Meeting end users’ needs requires companies to pay careful attention to how the payment preferences of consumers, vendors and industry partners are changing.
It also requires companies to know what tools and technologies can help them keep pace with these shifts, according to “The Banking-as-a-Service Opportunity Report,” a PYMNTS and i2c Inc. collaboration.
Get the report: The Banking-as-a-Service Opportunity Report
Interest in convenient, fast payment solutions has risen sharply among businesses, following the lead of consumers who have come to expect the same simple, connected payment processes they experience on sites such as Amazon reflected in all their digital activities.
Preparing for Even More Innovation
“Over the last year, we’ve seen the continued rise of digital commerce based on customer adoption of FinTech innovations like cryptocurrency, buy now pay later (BNPL) and digital banking solutions including virtual card issuance, to name a few,” i2c Chief Product Officer Ava Kelly wrote in a PYMNTS eBook released in April.
Read more: Digital Commerce Will Continue its Dominance in 2022
“Considering the pace of innovation and high consumer adoption rates, the payments industry is primed for even more innovation throughout 2022,” Kelly wrote.
The shift to digital channels driven by the changes of the past several years continues to raise the bar on both consumers’ and businesses’ expectations of their financial experiences in the current economy. Winning the checkout war requires companies to take a second look at not only how they are offering payments, but also the role they play within the payment process.
Creating space for payment or financial services to be integrated into one’s own platform through the use of Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) solutions could help businesses better engineer lasting customer loyalty.
Taking Advantage of the BaaS Opportunity
BaaS solutions allow nonfinancial entities to incorporate payment and banking tools into their own platforms, offering exceptional convenience to users and boosting their engagement and loyalty.
Banks and businesses looking to take advantage of the BaaS opportunity can do so readily with the help of technologies such as application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable easier transfer of both data and funds across disparate platforms.
Another factor that promises to drive adoption of BaaS services is consumers’ growing familiarity with open banking experiences, which also use APIs to connect banks, FinTechs and other third-party services. Open banking utilizes APIs to help banks, businesses and key financial players easily access and share bank customer information, creating greater opportunities to develop more personalized products and services and drive forward growth.
Speedy, convenient and personalized banking and payment experiences are becoming nonnegotiable, as consumers developed increasingly digital-first habits during the pandemic.
Banks and BaaS providers can take steps to fulfill this demand by partnering not only with one another, but also with key industry players such as innovative payment processors.
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