Using payments data to simplify complexity

Most payments ecosystems are incredibly complex,
and as such, produce huge volumes of data.
But how can businesses use this data to facilitate
better business decisions, provide a great customer experience
and keep downtime and outages to an absolute minimum?

It is all rather simple, right? Capture the data, take a look at it, draw conclusions and respond to the derived insights! And yet, for any IT professional working closely with business managers, the sheer volume of data being created combined with the number of sources involved is only highlighting how complex today’s IT environment has become. It’s hybrid, it is clouds and it is more proficient end users who have options. It is a landscape that sees the horizons shrinking to where the value of insights can oftentimes be short lived.

For financial services their payments platforms are no less complex than other major solutions and yet, they represent the frontline of business and client interaction. Any consumer looking to use a plastic card for cash at an ATM or to simply complete a transaction at a POS, they want to be sure nothing interrupts the successful completion of their transaction. However, it is not just about consumers as it is just as important to keep merchants on side even as you can provide them with additional insights into how to enhance their customer’s experience with the merchant. Looking at both the merchant and consumer experiences brings with it an escalation in the amount of data being captured. There is simply no letup in the data that is being created and captured by today’s payments platforms.

For the NonStop community where the presence of NonStop systems has become a staple go-to system in support of payments platforms, there has been the added element of an ever growing complexity as tasks ancillary to the processing of a payments transaction have moved off-platform to be picked up by services available today from cloud services providers. Where there are for all practical purposes no limits to the amount of captured data that can be stored, clouds have become the norm and in so doing, expanded the complexity that IT professionals are having to embrace.

This is the focus of the latest post by Jason Krebs, Using payments data to simplify complexity. While the payments ecosystems are indeed complex and the volume of data being created unimaginably large, the need to drive better business outcomes couldn’t be more important to business than it is today. Without insights into what end users are prioritizing as important to themselves, sizable opportunities can be missed. Improving the customer experience remains paramount within the competitive landscape of payments and the best way to derive the insights that are meaningful is where IR Transact simplifies the complexity with easy-to-use tools customizable to the needs of all financial institutions.

According to Krebs:

“Analytics deliver real-time intelligence and actionable insights that no business can afford to be without. With transaction volumes increasing, new payment methods rapidly emerging and layer upon layer of added complexity in today’s payments systems, businesses need to keep up with changing market demands.”

As to why IR Transact delivers actionable insights through the real-time intelligence it provides, it’s important to recognize that:

“Insights are crucial to help find ways to provide better service and a deeper understanding of customers. For example, insights can uncover reasons why a customer is facing a negative experience at the point of payment, such as declines, slow response times or transaction timeouts.

“Insights allow you to look at all payments data across your entire network, and to be able to drill down and accurately pinpoint where, when and why it’s happening.

“Acquirers and processors can empower their customers by providing merchants with secure access to their own payments data, where they can analyze it in a way that’s relevant to them. This is a powerful and proven way to acquire and retain merchants.”

Capture the data, take a look at it, draw conclusions and respond to the derived insights! This is what IR Transact is responding to and where it aids in the simplification of complexity. There is no changing the trajectory of technology nor is there any indication that a simple solution to the needs of those financial institutions processing transactions will appear. As more and more intelligence is pushed out from the core and the cloud to the very edge of business, the complexity is bound to increase.

With IR Transact, this potential is already being addressed; payments data is being analyzed and insights being provided. Better business decisions are being made. There is greater customer experience at hand and knowing this, the time is right to look deeper into the full capabilities on hand today with IR Transact. And if you haven’t as yet read this latest post from Jason Krebs or have difficulty with the hyperlink provided, then simply copy and paste this url into your favorite browser –

https://www.ir.com/blog/payments/using-payments-data-to-simplify-complexity

Should you have any questions or would like to learn more about simplifying the complexity arising from processing payments data 24 x 7, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your IR sales team. We look forward to addressing any aspect of the Prognosis Platform that may be of interest to you and your enterprise.

Kevin Johnson,
VP Sales – Payments Performance Monitoring
www.ir.com