With over 50,000 customers operating in 150 currencies across 204 global markets, and a team of experts supporting fashion and retail clients worldwide, payment technology partner Nuvei is well-positioned to inform the fashion industry on the behavioural drivers impacting the payments space.

Nuvei delivers unified commerce solutions to its partners, supporting online, in-store and mobile payments, in addition to supporting a portfolio of alternative payment methods including Klarna, WeChat, Apple Pay and PayPal.

Nuvei considers best-in-class payment strategies to be an iterative process, requiring regular, innovative updates to reflect the needs of the industry. To facilitate growth and international expansion, innovation teams deliver effective localisation capabilities, while its client management focus ensures partners are informed on trending categories and verticals, and innovation to payment processing.

The recent acquisition of Simplex, a payment solution provider to the cryptocurrency industry, exemplifies Nuvei’s commitment to enable clients to meet customer demand for alternative payment methods.

Now, BoF hears from Nuvei’s chief commercial officer, Motie Bring, to understand the commercial gains in innovating payments, the role service plays in effective payment management, and how Nuvei’s strategies have evolved to respond to the changing payment landscape.

Why have payment solutions become more significant to retail strategies?

We’ve been tracking the increasing importance of facilitating ease in payments. Customers expect a seamless and frictionless shopping experience — being in control of how they pay, wherever they are in the world. Today, customers are not just choosing what to buy, they’re choosing how they want to buy it.

In the fashion industry, retailers and businesses focus on what they do best — the end-to-end retail experience: innovating on design, and strategising on new ways of enticing customers to shop. By providing first-class customer experiences, Nuvei is helping to convert an interested consumer into someone ready to make a purchase and ensuring the last mile of any customer retail experience is successful. You can attract customers via promotions, get them to put something into their checkout basket, but getting them to press the button and make that purchase is fundamentally what makes or breaks a business.

What emerging trends in the payments space are most relevant to the fashion industry?

Brands should be asking themselves, what do they offer by enabling a certain kind of transaction method? Take cryptocurrency as an example. It’s front-of-mind for both businesses and customers. While everyone wants to offer them, consumers are not adopting them yet. So, Nuvei isn’t just driving conversion, it’s helping retailers with brand image by facilitating choice. Currently, brands toy with the idea of offering crypto or other alternative payment methods, because it says something about you as a brand. The number of transactions you see from it are less important right now.

We take the time to deep dive into the things that matter most to our retail customers: seamless returns and refunds, decline management and acceptance rates.

The second trend is really how consumer behaviour is dictating the payment methods that exist. In the UK, for instance, everything is to do with buy now, pay later. It didn’t exist a decade ago. Now, the majority of fashion brands offer these solutions as a top payment. It’s attractive to specific demographics for product [accessibility] and a means of controlling spending. It’s not dissimilar to PayPal 20 years ago — the must-have payment method. If you look now to Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, they are all linked to convenience. We don’t have to go through too much authentication — the payment can just happen in the background.

We take the time to deep dive into the things that matter most to our retail customers: seamless returns and refunds, decline management and acceptance rates. For that reason, our customers trust that we always have their key business drivers in mind.

How do brands and retailers benefit from partnering with a local payment specialist?

Moving into new markets really requires a partnership with a business who understands those markets and can help you navigate the payment landscape, the impacts on taxation, and all the elements that can make or break a launch of a new business, or the move into a new market. Nuvei now offers 500 different payment methods that we can process in over 200 countries — and process in a domestic way. If you’re Brazilian, you can use the payment methods that are relevant to you — you’re not going to see something that’s relevant to someone in the Netherlands, and vice versa.

When we build the frame of payments that a specific business or market requires, we are helping [brands and retailers] to build that trust. Customers can identify their familiar, localised payment methods. It’s something that consumers will consider trivial but is critical to the business itself.

What new technologies are innovating the transaction for both merchants and end consumers?

Blockchain technology is going to play exciting roles within payments, both in how we consume and how we behave. I am a huge believer in NFTs and their use cases. Secondly, as a company we believe cryptocurrency is here to stay. This world is complex — there are just seven stable currencies. Other currencies are so volatile, they’re used more as an investment tool rather than a payment method.

As consumer behaviour gravitates towards specific cryptocurrencies — as seen with other payment trends — then they will start to feature more consistently. However, they’re under a lot of scrutiny in terms of their green credentials. The currencies that start to gain traction will be the ones that stabilise and are backed by green technology. Our single-integration platform supports retail brands with choices like crypto or buy now, pay later to suit their brand image and be as relevant to their customers as possible.

Why are deeper partnerships important to drive innovation and results?

At Nuvei, we’re firm believers in a genuinely human approach to our client relationships. Relationship management is integral — and it begins before we even start to work with a company. We collaborate to understand different acceptance rates, how we can improve them, and understand the customers those businesses are attracting.

It’s an ongoing process, as we have to keep working with merchants to anticipate changes in consumer behaviour. We bring in different experts from different parts of the business to help build the solution and hold their hand through integration, testing and the live process. From there, our support can range from optimising the number of successful transactions, to benchmarking against their competitors and against the industry at large.

If four or five percent of the population adopted payment methods and you don’t offer them, then you’ve lost them as potential consumers.

Technology, some yet to be discovered, will continue to play a critical role in behaviour and consumption. We focus on what’s going to be next and make sure we’re able to implement new payment methods as quickly as possible. It’s key because if four or five percent of the population adopted payment methods and you don’t offer them, then you’ve lost them as potential consumers.

Where do you see growth stemming from in payments, over the medium term?

A few contradictory things will begin to happen. On the one hand, we will see consolidation, on the other, we will see fragmentation. Consolidation will come from companies. For instance, we have a wide range of different buy now, pay later companies. Are they going to merge, as they continue to serve the same role in the market? However, we will continue to see fragmentation in how consumers anticipate to pay across demographics, markets and regions. We have to expect that and accept it. Visa and Mastercard are big in the UK, but not popular in the Netherlands. You will keep on seeing specific domestic payment trends.

Marketplaces are certainly going to continue to grow in relevance. Innovation in moving money coming in and going out will be key, because in this model, you need to be able to pay money out conveniently, as well as just accept payments. This innovation will certainly facilitate more second-hand, [circular] shopping models.

As a future-focused payment technology partner, it’s our job to offer the next preferred payment method or facilitate the details that matter most to retail consumers.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Nuvei as part of a BoF partnership.