The omnichannel payments realm is changing rapidly as businesses that provide merchants with options for accepting payment increasingly have to take new methods into account. This year, that likely means preparing for agentic commerce, driven by artificial intelligence.
But with such agentic shopping experiences still in development, there are plenty of other disconnects between the in-person shopping experience and the e-commerce sphere that business-to-business payments services providers are seeking to address.
New York-based Verifone is one of those companies aiming to make its services as relevant to merchants focused on in-person retail as those in the digital shopping realm. Rajeev Yerukalapudi, global head of strategy and partnerships at Verifone, explained earlier this month how the company is partnering to serve both environments in areas such as consumer identification.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
PAYMENTS DIVE: How does Verifone view omnichannel payments strategies in the evolving retail environment?
RAJEEV YERUKALAPUDI: The crux of the problem is solving the identity: How do we move the identity much, much, much higher in the funnel? How do we actually know who is walking into the store so you can personalize offers, rewards, loyalty, all sorts of fancy things.
Our view into identity is not only for payments…[we envision a consumer can] place an order, you collect your loyalty or redeem your loyalty, and you make a payment. Those three are three different bespoke transactions today, and we have the ability to combine all of it into one.
How are the digital and in-person retail experiences different on that front?
In the pure digital world, it's not that hard to identify who the shopper is. There's cookie data, there's logged-in experiences, there's device ‘fingerprints.’ With 90% certainty, any retailer can tell who is shopping, even if you're not logged in. But if you are in an in-person environment, the shopper identity is the most difficult thing, because they have no idea until you swipe your card.
Is there an increased role for biometrics to play?
We have invested significantly into biometrics. So, how do we get a consumer to do a one-time registration into biometrics through our consumer platform, like PayPal [Holdings], and how do we just use that one-time registration with any merchant that you may walk into to make a payment?
We are in the process of partnering with a number of consumer platforms which act as the biometric enrollment engines for us. Think PayPal and [and its peer-to-peer unit] Venmo.
How does Verifone view its role in the online versus in-person environments?
I would say our strength is in the in-person, physical world. That's really where our DNA is. That doesn't mean we don't do online. So we do, but in some cases, we partner with [companies], and in some cases, we are actually figuring out how to extend the identity that we can solve in the in-person [environment] into the online world.
