Few sectors have transformed as rapidly as digital payments. No longer just a fragmented and transactional touch-point, the payment’s journey enables businesses to engage with customers, enhance their experience, and build long-term loyalty.
The last decade has been eventful as the digital payments ecosystem expanded with new solutions such as digital wallets, UPI, one-tap payments, automated payouts, as well as new frontier technologies like tokenisation and blockchain. This is a classic example of customer expectations driving new product breakthroughs, resulting in a virtuous cycle.
Consider the case of the subscription-based billing model. With the proliferation of OTT and music streaming sites, subscription payments have become popular among businesses and consumers alike as they are convenient, cost-effective, and customisable by nature.
The fintech sector has completely redefined customer experience by giving users trust, security, and productivity.
Innovation is key
A customer-first mindset sparks innovations. It is the guiding principle in creating successful fintech products at scale.
Refund latency, failures during transactions, or checkout issues are all myriad problems that a customer used to face in their online payments journey. Deep-dive studies reveal that merchants often bear the brunt of cart abandonment due to complex checkout flow, lack of payment options, and technical glitches.
Consequently, the payment ecosystem has been working cohesively to ensure frictionless payment experiences across all payment methods. By using innovations, such as One Click Payments, customers do not have to remember CVVs, OTPs, switch tabs or input the information to make a payment.
It is estimated that such innovations can make the payment process 1.5x faster. In a post-COVID environment, it has become imperative for businesses to invest in frictionless payment experiences because they help increase repeat purchases, average transaction value, and transaction success rates.
The customer-first approach also fosters high-growth product cultures.
In the end, the objective of product development isn't just to satisfy business needs, but to add value on a larger scale. To do this, it is essential to create an environment where product managers and engineers can deliver amazing results.
It has been observed that focused group studies, contextual interviews, and product surveys help identify pain points accurately, resulting in more targeted and effective product strategies.
By providing teams with the necessary level of trust, empowerment, and ownership, they are more likely to generate innovative ideas. The teams in strong product cultures are given real-life problems to solve, rather than just features to build. Additionally, they are empowered to solve those problems in the way that they see fit.
