Growth in the digital payment space is through seamless digital experience

Outseer leads discussions on what is driving the growth of digital payments and what customers expect from them.

Imagine getting a sudden urge to buy food from a street vendor, but realising that you do not have cash. The vendor then pulls out a point of sale machine where you can easily swipe your card to pay for your goods. This is soon to be the norm for the payment space, “Innovating in the payments category must balance security, convenience, and choice for consumers. Outseer has made investments to safeguard all consumers however they want to shop, and to enable the ecosystem to serve this mission”.  Outseer’s leader in Payments Security, Asia Pacific and Japan, Ramesh Nagarajan, told his audience.

In a roundtable discussion—titled “Driving Digital Payments Growths Through Seamless Digital Experiences” and hosted by Asian Banking & Finance in collaboration with Outseer, an RSA company—Ramesh explained that a plethora of digital payment channels such as mobile apps, platforms, and payment terminals would be prevalent and financial firms should take note.

According to Statista 2.15 billion people participated in e-commerce in Asia back in 2020,  a number that is only bound to grow to 3.13 billion by 2050.

For HSBC’s Abishek Kapoor, senior vice president and regional lead of Global Liquidity and Cash Management, the major industries were already changing their business protocols and their way of working even before the pandemic. Abishek gave disruptive technologies, such as blockchain and tokenisation, as an example.

“In such a crowded market, many consumers are finding it harder and harder to differentiate between financial firms or tell which products and services are actually right for their needs. They may not even be focused on the products or services at all, but rather on who can deliver superior and mind you far superior client experience from within that huge crowd of players,” Abishek said.

Balancing experience and security

After talking about a seamless client experience, a question was put before the table: how do financial firms attain the balance between seamless and secured?

According to Standard Chartered’s executive director and head of Digital Services and Open Banking, Gary Lau, this is the toughest thing to balance.

“It's probably not just payments, but anything on digital is always the toughest to balance the experience side with security, especially for banks,” Gary said.

Gary said this is a constant challenge for financial firms like them. Because one thing they want to avoid doing is limiting what kind of transactions clients can do online. It is how they can protect their customers without the need to introduce additional steps that may well end up being a hassle.

This is when technology comes into play. 

“A few examples would be how we use biometrics, and device binding, which happens seamlessly with the customer. They don't need to remember passwords, but it is secure for them to make that payment,” Gary said.

This is especially vital as according to Outseer, fraud in the digital and mobile channels increased by 68% in the last year, with a 49% increase in rogue mobile apps or apps designed to steal private information from customers.

Building on what Gary said, Ramesh agreed that technology itself could be a key to fighting fraud. As an example, Ramesh said Outseer has been very successful with using its AI and machine learning technology to help its customers protect their clients. In the last year alone Outseer has stopped 95% of fraud with only 5% intervention. He summed up what Gary said in just five words: “ Stop fraud, not customers.”

To watch the recap of the roundtable, please visit this link here.