Doug Fieldhouse, Vesta Corporation: "Vesta: the biggest untold story in payments today"

Could you give our readers some background on Vesta, its roots and how it has transitioned to the company it is today?

Long before the ubiquity of cell phones, Vesta established its business by capitalising on the prepaid long-distance phone card industry. Unlike many prepaid card providers in the 1990s, we targeted upscale brands with loyalty programs and paired rewards points (or frequent flier miles) with the purchase of phone time on what was then a new offering – the rechargeable prepaid card. Vesta’s unique top-up service offered consumers the ability to conveniently and securely add calling time by simply dialing 1-800 PREPAID without having to go to a store.

But, as transaction volumes grew and Vesta became one of the leaders in prepaid top-up, so too did the influx of fraud in our call center and IVR channels. Vesta developed a patented solution to eliminate fraud in virtual channels that quickly drew attention from some of its key telecom partners. As demand increased, the company began to pivot from a consumer-facing brand to become a white-label solution for managing payments and eliminating fraud across multiple channels for leading carriers, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Vodafone, O2, Sprint, and China Telecom, among many others.

This shift came at a time when expansion of the internet and mobile telephony became some of the biggest drivers of change in terms of social behaviors, retailing, payments, and compliance standards. The rapidly shifting payments landscape required Vesta to innovate and continuously develop new solutions for payments, risk and fraud prevention, channel development and management, and the optimisation of the user experience on a global basis. Over time, this led to the development of a series of customised “black box” payments solutions used by carriers around the globe.

We have recently expanded our market focus beyond our telecom roots and are leveraging our expertise to meet a number of specific market needs. Vesta is now offering three distinct solution sets: vGuaranteed™ Payments for online merchants of digital goods; vAdvanced™ Payments for larger multi-channel merchants who may need a range of customised options; and vUnified™ Payments, the first true omni-channel payments solution that delivers a single, 360-degree view of the consumer across all channels, including retail POS.

How is Vesta positioned in the payment ecosystem and what kind of expertise does Vesta bring to telcos and enterprise merchants?

Vesta stands apart from other payment solution providers because it is the most vertically integrated solution available today. These days, many of the issue-specific solutions within the ecosystem have been commoditised – things like fraud or chargebacks or processing - and no one is providing a one-stop alternative that spans all of the critical elements of an integrated payments solution. Vesta has been able to leverage its track record of innovation and experience with some of the world’s largest and most demanding brands to develop a multi-dimensional solution that solves all the key challenges: the elimination of fraud through complete indemnification, increasing acceptance and conversion, PCI compliance and remediation, tokenization, payment processing, cross-channel authentication and the ability to build, host, manage and optimise both the channel and consumer behavior across all channels – IVR, mobile, web, live agents, text-to-pay and retail POS.

This offers enterprise merchants a number of advantages, starting with the ability to lower operational costs through centralised management of payments. We offer an unmatched flexibility in terms of managing or hosting all channels or creating a hybrid environment that blends both approaches. We are also able to migrate consumers from the highest cost to the lowest cost channels to increase profitability while enhancing the customer experience. At the same time, we are processor agnostic, which provides flexibility in controlling processing costs.

Finally, our vUnified solution gives merchants a new level of visibility and control through the ability to see each consumer, their devices, payments history and behaviors across all channels in real-time. Most importantly, we are fiscally aligned with our partners – we only get paid on approved transactions, so we are committed to eliminating fraud while increasing acceptance.

Consumers expect a consistent, smooth and unified experience in all their interactions, from buying and purchase to customer service and technical support. Omni-channel is a competitive imperative and a huge challenge for merchants. How does Vesta support merchants in offering a seamless and unified experience across all channels?

Throughout our history, Vesta has always focused on payments in multi-channel environments. When you provide a white label solution that touches the customer so directly, you are responsible for ensuring the integrity of a merchant’s brand. We have proven that we can optimise the customer experience across channels in ways that lower churn and abandonment while, at the same time, increasing acceptance, conversion, loyalty, and profitability. At Vesta, we are not just another vendor. We consider ourselves partners to the clients we serve and we believe we have the ultimate metric of success. We have only lost one partner in 20 years.

What’s next on the company’s roadmap?

Well, I’m a firm believer in the fact that “Vesta is the biggest untold story in payments today.” Despite our reach, history of innovation and track record of success, most of the industry doesn’t really know us that well and I’m very excited to be working with our new CMO, Tom Byrnes, to re-introduce the brand. We have been able to leverage our vertically integrated range of services, proven history of innovation and success in providing revenue-generating payments solutions to the world’s largest and most demanding brands for two decades.

Building upon this deep domain of expertise, we’ve created a scalable guaranteed funds/zero-fraud liability solution set that meets the needs of everyone, from online purveyors of digital goods to global multi-channel merchants. Our plan is to take our new solution set to a variety of new markets while still expanding our presence in Europe and Latin America and staying active in the telecom sector. We’ve already been able to generate significant traction in multiple fronts and the market is clearly validating our approach - Vesta’s future looks bright!

About Doug Fieldhouse

Doug Fieldhouse was a founding investor in Vesta in 1995 and was appointed president and chief executive officer in May 1997. Prior to Vesta, Doug spent 15 years engaged in building and leading businesses in the US, Europe, and Asia. His experiences include building and operating law firms, international non-profits, and high-tech enterprises. He has worked closely with a number of Fortune 500 companies and leading international financial institutions. Since joining Vesta, Doug has been recognised as an entrepreneur, leader and innovator, and was named Ernst & Young’s 2009 Pacific Northwest Entrepreneur Of The Year^®.

Additionally, he received the 2008 Entrepreneurship Award for Individual Achievement from the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network and has been previously recognized by Computerworld, Fast Company, and Inc. magazines. He is a featured author in Smart Business Growth, a book by CEOs of fast-growing companies on strategies and methods behind successful growth. Doug holds two US patents and serves on select boards. Doug earned a BA degree in International Relations from Antioch College.

About Vesta Corporation

Vesta Corporation is the global leader providing revenue-generating payments solutions for enterprises. The company’s patented fraud protection technology is proven to increase conversion and acceptance while eliminating fraudulent transactions and merchant liability. Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Altanta, GA, Vesta’s operations span the Americas, Europe and Asia.