new BI service called Elevate. Could you expand on the service and what it offers?
NT: With Elevate, GlobalCollect is pioneering the application of Business Intelligence and Big Data to the world of online payments. Elevate enables merchants to extract actionable insights from large volumes of raw, unstructured payment data. These insights help optimize the conversion process, drive additional revenue, reduce cost and support strategic decision making.
We created Elevate based on input from our Customer Advisory Board, in response to their specific business questions. And we developed and tested it in close cooperation with leading international merchants.
Elevate visualizes all of a merchant’s payment data into a wide range of interactive dashboards organized around 5 themes: Performance, Authorization Rate, Chargebacks Insights, Commercial Insights and Payment Funnel. Using these dashboards, merchants can quickly identify and act on problems and opportunities in the payment and fraud management process. And because it’s browser-based, Elevate requires no installation and is accessible any time, any place, and from any internet-connected device.
We launched at the end of March and we’re seeing merchants realize some fantastic results with Elevate. We’re already actively working with our clients to add additional functionality based on their experiences.
PM: What are the supported currencies and payment methods that GlobalCollect currently accepts?
NT: We enable our clients to efficiently and securely accept payments from more than 170 countries, and in more than 150 currencies. We offer in excess of 150 local payment methods, including all major credit cards, debit cards and alternative payment methods. We really give unparalleled coverage throughout all global regions.
PM: Do you see GlobalCollect accepting digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, in the future?
NT: As a PSP, we are positioned at the center of the global online payments ecosystem, connecting consumers, banks and card schemes with acquiring banks and tier-one, international online merchants. In this position, we’re ideally placed to identify, track and drive emerging trends in online payments. The emergence of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies as payment methods for online transactions is certainly one such trend, and we closely monitor developments in this area. We continually review our position on Bitcoin with the objective of providing our customers with the best advice for their businesses, but right now we see acceptance of Bitcoin by GlobalCollect as incompatible with our own financial risk governance.
PM: What are your thoughts on Bitcoin and its variants? Do you see them having a prominent and long lasting place in the Ecommerce space?
NT: We don’t currently advise our customers to accept Bitcoin. From what we see in the global online marketplace, the benefits of doing so don’t outweigh the risks for merchants at this point in time. We believe that there are many growth drivers that merchants could consider first, that add more and immediate value to their business. These include international expansion, adding additional (local) payment methods, optimizing payment processes and conversions through Business Intelligence and lowering exposure to fraud and chargebacks.
PM: Risk and Fraud is an inevitably associated part accepting payment online. What fraud and risk prevention services does GlobalCollect offer its merchants and PSPs?
NT: Fraud is a fact of life for merchants, especially those with significant cross-border business, because international payments experience much higher fraud attacks than domestic ones.
Through Managed Fraud Services, we help merchants unlock revenue opportunities within their existing fraud environment without exposing them to unnecessary risk. Our Managed Fraud Services are highly integrated in the overall GlobalCollect service offering, which creates an efficient, end-to-end service, focused on three objectives:
1. We maximize the number of approved transactions,
2. We minimize the cost of chargebacks, and
3. We reduce the operational cost of running a fraud department.
Our Managed Fraud Services are custom-built for the client’s environment. Through a simple monthly subscription, merchants get access to a dedicated fraud manager, industry-leading tooling and technology, and the key Business Intelligence insights that are essential to identify and analyze the opportunities and threats within their fraud environment.
PM: For new merchants who have yet to choose a payment solution, or are looking for other options, what advice would you give them for picking the right one for them?
NT: The key is for merchants to choose a partner with the scalable range of services that can accommodate their most ambitious growth plans for the next five years. Cross-border Ecommerce is expanding most rapidly in emerging economies, and more rapidly in many cases than offline trade in those economies, which means that knowledge of how those business markets operate in both channels is essential. Of course in today’s competitive and fast-moving Ecommerce market it is also important to choose a partner who can provide you with access to the right data and insight to allow you to make quick business decisions.
PM: What differentiates GlobalCollect from other payment processing services available?
NT: These days, many PSP’s offer global coverage and an extensive portfolio of local payment methods. However in most cases, they can only offer basic gateway connections, and the merchant still needs to deal with each individual payment partner themselves. Where we differentiate ourselves is in the fact that we not only offer an unrivalled portfolio of payment methods, we can actually offer them in a full service model, meaning a single commercial and technical interface which removes all of the complexity for our clients.
On top of these payment processing services, we offer value-added payment knowledge services. We have offices and local expertise in every major Ecommerce market, from Europe and the US to China, Brazil, Japan, Australia, Singapore and Argentina. And we have deep industry knowledge, with Global Market Directors for key verticals such as gaming, travel and retail, as well as experts in specialized fields such as FX optimization and fraud management. Combine this with an innovative Business Intelligence platform like Elevate, and you get a very strong consultancy proposition that enhances our processing services and sets us apart in the market.
PM: Entering new markets seems like a daunting and near impossible feat. What advice would you give a merchant looking to expand into a new market?
NT: There are many factors that contribute to success, and of course logistical variables differ greatly between those companies delivering a physical good and those not. When we work with a client on new market entry, we follow a three-step approach.
First, we engage local and regional resources, as well as the macro-data we see on Elevate, to identify the most appropriate payment methods and preferences for the target demographic. Next, we identify the critical success factors in the new market, such as regulatory environment, acquiring bank practices and functional imperatives. Finally, our Foreign Exchange consultants define the optimal FX and repatriation solution for our merchants.
PM: To finish off, is there any you would like to add for our readership?
NT: I think it is no secret that simple payment processing is becoming more commoditized, and that as the Ecommerce market matures we are seeing expertise move from supplier side to client side. This makes it even more important for companies like GlobalCollect to continually add value around our transactional services to ensure that we remain strategic partners for whatever tomorrow’s world makes possible for our merchants. We believe that providing access to expertise and insight on payment data in order to optimize performance will reinforce our position in this respect.
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