Exclusive interview with Roelant Prins, CCO of Adyen (Part 1)

Adyen has seen an opportunity to become the next generation Internet payment serviceThe Paypers: First of all, I would like to ask you to please provide our readers with a brief insight into the vision behind Adyen. Why an internet-based payment processing solution for the corporate sector?Roelant Prins: Since the inception of Adyen we have seen an opportunity for a next generation Internet payment service. The market so far has been dominated by what we see as

During the past 10 years the ecommerce industry has evolved significantly. Ecommerce merchants are now focusing on optimising their processes and doing anything they can to increase their conversion rates. On the other side they focus on improving efficiency and control of their operations. This leads to different requirements for a payment platform.

On top of this PCI compliance has become an essential element in the online payments strategy for many merchants. There is now a much stronger incentive for merchants to fully outsource their payment processes (including handling of all card data) to specialised companies.

Adyen has specifically built its platform to address the needs that ecommerce merchants have today. This means that by using the Adyen platform merchants can now choose a fully PCI compliant payment solution via a hosted payment page, whilst still being able to maximise online conversion and retain full control and insight. Examples of the innovations Adyen provide are listed in the questions below.

The Paypers: In brief, what is your company’s main value proposition and how is it delivered for its business customers?

Roelant Prins: Adyens proposition is built on the following components:

a) Higher conversion via innovation
Adyens payment platform is completely designed to help merchants maximise conversion during the online payment process. Adyen does this by making the payment pages more intuitive and straight forward.

b) Cost savings due to lower pricing and operational efficiencies
Adyen provides a fully transparent and simple pricing model. This includes single digit transaction fees combined with full pan-European interchange+ pricing on credit cards. This generally leads to significant cost savings. At the same time the Adyen back-office and reporting go quite a few extra miles compared to the industry standard. Via value adding reporting like Conversion Reporting, Monthly Financial Reporting and a highly user-friendly back-office system, merchants improve operational efficiency.

c) Global coverage
Adyen provides a global payment solution. We concentrate on supporting payment methods that are most relevant and bring value to our customers.

The Paypers: Tell us more about your packaged internet payment product. How does it work and what payment methods does it support?

Roelant Prins: Adyens hosted payment page solution is quite unique. It is a redirect based payment page, which means that Adyen takes full responsibility of PCI compliance and completely takes this issue away from the merchant.

What makes our solution unique is that the pages are very flexible and merchant has full control over them, allowing maximum conversion:

• Merchants have complete flexibility to control the look and feel of the page via Adyen’s innovative skin technology.
• Payment is handled on a single screen (using Ajax-technology)
• Single-click payment options are supported
• A/B Testing of different payment pages is supported
• Conversion rates are measured and reported providing full insight. 

Currently we support around 75 payment methods. We concentrate on supporting methods that are truly relevant. Having too many payment methods is known to confuse consumers leading to higher abandonment. The solution supports all major credit cards. Additionally we support all relevant payment methods in Europe, the USA and Latin America. We will be adding additional payment methods in Asia the coming year.

Adyen’s offering also includes a mobile option for merchants looking to leverage the mobile channel. The latter allows merchants to receive payments either directly from the web or via dedicated apps.

The Paypers: Please provide our readers with more information on the Adyen-hosted Mobile Payment Pages. How does mobile payment processing occur and what technology setup do you employ to back it up?

Roelant Prins: Our solution allows merchants to use special payment pages within their mobile app (or mobile site), where the customer enters their payment details. So it’s really a mobile version of whats already offered on the web. Its PCI-compliant so our merchants dont have to be, and since it is a plug-and-play module, it is easy to implement. Because it uses standard technology, it can be used from within any mobile environment.

We often see that using regular, proven technology is successful for our merchants. Theyre not waiting so much for new mobile payment methods without a customer base, or using the iPhone as mobile POS. All are interesting initiatives, but our merchants have existing business and wish to extend just that to the mobile distribution channel.

About Roelant Prins

After starting his career as a consultant, Roelant started in the online payments industry early 2000 when he joined Bibit, at that time the most successful PSP. Throughout the years Roelant has held various international management roles in sales and business development for companies providing payment solutions to international ecommerce businesses. In his last position prior to joining Adyen Roelant lived in London and managed the team responsible for corporate sales in the UK for the payments division within Royal Bank of Scotland Group.