Category "Payments"

Making Payments Work For Platforms (Instead Of The Other Way Around)

Kurt J. Bilafer - October 25, 2018 - Payments

The payments landscape is changing rapidly. Back in February, I had the opportunity to chat with PYMNTS.com about the state of online payments today, and what business platforms need to be thinking about as the ability to process payments becomes a requirement. Here is the writeup of our conversation:

As of 2017, platform businesses need payments solutions — they are becoming a less optional part of the business. But turning payments isn’t exactly as easy as flipping a switch — and therein lies the rub, according to Kurt Bilafer, CRO at WePay. Platform businesses aren’t at a payments-optional point in their evolution — their merchants and consumer end users more or less demand them. Commerce in the digital age is built around notions of frictionlessness and seamlessness, and being unable to start and finish a full transaction on a single platform is nothing if not a friction-filled experience.

Are you a Platform?

Kurt J. Bilafer - October 25, 2018 - Business Strategy, Payments

What’s the hottest trend in business right now? Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter? Sharing economy apps such as Uber and Airbnb? Apple, and its line of personal computing devices? Or Software as a Service for the enterprise, such as Salesforce?

You could probably make a case for any one of these, but here’s the thing: Although on the surface these companies appear to have completely different business models, they all share one very powerful component: a scalable online platform connecting people and ecosystems.

Evolving from a software company to platform company, partnerships are key

Kurt J. Bilafer - March 22, 2017 - Business Strategy, Payments

Back in 2011, Marc Andreesen penned his now famous essay, “Why Software Is Eating The World,” outlining the coming economic shift in which software companies take over large segments of the economy.

Gartner in 2012 predicted that “The Nexus of Forces”—mobile, social, cloud and information–would give rise to “entirely new possibilities and creative business endeavors.”

Five years in, we’re seeing that take shape with the rise of platform businesses and market places such as Uber, Airbnb and Amazon.

Solving problems with software

Making the Platform Economy Big and Hard to Miss

Kurt J. Bilafer - January 27, 2017 - Business Strategy, Payments

“Why did WePay wrap a train car?”

I’ve been getting that question a lot lately. Actually we wrapped two Caltrain cars that shuttle daily between San Francisco and San Jose. Maybe you’ve seen one of them –they’re big and blue and bearing the logos of WePay and our customers.

This is one element of a campaign to start a conversation about the rapidly emerging platform economy. Business platforms such as eBay, Uber, Etsy, Airbnb –sometimes also called multi-sided marketplaces–are transforming the economy. Many of our customers are part of this movement.

Payments: The last mile of online customer intimacy

Kurt J. Bilafer - January 27, 2017 - Business Strategy, Payments

When it comes to online commerce, the point at which money changes hands has often been the moment a sale falls apart. What was a carefully crafted brand experience becomes off-putting and complicated. There are confusing redirects, forms that clash with the rest of the design, and a lot of sensitive data that needs to be entered.

But that’s now changing, and fast. Innovative companies have stepped up their game, using technologies that make a much easier payment experience possible. That in turn is changing consumer expectations about what a payment transaction should be like. You now need to bring your payments experience up to this new standard, or risk getting beaten by competitors who do.