Customers across the country are now looking at multiple combinations of physical and digital payment channels. In an exclusive conversation with CXO News and APAC News Network, Jagdish Kumar, Chief Technology Officer – India, Worldline explains the operating and business models of One Commerce and their security mechanisms and challenges of regulatory compliance.
How will you explain the operating model and business model of the One Commerce platform?
Worldline One Commerce platform is built for all sizes of traditional to modern day businesses that are acquiring customers and selling products or services across multiple channels. Powered by Worldline’s payment suite across online, in-store, subscription, bill payments models, the platform can transform the payment experience of merchants by allowing them to initiate order confirmation and payment acceptance through multiple combinations of physical or digital channels.
The platform also supports effortless transition from physical to online or mobile-based payment collection journeys to aid the buying and payment experience of the end customer and drive conversion of sale/transaction for our merchants.
What are the unique differentiators of One Commerce over other competing payment platforms?
There are three key areas of differentiation:
- One Commerce covers the entire spectrum of payment modes within the in-store, website or mobile app as sales channels including one-time payments, mandate journeys for recurring or subscription payments, WhatsApp/SMS/email based payment links with built-in mobile in-app flows.
- Omni-channel solutions build for offer management, affordability, billing and order management which can be accessed through a single Worldline merchant super-app.
- Worldline innovation centre keeps churning out focussed innovations to help our merchant base to benefit from the latest emerging trends within the payments industry. For ex.
- a) The one-commerce platform is already built to support Digital Currency wallet transactions across all supporting banks;
- b) The platform supports offer discovery for end customer by simply scanning a QR using their Bank/Payment Service Provider apps.
How will One Commerce work in sync with banks, financial institutions, retail brands, MBOs and other payment platforms so that there is a seamless experience for consumers?
Our payment engine is already integrated with all major acquiring banks supporting all payment networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Rupay, Diners etc) as part of our Payment Aggregation business in India. We also have direct channels with the issuing banks to support specific customer offers and with other financial institution to support affordability or loyalty management programs for our merchant.
Every transaction on the ‘One Commerce’ platform goes through instrument specific rules engine to validate the best possible outcome in terms of success rates for conversion, running personalized offers or even determining the preferred or recommended path for the end customer to complete checkout with minimal clicks.
To support this,Worldline works tirelessly on multiple fronts:
- with all the card schemes to maintain an updated Card/Token bin master to run bin level intelligence;
(ii) with enablers like NPCI for integrating latest API suites that promote multi-mode linkage and context;
(iii) with financial services and Third-party service providers (TSPs) at the back supporting various affordability, loyalty and other customer engagement programs to facilitate our merchants
What are the security measures for One Commerce that you have put in place to protect against fraudulent mechanisms?
Worldline One Commerce platform is compliant and certified for all mandatory services to multiple scheme and RBI mandates/guidelines like DPSC guideline, PCI DSS, COFT/ALT ID, 3DS 2.0, PCI P2PE, PCI SSF, PCI PTS, RKI to name a few.
The platform uses best in class cryptography mechanism to protect and secure data (sensitive/PII data) in transit and at rest using HSM across its payment systems. Worldline fraud risk monitoring systems are fully operational and are already actively monitoring 75MN+ monthly transactions on our platform.
What will be the importance of One Commerce in the current landscape of omnichannel payments platform?
Worldline One Commerce will create the path for business of all sizes and types to confidently start selling and accepting payments across channels. Be it enabling a standalone store on ONDC, or powering an omnichannel merchant to drive online/in-app/subscription business, right up to facilitating a multinational marketplace for cross border import or export scenarios, everything will become a possibility with just a single payment partner Worldline.
What are the other solutions and services in the Worldline portfolio and what are their use cases?
Worldline is a Payment Aggregator for online and In-store (POS) with over 1.5 million merchants. Worldline is one of the largest processing partner driving acquiring business for 30+ banks in India through our Payment switch and processes over 1.6 billion processing transactions.
Worldline is the largest non-banking processor in India for Mandate based payments including NACH, DD, e-NACH, e-sign e-Mandates, SI on cards and UPI Mandates. We are also a certified Operating unit under the Bharat Bill Payment System network. Moreover, our Instapay solution powers instant to near real time payouts and disbursals to a number of business use-cases in India.
How critical is the importance of compliance under the payment industry’s new licensing regime?
It is fair to say that compliance should be as important as the air we breathe in the payment industry. This is how we at Worldline give importance and prioritization to being compliant on our product, technology and operations modules. Carrying such a motto and practice in general made it simple for us to embrace the license regime and comply with the regulatory guidelines and principles.
Becoming and staying compliant under the new regime for all offerings will become the single biggest barrier to scale for all companies getting into this space and thishas already been proven with several flourishing brands brought to a grinding halt across online payments and banking services by the regulatory bodies in the last 1-2 years.
How can the RBI regulations make the payment ecosystem more resilient and transparent?
Digital payments in India have seen a phenomenally bullish run year after year now. However, with the rise in digital adoption came the rise in the quantum of digital payment frauds. Such a trend could have made the adoption of any technological enhancement difficult due to the sceptical outlook of the users.
Thanks to RBI rolling up their sleeves and pulling their might behind the payment industry. It has given a new found confidence for both the payment companies and end customers to invest and adopt latest payment technologies and interfaces with confidence, knowledge and clarity of objective.In the long run, this will be seen as the single-biggest paradigm shift for Payment industry to take the next quantum leap and grow in giant strides.
Rajneesh De, APAC News Network
