The Paypers: “Because a normal web-based payment page is inconvenient to use on most mobile devices, Adyen has created special mobile payment skins to be used by mobile merchants” your website states. What are the mobile payment skins and how do they work?
Roelant Prins: The web pages are heavily optimised for mobile use. The pages use the native interface of the handset as much as possible. This means that our iPhone payment pages really have the iPhone look and feel. This is the same for Android and other platforms. Its okay to enter card details on a mobile device as long as the pages are secure and tailored to that channel. Furthermore, it is possible to use the one-click payment option for mobile. This means that you can simplify the mobile payment experience for returning shoppers.
The Paypers: How is Adyen handling fraud prevention? What measures do you employ and how is the mobile channel safeguarded against data breaches?
Roelant Prins: The payment pages are fully PCI-compliant so the card details are entered directly into the Adyen servers. If you dont do that, youll have to use some safe way to send the card details directly from the handset to the payment environment - which results in all kinds of security measures. By using redirect and appropriate speed optimisations, you dont have these security problems as its really the same as using the web for payment entry.
An exception is 3D-secure which is technically possible, although not very practical on the mobile phone because most issuing banks dont have mobile-optimised versions yet of their authentication pages. But this will come without a doubt in the next few years. On the other hand, we do have sometimes more data from the handset to do fraud checks on.
The Paypers: What type of charges can merchants expect and how are they levied?
Roelant Prins: Adyen has a very transparent and simplistic pricing model. We only charge atransaction fee per transaction and a commission fee per payment method. There are no other fixed, monthly or hidden fees.
For credit card payments Adyen is the first payment service provider to provide complete interchange + pricing. This is a pricing model where we transparently charge the actual cost-price of a credit card payment (=interchange) added with a mark-up for the acquiring bank.We find that merchants very much welcome this transparent pricing model, not only just because they are able to generate significant cost savings, but also they can see that they pay a fair price.
The Paypers: Adyen already has an app targeted at merchants using an iPhone, allowing them to monitor transactions in real time. Do you believe that the advent of smartphones is likely to impact the way you do business? If yes, what place do you envisage for smartphone-based mobile payment processing apps in the wider context of e-commerce?
Roelant Prins: We strongly believe in the iPhone and Android platforms as upcoming sales channels for our merchants, especially for selling items such as tickets, postcards and deal-of-the-day kind of products. Thats where we now see the biggest initial merchant uptake. You should allow your customers to shop with you at any moment, from any device.
On the merchant side, we want to allow our merchants to get a real-time insight into their business. Whats easier and more fun than to use your iPhone daily to view your business growing in the Adyen app? Apart from that, we plan to add some KPI graphics to the app, as well as real-time fraud warnings. The app is also available for Android.
The Paypers: What are some of your company’s strongest selling points for the business (merchant) market segment?
Roelant Prins: The strongest selling point is that merchants are able to significantly improve their online conversion rates by using the innovative features of our payment platform.
The Paypers: How long does it take for a merchant to become fully integrated with your payments processing environment, mobile and online?
Roelant Prins: Typically this can be done in a week or two, for mobile and online the technology is the same and well-documented including examples in many development environments. Of course it all depends on the extent of implementation and the flexibility of the merchant platform.
The Paypers: Where are you now in terms of market coverage?
Roelant Prins: Our solution now completely covers Europe, the USA and Latin America. In Asia we currently support credit cards in local currency and will extend with local payment methods early next year.
The Paypers: What are some of the main obstacles you have encountered so far? What are the top three concerns raised by merchants when dealing with internet-based payments?
Roelant Prins: In the beginning (were talking about early 2007) we really had to prove ourselves, being an experienced team, with a newly-built platform. You could tell that large merchants had every trust in the team (which is the same team that founded Bibit in 1997), but the platform had yet to prove itself in the market for high volumes. This is now not a problem anymore with high volume customers such as Vodafone, KLM, Mango, Spreadshirt, Albumprinter, Greetz and PopCap Games.
Major concerns are usually lack of flexibility, minimal reporting capabilities and high pricing. Topics we have emphasized on while building our platform.
The Paypers: Where are you headed? Where do you see Adyen two years from now?
Roelant Prins: From the start it has always been our ambition to be the leading International Payment Service Provider. There is currently a lot of activity and consolidation in this industry. We believe that online payments will become more and more of a commodity and that Payment Providers will truly have to differentiate on basis of value added services and offering the best technical solution. The company that has the best technology and most flexible platform will have the highest chance of success.
Adyen has the most innovative technical solution and will continue to invest in the development of the platform. We anticipate that in two years time from now, the gap between the possibilities of our platform and the ones from other first generation providers will have grown even further. This will allow us to reach our ambition of being the leading international payment service provider by then!
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