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Leaders In Payments
Leaders In Payments
Special Series: The World of Ecommerce: Thriving Online with Chintan Gandhi & Rob Ward, Worldpay | Episode 363
Unlock the secrets of e-commerce success for small businesses in the UK with insights from industry leaders Chintan Gandhi and Rob Ward of Worldpay. Discover how small and medium-sized businesses in the UK can transform their digital strategies by embracing innovative payment solutions. As Director of Strategic Planning and Go-to-Market, Chintan shares his expertise on navigating the UK e-commerce landscape, while Rob Ward, Product Director for eCommerce, provides a roadmap for integrating Worldpay's cutting-edge solutions into any business model. Learn to tackle common merchant challenges and elevate your online presence by implementing actionable strategies and best practices that are essential in today’s digital economy.
Join us as we explore the future trends that will redefine the e-commerce arena for SMBs in the UK. From digital wallets to cryptocurrencies, find out why diversifying your payment options is more crucial than ever. Hear from Chintan and Rob about the transformative role of AI and blockchain in enhancing customer experiences and securing transactions. You'll also get an exclusive peek into Worldpay's product roadmap, highlighting the innovations that promise seamless onboarding and robust support. Worldpay's commitment to empowering small businesses in the UK with tailored solutions is clear, and this episode is your ticket to staying ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world of e-commerce.
Thank you at the heart of great e-commerce experiences globally, whether you are just starting out or upscaling your business, we'll discuss current and future trends in the UK e-commerce landscape and dive into merchant pain points and world pay solutions. Additionally, our experts will touch on actionable strategies and tips to help your business thrive online.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. This is Greg Myers, the host of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Today, we have two very special guests joining the show Chintan Gandhi, director of Strategic Planning and Go-to-Market, and Rob Ward, product Director, ecommerce, both from WorldPay. So welcome to the show and especially this special collaboration between the Leaders in Payments and WorldPay. This is the fifth and final episode in our series on e-commerce for small businesses in the UK. We've had great discussions in previous episodes about merchant pain points, worldpay solutions, the merchant life cycle and how WorldPay supports merchants, so I highly recommend you go back and listen to those previous episodes. In fact, chintan and Rob have been on a few of those, and today we'll be talking about some of the best practices or tips that merchants can use to be successful, as well as the future of e-commerce for small businesses in the UK. So, chintan and Rob, thank you both for joining again today and welcome to the show, hi.
Speaker 3:Greg, great to be here.
Speaker 4:Hi Greg, thanks for having us. It's a pleasure to be here. Absolutely show, Hi Greg. Great to be here. Hi Greg, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to be here, absolutely, so let's go ahead and dive right in Chintan. If you don't mind, we'll start with you. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your professional journey as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah sure, I grew up and completed my schooling in India before moving to the UK to pursue my MBA. Currently, I live in Hertfordshire with my family, just on the outskirts of London. Professionally, I've spent the last 15 years in the payments industry, focusing on payments processing, merchant acquiring and cash issuing. Over the years, I've held various leadership roles where I've driven business strategy, forged partnerships with ISVs and SaaS providers, product management and led on various business development and commercial initiatives. In my current position with WorldPay, I oversee the global market strategy and commercialization of our strategic solutions for the global SMB segment.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, Rob. Same question for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:So I grew up in rural England in a small town where I did my main schooling, left there and went to Nottingham University to study geography.
Speaker 3:So I was a geographer by training. In terms of my professional career, I actually started off in a legal firm when I was doing my conversion course, the law, which I completed. But during that process I joined a merchant business who was involved in e-commerce processing and got involved in managing their relationships with acquirers and payment gateways and looking at all of that new emerging e-commerce stuff that was happening in the economy and starting to really gather some pace and got fascinated by that. And so then I fast forward 12 years on from that and you know I joined Worldpay, been here for just over 10 years now, worked across operations, implementation, pre-sales and across the enterprise and SMB segments here. So I've kind of seen a lot of the different ways that e-commerce is being used in the markets and that's been a really kind of fascinating career so far and I've been very fortunate with the opportunities that I've had offered to me working at Worldpay.
Speaker 2:Okay, great Thanks for sharing that Chintan over to you, and I think most people know who Worldpay is, but if you don't mind, tell our audience a little bit about Worldpay.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Worldpay is a global leader in payments, empowering businesses of all sizes, from small and medium-sized businesses to large global enterprises. We enable them to process payments seamlessly and reliably, whether it's processing payments online or in-store, or via mobile. Worldpay is at the heart of many great commerce experiences we encounter daily. What really distinguishes WorldPay is our ability to meet the unique payment needs of those customers with tailored solutions that we support them with at every stage of their growth. Especially for the small and medium-sized businesses, we offer innovative and user-friendly payment solutions that really are designed to help them thrive. But beyond our technology and solutions, what I feel is that what makes WorldPay exceptional is our global reach and diverse team of experts. Their wide area of perspectives enables us to tackle complex payment challenges and create seamless experiences for everyone.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So, rob, over to you, and we haven't really talked about this. But let's say we're a small business, we just built our website and we know we need a payment provider. But what should we have ready as a small business owner before we engage with a world pay? Like, should I have my shopping cart already built? Should I have my inventory already ready and my pricing Give us an idea of kind of what that merchant should have ready before engaging with world pay?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So it's, you know, obviously, launching kind of any e-commerce business. There's a lot involved with that. There's a lot that you've got to consider and I would certainly recommend that you know first. You start with really kind of clearly mapping out what you're going to be offering in the market from an e-commerce perspective. How are you going to take that to market so that, obviously, payments and the checkout experience is really fundamental to making sure that that's going to work for the particular vertical that you're into. Let me give an example of that. A couple of examples probably would be helpful.
Speaker 3:There is you're thinking about if you're in the retail business, then do you want to be taking any pre-orders for things that you're going to advertise, but maybe you're going to have a kind of release in 30 days? So you're going to want to take a card zero off and then you're going to want to process later. Are you in something where it's a bit more instant in terms of delivery, kind of digital content, so you want to take the payment immediately, make sure that's cleared and then release the goods? So you kind of got to start thinking from from the start there about kind of how you're designing that end-to-end experience and how you're going to take that to go to market. So I'd say that's the first thing you should think about. If you're an smB going online, then once you've got all that sorted there, once you've got that core whether it's the platform off the shelf that you're using, whether it's something more bespoke that you're going to work with a developer to build, depending on your needs that's the way you want to look in the market in terms of who your provider is and certainly from who you want to choose in the market.
Speaker 3:There. You've got to be really careful to look at the detail of what that provider's going to be looking to provide you with in terms of pricing plans, etc. You know, is that pricing plan suitable for you? Does that kind of match what the expectations you should have? So again example there is if you're going to be working in the the kind of more b2b space, the interchange fees on that. So the fees that the Visa, mastercard, cardio, swiss Charge could be a lot higher in that space.
Speaker 3:So it's important that if you're going to have high volume there, then you need to engage with a good provider from a sales perspective to make sure that you get the pricing plan that works for you. Likewise, if you're very much a kind of consumer-driven business, that's a completely different kind of interchange profile. So you've got to be really mindful that you choose a provider who's going to work with you to put together the kind of right solution and make sure that solution is really good. To know somebody who's got real robustness around their technology, you know, around the kind of fraud checking that they're doing.
Speaker 3:We've spoken about it before, about the importance of of making sure those fraud checks are completed correctly, because if you kind of hit thresholds with the card schemes on fraud, you can get blocked from processing cards and that could that could really materially impact your e-commerce business if you can't take these are a master card within within the uk and certainly within kind of europe. So you've got to be really mindful that you're choosing, choosing a really kind of a provider that's going to be there for you and obviously from a support perspective as well, have you got somebody to speak to? You know if you've got all the kind of self-serve content that you need and you've got a really good digital experience, but if you really need some extra support, is there that support for you to engage with? So I'd say kind of that's. That's what I would say is things to consider.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So once a small business becomes a WorldPay customer, what are some best practices or things that small business should think about that will help them get the most out of the WorldPay relationship?
Speaker 3:look through all the features on there. We spend a lot of time designing that, making sure that it's as intuitive as possible, but also putting some really useful tools, particularly around insights and reporting. It's things like your busiest time, operating time, operating day, etc. That can give you some really interesting insights as to when are you getting most of your volume as a business and maybe when you should think about how you could back that up with some advertisements, et cetera around that time to really kind of grab attention of the market.
Speaker 3:So I'd say, definitely kind of engage with the tools that we provide to you. There's lots of knowledge documentation there as well to guide you through how to maximize the potential of what you've got access to. And there's a lot more to it than just accepting card payments. There's a lot more tools that we provide to our merchants to really help them maximize their payments. So I would encourage that. And the second thing is we've got support teams there to support you. So if you do need support, you'd reach out, and there's loads of ways that you can reach out to us. You can chat to us on the web chat, you can raise a ticket, you can give us a call and somebody will pick up the phone and speak to you, so don't kind of sit there and don't reach out to us. If you do need support, reach out to us and our team will get onto it and support you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you talked about a lot of things there, from pricing to technology to support to fraud and security. Are pricing to technology to support to fraud and security? Are there any other sort of best practices or tips that you'd provide to a small business that might be out there listening to the show?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say and this is something that we spoke about in a previous podcast which is around kind of that checkout flow and there's a lot to the payments industry.
Speaker 3:It can be quite complex, but I think it's really important for SMBs to know, with your checkout process, your ability to convert from the cart to the checkout page, the authorization through the fraud checking, et cetera, making sure that your fraud system is rejecting the bad stuff but it's not rejecting the good stuff.
Speaker 3:So those kind of false positives, they can really be material to the business. I speak from experience of working with some of the biggest brands out there and they're obsessing about how they maximize that checkout funnel. And so I think you know, for SMBs thinking about how do I ensure that I've got the best authorization rate I could possibly have, checkout process is really smooth and also that fraud tool is doing the best job that it possibly can. And that's where I say you know, we give the tools for you to do some analytics on that so that you can see where you are. So I'd really say you know, make sure that you don't lose sight of that, because that's money on the table that you've earned hard to get as a business. You've probably spent some marketing money there to get that volume to your website etc. Those things can just help you convert what you've got coming into your website. So I really encourage merchants to take some interest in that.
Speaker 2:Okay, thanks for sharing that. So, chintan, over to you. Let's kind of step back from these details around small businesses and maybe look at the macro environment or the macro trends. What do you see as the future of e-commerce for small businesses in the UK?
Speaker 4:The future of e-commerce for small businesses, I would say, holds tremendous potential when you look at how it's driven by the key macro trends that are redefining how SMBs operate and connect with their customers. First, I would say there is a growing demand for omnichannel experiences. Consumers expect a seamless journey, whether they are shopping online, in-store or through social media. Small businesses, especially, must provide flexibility in how customers browse, purchase and receive their products. Effectively integrating various sales channels will be crucial for maintaining a competitive edge for them. Second, I would say the rise of mobile e-commerce is significant. As more customers shop via smartphones, SMBs that optimize their websites and checkout processes for mobile will capture a larger share of the market. And third, personalized customer experiences are becoming a key differentiator. Small businesses can leverage data and AI-driven tools to create tailored offers, recommendations and loyalty programs for their customers. This gives the ability to cater to their individual preferences, foster stronger customer relationships and really drive that repeat business for their customers. And I think, finally, payment innovation will play a vital role to this.
Speaker 4:Small businesses will need to offer diverse and flexible payment options, from traditional card payments to digital wallets, to buy now, pay later solution options to even cryptocurrencies. At WorldPay, we are committed to helping SMBs stay out of these trends by providing payment solutions that really integrate seamlessly across platforms and meet their customer expectations when it comes to speed and security. The other trend I see that kind of now is really emerging is the sustainability. It's becoming a critical trend, are increasingly eco-conscious, and businesses that prioritize sustainable sourcing packaging delivery practices will really attract more customers while enhancing their own brand image. For the UK SMBs, aligning with this shift presents more of a challenge but equally an opportunity. So, yeah, I think, in summary, the future of e-commerce for UK SMBs hinges on the agility, technology adoption and the responsiveness to evolving consumer needs. Those who embrace these elements will not only survive but thrive in an increasingly digital-first economy.
Speaker 2:Okay, and you mentioned a couple of macro trends, so I want to double-click on those a little bit. Things around AI and I know in the payment space, when you say AI, a lot of people immediately go to fraud, but I think there's a lot more use cases for AI and payments beyond that. You mentioned crypto, which again has a lot of different avenues you can go, and then, of course, blockchain. So there's sort of these broad macro trends. Do you see them starting to affect small businesses? Yes, blockchain. So there's sort of these broad macro trends. Do you see them starting to affect small businesses?
Speaker 4:Yes, definitely. I think we are already seeing how AI, crypto and blockchain are starting to affect small and medium businesses. Ai really to your point earlier. It helps with things like automating customer experience and improving operations, while crypto offers new payment options, especially for cross-border and international transactions, whereas blockchain can really add more to the security and transparency of things around contracts and record-keeping. So I would say, as these things and technologies become more accessible for SMBs, those who jump on board early will definitely have an edge.
Speaker 2:Okay, rob, let's go back over to you. Let's talk about the product roadmap. We've talked about the product a good bit in this series but we haven't really talked about sort of the roadmap. So what can you share with the audience about the future functionality and the products or solutions you're working on for these merchants?
Speaker 3:There's a really exciting roadmap that we have for our e-commerce solution. In terms of kind of the themes of that roadmap. It's really kind of based around three things, which is kind of one looking at the solution that we have today and building out the feature set with that. So, you know, thinking around additional payment methods to introduce that have relevancy for the markets when we offer the solution, and also the ways that you take payments of the kind of new ways of actually not just kind of the payment method itself but the kind of ways that you have those payments and that you're taking them and the way that that can interact with if consumers. So you know, we've got a, we've got some exciting plans around how we're going to expand from that perspective.
Speaker 3:Secondly, the experience itself. So you know, not just the solution set but the way that our new merchants get onboarded. There's a lot of things that we're looking to enhance that to improve the smoothness of that experience and increase the speed of it. And then also, you know, within that it's existing merchants. So we certainly don't take our existing merchants for granted there. We know that we have to work hard to improve their experience. It's a very competitive market and we want to ensure that we give them the right set of tools to manage their payments with us reporting enhancements, et cetera and that sort of thing. So that's something that we're looking at as well.
Speaker 3:And thirdly, the part that we play in the ecosystem. So, in e-commerce, it's a big opportunity for businesses because, effectively, you can launch a business anywhere in the world and you can do business with somebody the complete other side of it. That is an amazing feat if we stop and think about it. But there's a lot of solutions that you need to kind of work together payments and your kind of platform, etc. Kind of your marketing platforms, etc. You've got to have kind of all of that's got to be nicely kind of linking together and working really smooth.
Speaker 3:So, in terms of kind of our role in the ecosystem, expanding the partnerships that we have, expanding the capabilities that we have with those partners and making sure that they remain really good quality, because it's one thing for you to say, hey, I've got a really big marketplace of partners here, but it's the quality around them that's important, because the last thing a business wants is to say, hey, I've got a really big marketplace of partners here, but it's the quality around them. That's important, because the last thing a business wants is to say, yeah, that connection, that kind of plugin, that's really important to my business, and then the quality of that plugin is a really disappointing performance. So that's really important for us to ensure that we play a really good role in that ecosystem and have the right partnerships that are going to help our merchants succeed.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So, chintan, as we wrap up this show and we wrap up the entire five-part series, if you don't mind, would you kind of summarize the series for our listeners?
Speaker 4:Yeah, sure To all our listeners. Firstly, thank you for joining us on this journey through e-commerce landscape for small and medium-sized businesses. Throughout the series, we've explored the key trends and the challenges that SMBs face in today's digital economy, from understanding shifts in consumer behavior to leveraging technology for the growth. We've highlighted the importance of adaptability and innovation in navigating this fast-evolving space. I think the key takeaways that we touched upon WorldPay is committed to supporting SMBs and we provide trade-tailored solutions and services at every stage, right from prospecting to onboarding, to implementation, to ongoing customer support.
Speaker 4:It's also in the way in which we take our solutions to market, position them to assist merchants with that decision-making and adopting the solutions that are right for their business. Our offerings address the needs of SMBs through kind of, whether they are new to e-commerce or looking to modernize their payment solutions. This really ties back to the points around. We're trying and aim to make our solutions with a focus on simplicity, flexibility and scalability. Our approach is designed to empower SMBs throughout their lifecycle with world pain. And yes, as we close this series, I hope our listeners feel inspired and better equipped with the knowledge. And lastly, thank you for tuning in and we're really excited to see how your businesses grow and succeed in the ever-evolving world of e-commerce.
Speaker 2:Okay, rob, anything you'd like to add to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I guess you know just to highlight that.
Speaker 3:You know we're working kind of day in, day out to think about our SMB challenges in the e-commerce space.
Speaker 3:You know we're working with the team here at Wellpay to innovate and to provide solutions to those challenges to help our merchants succeed. And we've got a great team of support people who will help you as a merchant to make sure that you get the most from your relationship with Worldpay. And I think, just to kind of finish up on that, I would say that I think I mentioned at the end of the first episode, which was what a real pleasure it is to be supporting these SMB businesses those who are entrepreneurs, who are using funds that may be lent to them by FAMS or Friendly to get started, those who've got businesses that have been in the family potentially for generations, and it's a real pleasure to be able to support them to be successful. So I'm really excited about looking at our current merchants. We're heading towards peak season, so I'm looking forward to the success they're going to have. And I'm even more excited about the merchants who are going to join us in 2025 and the success that we can help them have in the year ahead.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. Well, chintan, rob, this has been a great series and I thank you both so much for being on the show and being a big part of this entire series, so I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here. Thanks.
Speaker 4:Greg. Thanks, greg, been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:And to all you listeners out there. I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in today to this special series on e-commerce brought to you by WorldPay. To learn more about WorldPay and their e-commerce solutions, please visit wwwworldpaycom. Slash en-gb. Slash worldpay-ecommerce. Thank you.