Control Your Possibilities with Different PayFac Models
In this the ninth episode of PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments Podcast brought to you by Payrix, Host Bob Butler interviews Jorge Lozano, VP of Underwriting and Lloyd Fernandez, VP of Product at Payrix, about all of the decisions a software company must make when embedding or integrating payments.
Jorge started his payment journey 15 years ago working primarily in the risk and compliance space with several pioneering companies in payments. Lloyd started as an engineer in software over 20 years ago, he thoroughly enjoys building products, from the ground up or scaling an existing product platform. He has worked very closely building out platforms internationally and in the US, including companies like PayPal and Rapid.
Jorge starts by talking about the different stages a software company might be in on their payments adoption journey and how difficult it is to understand and anticipate all the different questions, steps and levers involved with embedded payments. He explains that the acceptance of payments comes with a large array of requirements and obligations just within his discipline of risk and compliance.
Lloyd discusses many of Payrix’s differentiators including the risk and compliance area, reporting and analytics, disbursement of funds and the use of automation in the boarding process. Payrix offers clients world-class embedded payments and payment facilitation solutions that are not only low cost to administer but are revenue generators for customers. Payrix enables both card present and card-not-present payments for merchants, in addition to an API-technology stack that is a comprehensive, flexible system that enables payment experiences to be built upon. Different from competitors in the industry, Lloyd explains that Payrix offers autoboarding merchants, which allows for sleek and quick onboarding experiences, and automated risk decisioning, taking into account industry standard risks and what Payrix deems to be risky to make informed decisions and protect our customers.
Lloyd goes into details about the two platforms Payrix offers the market – Payrix Pro and Payrix Premium. Payrix Pro is the quickest and best way for clients to leverage payment facilitation features and functionality without worrying about licensing, risk, compliance and technology infrastructure. Payrix Premium on the other hand is driven towards software companies that already have a payment facilitator license or those who may decide to become a registered payfac in the future, Payrix is able to use the same infrastructure and service you own going forward. Either model solves for the different stages in a companies’ payment life cycle by providing flexibility and options that can be configured to each customer and each merchant.
According to Jorge, choosing a model depends on where companies are in their payments journey. Some early adopters want to solely integrate payments with a simplified out of the box experience like Payrix Pro, that allows SaaS providers to continue focusing their resources and energy on improving their software offering. Other mid-growth stage software companies that have advanced their software to a desired level and want to maximize revenue are more willing to dabble into payments. Some examples might be desiring to have greater control of the funding flow, dictating the look of their onboarding, wanting greater insight and analytics into their customer processing transactions and possibly starting to play a role in risk and compliance duties, Payrix Pro also allows for this.
Meanwhile, Payrix Premium would be a better fit for more payments-experienced software companies that have already progressed from the previous stages and are interested in playing a direct role in payments and becoming a payment facilitator. Jorge explains that Payrix takes a consultative approach to recommend offerings that mirror where prospects and customers are in their payments journey.
Lloyd mentions that Payrix is a growing company, continuously improving our product and services. He says they’re keenly interested in feedback on how they can make offerings even better for our customers. Payrix offers signup forms, hosted payment pages and a fully white-labeled portal right out of the box for companies that want to get started right away.
Lastly, Jorge explains that regardless of where companies are in their payments journey, it is critical to find a partner aligned with where you are in that process and with your overall strategy that steers you in the right direction based on your own demands.
Payrix is uniquely positioned through its offerings, products and features to empower customers to control as much of the payments lift as they’re comfortable with, which allows them to continue focusing on the innovative aspects that make their company best.
Full Transcript
Welcome to the PayFAQ Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix. As payments and software experts that eat, sleep, and breathe embedded payments, we’re as passionate about you as you are about your customers. Each podcast episode will provide insights about embedded payments designed to help you feel the transformation and growth of your software business. You’ll learn from industry experts, Payrix customers, and leaders on the Payrix team about the latest trends, best practices, and real-world guidance from payments experts to help you take your software platform higher.
Bob Butler:
Hi everyone. Welcome to PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix. I’m your host Bob Butler. And today I’m going to be talking with Jorge Lozano, the VP of Underwriting and Lloyd Fernandez, the VP of Product at Payrix about all of the decisions a software company must make when embedding or integrating payments.
So, hi, Jorge and Lloyd, welcome to the show. Jorge, can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your software and payments experience?
Jorge Lozano:
I started my journey in payments approximately 15 years ago. And I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with several pioneering companies in the payments space. I would say my main area of focus in payments has been primarily in the risk and compliance world, but with the modernization of payments and how we’ve had to adjust and operate to the demands of the market and quote unquote pivoting to the needs of the software innovators, I’ve also gained great experience working and collaborating extensively with folks in a product and engineering folks, as well as those in marketing and in sales.
Bob Butler:
How about you, Lloyd, can you tell me a little bit more about your background?
Lloyd Fernandez:
I started off as an engineer in the software industry more than 20 years ago, and I thoroughly enjoy building products either from the ground up or scaling an existing product platform. My experience involves working very closely with the engineering teams and building payment switches. We did this with open and closed loop networks in the past. At PayPal, from my PayPal days, I worked with building out in-store experiences with a card, obviously that is all mobile now, but, I’ve also been very involved in rebranding some of the PayPal mobile app features. This is a couple of years ago, so I’ve been very fortunate to be part of the payments landscape, not just in the US market, but also on the international stage. My last gig at Rapyd involved building out over a hundred different international payment method types, right from Boleto to Rupee and a whole bunch of new eWallets that we see around today.
Bob Butler:
Jorge, how does a software company even know or anticipate all of the questions that they’re going to have to answer or the levers they’ll have to control when embedding payments?
Jorge Lozano:
When it comes to payments, the cruel reality is that they don’t. It’s nearly impossible to anticipate all the questions, steps or all the levers to pull when embedding payments. And I’ll expand on this. You have the infancy stage entry-level software companies dabbling into payments for the very first time. You also have this mid-level or stage growth software companies who are actively embedded into payments, but still in the discovery phase of how to maximize efficiencies. And then you have these seasoned companies who have already embedded into its payments into their flow. They’ve gained efficiencies. They’ve learned how to maximize revenue. They’ve learned how to differentiate themselves from other competitors. And then you’ve got everybody else in the middle, but what all of these entities in their different stage levels have in common is that unless their payment acquires themselves or their payment processors or payment facilitators, it is nearly impossible to anticipate all of the levers that they’ll have to control.
They’ll take, for instance, my area of discipline in risk and compliance, the acceptance of payments comes with a large array of requirements, all taken place, seemingly in the background, but being an absolute necessity to operate, you have this regulatory requirements and obligations that are enforced by the government. They’re cascaded to their financial institution and downstream to payment processors, and payment companies like ours. You have the card brand compliance forcing you to operate within a set of rules and responsibilities outlined by payment networks. You have sponsor bank mandates. You have ongoing audits and oversight duties. You have internal risk and compliance policy adherence. And by the way, if that wasn’t enough for you to operate, you have responsibilities to monitor and mitigate credit risk and fraud. Not only during the onboarding process, but ongoing. I think this is where payment integrator experts like Payrix come in. We do much of the heavy lifting for those software companies are looking to integrate payments. We help them seek efficiencies and reach optimum profitability, all while operating compliantly. And we do that regardless of where they are in their payment’s adoption journey.
Bob Butler:
You absolutely made it sound like it’s not something super simple. There’s a lot to be taken into consideration and picking the right partner is obviously important.
Jorge Lozano:
That is correct, Bob. And that’s precisely why hitting on all the levers is a difficult thing, but that’s why we’re here.
Bob Butler:
Lloyd, let’s talk a little bit about technology. What does Payrix offer that is unique or different than other players in the market?
Lloyd Fernandez:
Aside from the complexity around payments, Payrix as a technology company. Payrix offers our clients a world-class embedded payments and payment facilitation solution that is not only low-cost to administer, but also revenue generator for clients. We enable both card-present and card-not-present payments for merchants. Like most of the other competitors in the space, our API technology stack is also a very comprehensive and flexible system that enables payment experiences to be built upon it. In the places that we differentiate ourselves, we offer a lot of automation. One of it has to do with auto boarding merchants for a sleek and quick onboarding experience. What Jorge alluded to in terms of risk, we automate risk decisioning that not only takes into account what Payrix thinks as risky, but also triangulates data from third-party and industry standard tools and sources to make the right decisions on behalf of our clients and the last. But not the least is our multiprocessor backend infrastructure. A lot of the payments volume is managed through multiprocessor capabilities. We do it all. We board merchants, we underwrite them, we process their payments. We disperse funds and then provide all of the necessary reporting and analytics. And all of that is a heavy lifting on our technology.
Bob Butler:
So, Lloyd, tell me a little bit about the two product options that Payrix offers.
Lloyd Fernandez:
Payrix offers two models for the product, the Payrix Pro and the Payrix premium. Now the Payrix Pro is the quickest and the best way for clients to leverage payment facilitation, feature and functionality without worrying too much about licensing, risk, compliance, and the technology infrastructure. Payrix Premium on the other hand is if you already have a payment facilitators license, or if you decide to become a registered PayFac® in the future, Payrix can help use the same infrastructure and service that you own going forward. So either model provides the flexibility and the options that can be configured per client, per merchant, and both models benefit from the upgrades to the platform and the technology. So, they solved for the different stages in a company’s payment life cycle.
Bob Butler:
That’s really unique because I’m not sure that there’s anybody else who actually does both the payment facilitation-as-a-service, the Payrix Pro offering, as well as the payment infrastructure-as-a-service product Payrix Premium offering all in-house, definitely unique in the space. So, Jorge back to you, why would a software company pick one product over the other?
Jorge Lozano:
I think they’re choosing of products or features really depends on where they are in their payments journey and quite frankly, where they want to ultimately land. You have the early adopters who want a simplified out of the box type experience, where they can literally plug and play, focus their main resources and energy in continuing to improve and innovate their software offering, which is what they do best. But quite frankly, they just want to integrate simply into payments. Payrix offers that via Payrix Pro. You have the more mature companies who have advanced their software offerings to a higher level, and now they want to maximize on payments and what payments can offer. In this mid-growth stage software companies are willing to dabble more into the complexities of payments, right? For example, they want to have greater control of the funding flow. Perhaps they want to dictate how they want their onboarding experience to look like. They may want greater insight and analytics into their customer’s processing trends. They may even want to start playing a role in risk and compliance duties. Parix Pro also allows for this. And then you have the more payments experienced software companies who have already progressed from the previous stages. And they’re now interested in ready to play a more direct role in the payments world and become payment facilitators or software payment companies. And this is where Payrix Premium come in play. So again, what will, this may have seemed like a long-winded answer there. The products they choose really depends where they are in their journey. You know at Payrix we take a consultative approach to recommend offerings that mirror where these prospects and clients are in their payments journey. And we feel strongly based on feedback from our clients on being able to follow through and support our clients and their needs and deliver on that.
Bob Buter:
So, Lloyd, I’ve got one last question. We often hear that the software companies end customer is demanding a better experience. How much control does the software company actually have using the Payrix solutions?
Lloyd Fernandez:
The software companies can be very innovative and forward-thinking. This precedent demands that the technology platforms of today continue to innovate and provide more flexibility and services. The Payrix platform is actually built ground-up with the latest rest-based APIs and offers all customers, the API advantage to fully manage their data and configuration as flexibly as possible. For companies that want to get started right away, Payrix offers sign up forms, hosted payment pages, and a fully white-label portal experience right out of the box. So, you could get it all built piece by piece, or you could get it all built right out of the box.
Bob Butler:
We’re about at the end of the show, any final thoughts you’d like to leave with the audience?
Lloyd Fernandez:
So, we’re a growing company and we’re continuously improving our products and services. So, we’re keenly interested in feedback and comments, and we will be very happy to talk to anybody who’s interested in sort of in providing this feedback and making our products even better.
Bob Butler:
Thank you. How about you Jorge?
Jorge Lozano:
I would say, look, regardless of where any prospect is in its embedded payment journey, you know, it’s critical to find a partner that aligns with where you are in that process in your overall strategy. And certainly one that steers you in the right direction based on your own demands. Again, based on feedback, Payrix is uniquely positioned through its offerings products and features to empower customers, to control as much of the payments lift as they’re comfortable with and allow them to focus on the innovative aspects that make them best. And I think this is where Payrix differentiate themselves from the others.
Bob Butler:
Jorge and Lloyd. I really appreciate you guys being on the show today.
Here at Payrix, we want to be a trusted resource for software providers who are out there trying to make sense of Embedded Payments. And we want to help you get the education you need to make the business decisions that your customers and key stakeholders will thank you for. This is Bob Butler, and this has been the PayFAQ Embedded Payments podcast brought to you by Payrix.