Over the last couple of months, payment systems development and innovation has continued apace with innovations world-wide.

KPIs improving e-commerce payment efficiency – first measure your performance

BlueSnap has launched a library of KPIs to solve the “lost e-commerce sales” phenomenon because 40% of sales are being lost without the merchant being aware of it. - see.

In BlueSnap’s latest report - The Payment Processing KPI Library - they claim that “lost eCommerce sales can be attributed in large part to one specific thing: payment processing. Reasons include: mistaken declines, fraud, friction in the checkout process—these issues and more are contributing to a significant checkout conversion problem for eCommerce merchants across the board.”

The first part of the solution is to measure checkout conversion, they suggest that these 12 key performance indicators (KPIs) should be tracked continuously:

1. Payment Conversion Rate 
2. Conversion Rate by Bank 
3. Conversion Rate by Payment Method and Card Type 
4. Checkout Abandonment Rate 
5. Landing Page Optimization Rate 
6. Mobile Vs. Desktop Clean Rate (Clean= the total percentage of transactions that had a successful outcome)
7. Global Sales clean rate
8. Fraud rate
9. False Positive Rate 
10. Order Rejections Rate 
11. Chargeback Rate 
12. Payment provider Uptime rate: The percentage of the day, week, or year is your provider online and processing successfully.

Payment cards

Developments included:

• The Chinese central bank has accepted American Express’ application to start a bank card clearing business in China.
• Deutsche Bank research predicts decline/extinction of payment cards – see
• Roll out of Strong Customer Authentication in Europe for PSD2 is now set at the final deadline of 31 December 2020. Although the implementation will still vary across countries until this point. It is generally accepted that 3D Secure seriously impacts conversion: on average 22% of transactions fail. So having a frictionless/easy to use system is critical. Suppliers like Ravelin are claiming important advantages using their approach and systems – see

Cash will be here forever

All sorts of developments are showing that cash is alive and surviving:

• In the UK: Consumer group Which? continued its campaign against the closure of bank branches and cash machines across the UK, calling on the Government to introduce legislation guaranteeing free access to cash.

• Visa is taking its ‘access to cash’ programme industry-wide, working with partner banks to offer high street retailers in remote and rural locations a fee for processing cashback transactions over the counter.


Biometric initiated payments

Developments around the world included:

• In the UK, NatWest has launched a new service with a payment fob linked to a customer’s fingerprint that will allow contactless payments of up to £100 to be made without the use of a bank card or mobile phone
• In China, payment by face recognition and iris scanning is being trialled
• Other ideas being tested include biometric wearable tattoo with a thin silicon chip that can be inserted into the skin.

Cyber coins/Cryptocurrency

Developments around the world included this major announcement:

• World Economic Forum is setting up a Global Consortium for Digital Currency Governance = the central banks fully accept that cyber coins/cryptocurrency is coming and that they have to ensure they are tightly and fully regulated.

Global payments

Developments around the world included:

• J.P. Morgan announced the launch of E-Customs Payment Solution to digitise and automate cross-border payments of goods in China.
• By the end of 2020, SWIFT will extend the benefits of tracking and confirming payments to every financial institution. As part of this, every single payment (MT 103 on FIN) will require a confirmation that funds have been credited to the end beneficiary account within two business days.
• Financial institutions on SWIFT that are not gpi-enabled will be able to confirm their incoming payments manually using a new Basic Tracker.

Recurring/Subscription payments

Developments around the world included Six Subscription Commerce Predictions from Recurly:

1. Expansion of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning because subscription businesses have a relationship with subscribers that is ongoing, with new data related to marketing, payment and customer lifecycle generated regularly, at each new billing cycle.
2. Subscription businesses will use payments and related data and analytics to illuminate trends and other elements of subscription commerce
3. Adoption of Hybrid Commerce to Better Serve Customers: use of subscription model and one-time purchase model
4. Increase in D2C Brands Utilizing the Subscription Model to promote and sell their product or service directly to consumers
5. Brands will use subscriptions as a defence mechanism to retain customers
6. “everything as a service,” or XaaS model will continue to gain momentum in 2020: with Forbes projecting that XaaS “goes completely mainstream”, e.g.  Porsche Passport, an all-inclusive, monthly vehicle subscription.

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CTMfile take: The new facilities and technologies in payment systems are being used to change the model of how companies do business. This opens up all sorts of new opportunities and maybe that is what corporate treasury is really about. Is this the real purpose of corporate treasury: opening up, releasing new business opportunities?