"We are a last mile payments delivery provider, with ambitions to be the world’s preferred cross-border, multi-currency and low-value payments router."
The Paypers is proud to premier its “Executive Talks” series, an initiative that aims to create a unique décor in which prominent players in the payments industry provide an unprecedented level of insight into their business vision and the inner working of their companies. The first interlocutor who sat down with The Paypers to discuss the challenges inherent to founding and heading a cross-border multi-currency payment processor is Lisa Shields, President & CEO of Canadian payments technology leader, hyperWALLET.
On founding a payments company
hyperWALLET was founded in 2000, based on a business vision which traces the company’s future evolution from the general concept of “PayPal for the cash world”. The initiative came from Ms. Shields’ initial experience within the gambling industry, as a merchant faced with the necessity of accepting card payments. A significant underlying element was the fact that at that particular time, credit cards constituted the one payment method which had the potential to successfully migrate from the old “mail and telephone orders” era to the new, glorified internet era.
However, there were still other significant issues that undermined the seemingly simple act of using a credit card for online payments. Merchants, for one, were required to collect disproportionately large amounts of customer personal information in order to complete a simple transaction. Cash, on the other hand, appeared to hold a great many advantages: it was simple to use, anonymous and recyclable, no registration was required and there were limited chargeback risks involved.
hyperWALLET was thus launched, not primarily as a service dedicated exclusively to the gaming industry, but as a payment service targeted at a great many of the “good things” out there, such as teenagers who did not own credit cards, or those who had misgivings in entering their credit card information online.
However, at the time, the business case for online spending turned out to be a rather weak one. In March 2000, the Internet bubble had burst and hyperWALLET found that online merchants were not in fact a good target group for such services. On the other hand, Canadian credit unions (many of which were facing difficulties servicing customers that had relations with other financial institutions) turned out to be fertile ground for the company’s future business direction.
“How do you send money to your child, who is a student, and has an account at a different bank? At that time, the only way to do this was write a cheque - not wise back then, but even more ludicrous today. So, we could use our technology – consisting of good funds mode, multi-currency capabilities and easy wizards for merchants – to accept cash from one to another. It was really easy for us to turn that into P2P payments. Our first customers were the Canadian credit unions, prompting us to change our business strategy – ie, stop trying to build a consumer brand, and start building a payments service that could strengthen existing brands.” (Lisa Shields)
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