Payments As a Service Tracker™ MARCH 2018
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Payments as a Service Tracker™ MARCH 2018 Flour, Butter, Mobile: Payments Tech As A Key Bakery Ingredient Tanya Li on Flour Bakery + Cafe’s The Co-op launches in-aisle Check out the top providers in loyalty and payments approach grocery payment app the PaaS space – Page 6 (Feature Story) – Page 10 (News and Trends) – Page 16 (Scorecard) Table of Contents PAGE What’s Inside The latest developments in payments platforms, including Google and 03 Amazon’s moves in the space PAGE Feature Story Tanya Li, assistant director of operations for Flour Bakery + Cafe, on choosing 06 the right partners to provide customers with friendly and fast payments PAGE News and Trends 10 The latest headlines from around the PaaS world PAGE Methodology | Top Ten Providers Best of the bunch 14 Who’s on top and how they got there PAGE Scorecard The results are in 16 See the top PaaS providers PAGE About 77 Information on PYMNTS.com Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 2 What’s Inside he payments space is seeing new competition as other interested parties with an Amazon financial Ttech giants look to enter and claim some of the product similar to a checking account. action. These tech giants aren’t alone in their bids to Google has been working to push its Google increase their involvements in payments, however. Pay payments solution and expand uptake. In a Recent headlines track a number of players looking recent PYMNTS interview, Pali Bhat, Google’s vice to expand their roles in the space. president of project management for payments, explained that expanding its use rests on the ability Around the Payments as a Service world to quickly onboard customers by giving them the Russian telecom giant MegaFon is one player option to sign up using any pre-existing Google seeking to move into payments. The company has account. The company is also working to expand partnered with Mastercard to enable subscribers the offering to more merchants and to boost it with to purchase goods through their mobile phones. a new app. With this functionality, customers link their mobile Meanwhile, Amazon could reportedly carve a accounts to Apple Pay or Samsung Pay via virtual chunk out of credit card issuers, intermediaries and Mastercard cards. payment networks’ business. The eCommerce giant Meanwhile, a U.K.-based grocery retailer is also is in early discussions with financial institutions (FIs) helping customers pay by phone. The Co-op to provide unbanked customers, millennials and launched a mobile purchasing app for grocery Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 3 What’s Inside shoppers after noticing a decline in in-store cash staff from answering phone orders and enable transactions. The solution enables them to scan quicker — and thus more — customer ordering. goods and complete their checkout from anywhere in the store. In this month’s PaaS Tracker feature story (p. 6), Tanya Li, Flour’s assistant director of operations, Across the ocean, Memphis-based utilities company explains the seven-store business’ approach to Memphis Light, Gas and Water is offering residents selecting the right point of sale (POS) software — a new PrePay flexible pay-as-you-go account service and how the company rolled out a successful mobile to help them better control their utility expenses. order-ahead app and digital loyalty program. Customers preload money into a refillable account from which charges are deducted based on usage. “The online ordering has allowed us to help more The solution allows residents to pay in smaller people during lunch, to take on more orders, where installments instead of receiving a large utility bill at before we were pretty thoroughly limited by being the end of the month. only able to take phone orders,” Li said. Cafe sweetens the payments experience PaaS March Tracker updates Mobile order-ahead, digital loyalty programs and The March edition of the Payments as a Service other mobile-friendly payment approaches aren’t Tracker profiles more than 115 providers and their just for café super giants like Starbucks and Dunkin’ contributions to the ever-growing payments market. — smaller operations have embraced digital tools, This issue features four new additions: Datatrans, too. Mobile ordering even became a necessity for Instabill, ONPEX and Payment Bills Service. Flour Bakery + Cafe, allowing the company to free Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 4 What’s Inside Number of large utility sector billers onboarded 68 on the Reserve Bank of India’s one-stop Bharat Bill Payment System Percentage of U.K. diners who said 36% waiting for the bill was the worst part about dining in a restaurant Share of worldwide smartphone FIVE 1/3 users predicted to use mobile FAST FACTS POS payments during 2018 PLATFORM SECURITY Percentage of Chinese tourists 93% who said they would use mobile payments abroad if given the option Portion of consumers who would abandon a 39% transaction rather than try another card if their chosen payment method was declined Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 5 Flour, Butter, Mobile: Payments Tech As A Key Bakery Ingredient Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 6 FEATURE STORY “We wanted the app to be friendly, and easy to use, [and] in line with our branding.” - Tanya Li, assistant director of operations for Flour Bakery + Cafe Today, the average passerby on the street is likely the software that could best support both its to be holding a mobile phone, a coffee cup or both. business model and its vision. Cafés are taking note of how consumers For Flour, the “right solution” has changed over increasingly live on mobile devices, and are turning time. The company made a switch in how it handled to mobile ordering, payments and digital loyalty its payments in the summer of 2016, abandoning programs to keep up with their online-savvy the restaurant POS software it had used for several customers’ demands. Though big-name coffee and years and choosing an offering from a different bakery giants like Starbucks and Dunkin’ have swept provider. It had reached a point where it needed to headlines with their latest digital efforts, smaller streamline its payment processes, Li explained, and cafés are far from being left behind when it comes that new software included features the company to adopting technology and embracing digital hoped would help achieve this: enabling customers methods. to write their signatures on-screen, allowing staff to print real-time tickets for orders and accepting PYMNTS recently spoke with Tanya Li, assistant online orders, among others. director of operations for Boston area-based Flour Bakery + Cafe, to get the scoop on how the seven- Given the bakery’s sizeable array of offerings, it store operation is evolving its payments and loyalty was also important that any POS software be able program to stay competitive. to store Flour’s menu in the cloud and update that menu on demand. Picking a payment system “A big thing for us is our menu is very large,” Li For this smaller-sized bakery chain, brewing up the said. “We needed a POS system that would be right payments solution meant carefully choosing robust enough to handle the very large menu and the amount of orders that come through.” Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 7 Feature Story UNDER THE HOOD Another benefit of the software was the ability to offer digital gift cards, which become very popular around the holidays, she added. How did Flour design its loyalty and rewards program? The online ordering has allowed us to help more people during lunch. “There are two simultaneous ways to earn rewards. There’s a visit-based one [with] tiered reward levels — you reach a different tier based on the number of visits, and then An appetite for apps at each level there are rewards. The second one is spend-based rewards. For every $100 Flour launched with one storefront in 2000 and has you spend, you get a certain amount of since grown to seven. By 2017, it was receiving Flour Dough, which is the credit we offer a flood of phone orders so large that it released our app users. an app with digital ordering features to help manage demand. The app gave guests a quicker We wanted there to be more than one digital ordering option, allowed them to use saved way for guests to be able to earn rewards. payment information and freed staff from taking The end goal is to get more guests in as phone orders. repeat customers, [so we gave them] two incentives to come back in. I see a lot of “We’ve definitely been able to take on more lunch people using their Flour Dough credit that orders that way,” Li said. “The online ordering has they’re earning. That’s definitely working as allowed us to help more people during lunch, to an incentive.” take on more orders, where before we were pretty thoroughly limited by being only able to take phone — Tanya Li, orders.” assistant director of operations for Flour Bakery + Cafe Breakfast and lunch are hot times for a café, and Flour is no exception. On average, its slowest venue takes in approximately $5,000 per day, and it’s busiest sees $20,000. The latter handles more than 100 orders daily, and the app user base has hit 8,400 and growing. While the popularity of order-ahead has meant reworking staff flow, it hasn’t yet required changes Payments as a Service Tracker™ © 2018 PYMNTS.com All Rights Reserved March 2018 | 8 Feature Story to store layout.