The global payment market is currently seeing a level of disruption unlike anything the world has seen before. New technologies are introduced at an unprecedented pace and many organisations struggle to move fast enough to exploit new revenue and cost-saving opportunities, which include those related to new payment methods, ongoing industry initiatives and increased customer expectations.

Many organisations find introducing new technology to be a time-consuming and cost-prohibitive process, especially in finely tuned real-time transaction processing environments. Existing payment switch architectures are designed to be secure and are built for high-volume throughput at scale. However, they’re often not designed with innovation and frequent changes in mind.

Stanchion’s VERTO aims to address this problem of accommodating frequent changes in inflexible environments. VERTO is a digital payments integration platform that enables agility in system integration projects, supports innovation and delivers off-the-shelf payment solutions. The primary goal is to simplify and fast-track new payment initiatives.

Stanchion’s comprehensive SwitchCare offering ensures your Payments Switch is managed optimally, complementing your operational team with expert knowledge, skills and best-of-breed tools.

Most payment processing companies have a transaction switching platform at the heart of their operational infrastructures. Irrespective of the technology stack, it is a mission-critical system that requires operational discipline and specialised knowledge to ensure high-quality service is guaranteed over the long term. However, all too often a shortage of the right skills, inadequate tools and an unstructured approach jeopardise an organisation’s ability to meet its own high standards. This impact is frequently not visible immediately, but rather manifests as seemingly one-off incidents impacting on online transaction processing, back office processes, security systems and disaster recovery capabilities. Left unattended though, the problems become more frequent and more severe, until eventually the service degradation has a real and long-lasting effect on customer satisfaction and, ultimately, profitability.

The good news is that the solution to the challenge does not necessarily require the replacement of existing operational teams and processes, but rather the introduction of complementary services and tools. By identifying the specific areas where improvement is needed and filling the gaps with specialised skills and tools, operational risk can be managed effectively and efficiently.

In the current economic climate, organisations increasingly seek to optimise their Payment Operations.

This extends from transaction system environments; to processing metrics; to success/failed transaction rates as well as fraud rates; and optimising value-added services which rely on transaction volumes. Marginal gains over time can lead to significant competitive advantage, operational risk reduction, and bottom-line margin improvements.

In Payments, marginal gains bring outsized returns, and the rise of augmented Payment Operation Centres is a symbiotic driving force where you complement the skills and experience of your in-house teams with a customised skills and capability portfolio that brings external experience and knowledge, with a 24/7 monitoring process, enhanced with specialist automation tools. This augmented Payments Operations Centre is what Stanchion offers in its SwitchCare portfolio.

Effective real-time data analytics enhance operational efficiency and optimise revenue, but for many banks, merchants and processors the sheer volume of data and the speed at which customer behaviours are shifting outpace existing analytics and reporting cycles. Higher data velocity and faster payments have resulted in more rapid data depreciation and a shrinking decision-making window. This underscores the need for continuous feeds of real-time data analytics, as required by machine learning models and predictive algorithms.

Banks, merchants and processors rely on complex and ever-changing applications and IT environments to underpin nearly all aspects of business operations, but many fail to have optimised disaster recovery solutions in place to protect against downtime and data loss, putting their businesses at risk. This underscores the need for application-aware protection for physical and virtual platforms to ensure critical applications are recoverable almost immediately without interruption to the business, their users, and their customers.

Security is part of the critical infrastructure for any payments business, particularly the protection of data, the new oil. Payment data is the most sought-after data base for attackers to commercialise, which means that having the best, most secure solution to safeguard your cryptographic environment is vital. This is why Stanchion offers Futurex’s best-of-breed solutions and offerings range, including Futurex’s HSMs and Enterprise Key Management Servers.

Receive contactless card payments directly on your Android phone or tablet.

• Covid-19 friendly. Customers and Merchants can accept contactless card and mobile wallet payments.
• Turn any merchant’s Android smart phone into a POS terminal.
• Securely accept payments from contactless cards or NFC enabled devices anywhere in the world.
• Support new innovation and payment options e.g. QR codes, Alipay, WeChat etc.
• Empowers merchants to seamlessly integrate payment acceptance with a universe of additional business applications e.g. vouchers, receipts, campaign management, loyalty, analytics etc.

Security requirements, industry mandates and consumer demand for contactless mobile payments continue to fuel the need for Token Life Cycle Management services. Owing to specific market and regulatory factors, many card issuers have not yet embraced the popular mobile wallet providers. However, it is fast becoming a necessity, and Stanchion’s VERTO technology stack is a key enabler for organisations on this digitisation journey.

The speed with which the payments landscape is currently evolving is breathtaking and exciting. Constant innovation in the Payments and Value Added Services (VAS) space, mixed with increased customer demands, digitalisation, regulatory pressures and the use of mobile devices, is creating a rapidly changing and complex trading environment.