PCM vol. 3 issue 10

Vol 3. Issue 10 | October 2017
YOUR GATEWAY TO THE WORLD OF PAYMENTS
CO-CREATION
Leading the FinTech Innovation

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Contents
STORIES
Amir Abdin
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
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7
Brick-and-Mortar Suffers from a Pace Problem and
the Payments Industry Can Help Fix it
Tackling the challenges of cross-border payments
amir@teampcn.com
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/amir-abdin-21365683
9
The FinTech University
11
The Power of Co-creation in Payments
14
17
21
Funderbeam: the world’s first “start-up stock exchange”–
built on blockchain
Payment Collective - The story of a Merchant
with bol.com
Elavon’s Jamie Walker
Blanka Ligeti
Production Editor & Head of Creative
blanka@teampcn.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/blanka-ligeti-7127289b/
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26
Hot Jobs
Events
THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS!
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576, 2nd Fl., 1017 CJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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ADVERTISING INFORMATION
For details, please contact amir@teampcn.com
3

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
Brick-and-Mortar Suffers from a Pace Problem and
the Payments Industry Can Help Fix it
“
by Georgina Nelson
The speed of innovation can be dizzying. Just outside my office
window, I can hear the noise of jackhammers as construction
workers raise a new building. Retail has changed as much as
my scenery, but there are also times when it feels as though
innovation isn’t happening as fast as it could or that there is
a reluctance to make changes due to lack of data or enough
insight to make informed decisions.
While ecommerce, with the enviable ability to A/B test
continually, is on a path of near constant innovation, brickand-mortar
stores have been slower to adopt, and adapt with,
technology. Much of this can be attributed to differences in
culture: online lives in a world where product innovations
and iterations happen constantly and a competitor is always
waiting in the wings to pounce on your customers.
For these reasons, online is also much more collaborative and
co-creative. The more value they can drive for their customer,
the better - and if that means being open source or opening
their API so that the industry can drive that value-add to their
customers, that’s what they’ll often do.
like a great idea, but until recently has simply not been done,
making it much more difficult for retailers to adopt and
integrate the innovative technologies needed to keep up with
their own online businesses and those of their competitors.
Simply put, they have a pace problem. The good news? The
payments industry is well-positioned to fix it. There is a huge
potential for POS companies to co-create with tech companies
in the retail space by opening up their APIs to allow them to
develop applications that sit on the terminal--like an app store
for the terminal.
A merchant could go into an app store and self discover:
business applications, such as time and attendance, accounting
software etc. Doing this would enable technology adoption
to happen so much faster and make it much easier for brickand-mortar
to compete with online.Thankfully, some payment
companies see this potential. Verifone, Ingenico, Aevi, Poynt
and Clover are good examples – new smart terminal designs
are ripe to deliver these applications to the retailer and have
already started offering a limited number of applications
through its marketplace. Many of these applications are
critical, not nice to haves.
But to get there, the industry must be prepared to open up its
hood and be more co-creative and collaborative.
“
Which is one of the reasons why online retailers have so many
more tools at their disposal. Ecommerce platforms, such as
Magento, facilitate the creation of new tools by having an
open API that allows tech providers to build products on top of
their platform, speeding delivering of new products to online
retailers. They further compress adoption through their
marketplace, where one can literally choose from nearly 2,000
applications from marketing to payments to CRM.
But it’s much more difficult for brick-and-mortar retailers to
implement new technology at an equal pace. Part of the issue
is that the technology hub for these stores to gather data on
customers is at the point-of-sale (card present) and the POS
is traditionally a closed ecosystem. Thus, the ability to make
value-added services available to the retailer at the POS sounds
Homebase for example streamlines an antiquated method
of employee scheduling, which many stores still track in a
notebook. The Clover Marketplace features 250 applications,
free and paid, from both Clover and outside developers that
automate almost everything for the retailer.
At TruRating, we have some amazing partners in the payments
space, and we’re lucky enough (with a lot of sweat) to now be
working with around 80-90 percent of the payment platforms
- including marketplace providers - in our markets. It hasn’t
always been an easy journey and we’re all learning along the
way, but times are definitely changing - I’ve been to so many
great events recently where the innovators and leaders of this
sector are really building an exciting future. One that we’re
delighted to be a part of.
4

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
I firmly believe that this is just the beginning. Simply put, brick-and-mortar stores must leverage technology to remain competitive,
while the POS has incredible potential to be the hub for tech adoption. But to get there, the industry must be prepared to open up
its hood and be more co-creative and collaborative. By making their APIs available more readily to outside developers, they can
eliminate the unfair advantage of pace that is eluding the industry.
About Tru Rating
TruRating is on a mission to bring the truth back to
customer ratings. Its innovative feedback solution,
at the point of payment, enables businesses to
simply and easily track consumer sentiment and
crucially link it to spend, thereby understanding
the customer experience at an unprecedented level.
Working with the biggest payment companies in
the world, TruRating has already collected over 6
million ratings for its customers, which range from
the largest global retailers to local restaurants and
bookshops.
TruRating was recognized by Gartner as a 2016 Cool
Vendor and has offices in Australia, Canada, the U.K
and the United States. For more information about
TruRating, go to www.trurating.com.
Georgina Nelson
Founder and CEO at TruRating
Georgina began her career as a leveraged finance lawyer
at Clifford Chance. Georgina then joined Europe’s largest
consumers’ association, Which? where she was responsible
for advising the EU and the UK government on their
technology strategy, as well as advising internal teams
on their online propositions. It was in this role where she
identified a market need for mass, representative, reliable
consumer ratings.
She saw how this need could not only serve to improve
the world of business but also be valuable to consumers
alike. With this vision, she set about realizing the huge
potential of TruRating by bringing together a wonderful
team, exciting customers and partners in the payments
industry with the ultimate objective to bring the truth
back to ratings.
5

MAXIMIZE
YOUR DATA
VALUE
THE LEADING SOURCE FOR DATA SCIENTISTS IN PAYMENTS
CONTACT US NOW
Having data dilemmas? Please contact: simon@digitalsource.io
Digital Source | Herengracht 576 | 1017 CJ | Amsterdam | The Netherlands | +31 (0) 202 373 639

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
Tackling the challenges of
cross-border payments
By Matthias Setzer
Following the development and uptake of mCommerce,
cross-border now represents one of the biggest business
opportunities available to merchants around the globe. Indeed,
recent estimates have the cross-border market growing from
$402 billion in 2016 to $994 billion in 2020, with nearly two
thirds of cross-border business coming from high growth
markets. With high growth markets also accounting for 85%
of the world’s population, it’s no wonder ambitious merchants
are increasingly attracted to the business opportunities this
presents.
However, in an ever-changing landscape, the payments
ecosystem, historically burdened by complicated infrastructure
and out-of-date processes, is one of the biggest hindrances to
realizing the potential of cross-border e-commerce.
With this in mind, interoperability and open platforms are
arguably critical to help break down the barriers that exist for
the fintech companies, financial institutions and businesses
that are trying to reach a wider audience and increasingly
operate internationally.
We’re already seeing European regulators attempting to
tackle these issues with the scheduled implementation of the
Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) in 2018.
It is worth noting that the challenges of cross-border
payments go beyond the complexities of legacy infrastructure
and processes. Undeniably, the global rise in smartphones
has fuelled the demand for cross-border trade. And as more
consumers start to purchase goods online, convenience is
becoming a priority.
Although we are seeing payments technology continue to
evolve at an unprecedented pace and payment providers
looking to increase convenience and security for the consumer,
it is crucial to recognise that the consumer is also evolving,
both in terms of behaviour and attitudes.
For example, customers now take for granted that frictionless
payments are technically possible and they now fully expect
the market to cater to their demand to purchase from
whomever they want, whenever they want. In short: the better
the experience on offer, the quicker consumer uptake will be.
Unfortunately, cross-border trade has not yet caught up
to this customer expectation. In addition, as cross-border
eCommerce grows, consumers expect to be able to pay for
products through local payment methods that are familiar to
them. Alternative payment methods currently account for 59%
of transactions across the globe, so offering a wider variety of
payment options will be of benefit to any business.
It is these aforementioned pain points that illustrate the
significant opportunity for industry players to simplify
international buying on both the merchant and the consumer
side. However, overcoming these challenges is as much about
local market insight as it is about cutting-edge technology.
With this complexity in mind, coupled with the scale and
urgency to conquer cross-border challenges, there is a strong
argument for those involved in the payments industry to team-
7

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
Matthias Setzer
Chief Commercial Officer at PayU
Matthias joined PayU as the Chief Commercial Officer in October 2016. In
this role he is responsible for PayU’s cross-border business, global sales, key
accounts, strategic partnerships and marketing & PR. Before joining PayU,
he worked with PayPal for over 12 years in various roles, most recently as
their Senior Director Strategic Partnerships & Biz Development EMEA, based
in Luxembourg. Matthias holds a Masters degree from WHU in Vallendar,
Germany.
up in order to seize the opportunity as quickly, and efficiently,
as possible. At PayU, we are doing our part to make crossborder
trade easier for merchants and consumers. Earlier this
year we launched our PayU Hub platform.
PayU Hub aims to solve many cross-border commerce
challenges by using a single API integration to help merchants
access 2.3 billion potential new customers in the major high
growth markets across Central and Eastern Europe, Middle-
East, India, Africa and Latin America.
PayU Hub’s hyper-local direct connections to acquirers
and alternative payment methods allows merchants to see
increased card approval rates and reach entire markets
through alternative payment methods. This also ensures that
local consumers in high growth markets can pay for their
purchases using their preferred payment method.
In addition, our recent partnership with Zooz has enabled us
to co-create a solution for international merchants through
combining Zooz’s state-of-the-art technology and PayU’s
local market expertise, helping merchants gain access to new
global markets and opportunities, all while adapting to local
payment preferences and processes. This is a prime example
of PayU seeking the best international partnerships to build on
our heritage in payments and deliver innovations that the next
generation of cross-border processing.
Legacy infrastructure, processes, local payment preferences
and consumer expectations are just some of the hurdles to
be overcome in order for the potential of cross-border to be
realized. I firmly believe that co-creation and partnership
across the industry will not only allow us to address these
challenges efficiently, but also create a truly borderless
economy – empowering merchants and consumers to trade
freely wherever they are in the world.
About PayU
PayU uses its payments heritage and expertise to deliver
financial services in emerging markets. Our local operations in
Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle
East and Africa enable us to be experts in these countries and
provide the best solutions for the local market. PayU is the
leading online payment service provider in 16 high growth
markets, dedicated to creating a fast, simple and efficient
payment process for merchants and buyers. Our 250+ payment
methods and PCI certified platforms are designed to meet
every consumer’s needs.
The markets in which PayU operates represent a potential
consumer base of nearly 2.3 billion people and a huge growth
potential for merchants. PayU has more than 1,800 payment
specialists based in these local markets supporting PayU’s
300,000+ merchants and the millions of consumers making
online payments.
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THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
The FinTech University
by Christopher Justice
Financial Technology (FinTech) firms based in Atlanta, Georgia
employe approximately 150,000 associates and generate
over $90billion in revenue. The industry has grown rapidly
by delivering innovative new commerce solutions aimed to
improve the ways that global businesses bill, account, and
collect money. According to Business Insider, the explosive
growth of the industry led to a slew of FinTech investments
exceeding $15 billion in 2016 led by the US, Europe and Asia
Pacific. Investment in the sector has grown more than 60% in
recent years. Given the industry growth and desire to remain
on the leading edge of technology, FinTech companies face a
shortage of qualified talent to fill the 4,500 open positions.
During the 2016–17 school year, US colleges and universities
are expected to award 1,018,000 associate’s degrees; 1.9 million
bachelor’s degrees; 798,000 master’s degrees; and 181,000
doctor’s degrees (source). These highly capable students are
ready to face the world and make a difference. While they have
the basic skills to compete, they lack the necessary exposure to
FinTech industry related knowledge that would improve their
chances of success when interviewing. Universities typically
provide education in accounting, finance, information
technology, business basics, and computer science, but haven’t
been able to provide the experiential learning that would help
students excel when competing for high-earning roles within
the industry.
To solve these challenges, more than 90 companies joined
together to form FinTech Atlanta (www.FinTechAtlanta.
org) and establish a workforce development group that
collaborates with Universities about incorporation of essential
competencies and experiential learning-based education into
their current curriculum. Ultimately, the goal is to help
a college graduate appear to be more like a 2 year hire than
someone fresh out of the university.
More than 40 senior executives from leading firms have
adopted specific universities to lend their expertise toward
the effort. Meeting with university staff and professors,
the team provides valuable insight into the needs of the
FinTech business to encourage adoption of industry related
competencies. The team further engages with students to
encourage their consideration of the industry as they consider
a career where they can work on innovative solutions that
drive commerce worldwide.
Working with university officials, FinTech Atlanta executives
assist in launching a series of projects to give students practical
experience while they develop business plans, create new
applications and user interfaces, and think through solutions
to relevant obstacles that face product introductions. The
executives share their experiences as adjunct professors and
guest lecturers, while encouraging student participation in
FinTech degree programs.
Several leading Universities have embarked on the journey to
better prepare students to meet the needs of the industry. The
University of Georgia’s Terry School of Business is launching a
new FinTech emphasis in its MBA program which will include
an experiential learning requirement for students to complete
a capstone project with a FinTech company. The experience
would be project-based, sponsored by Global Payments
9

THOUGHT LEADERS CORNER
(NYSE: GPN) Gaming Solutions business unit and supported
by the University of Georgia Board of Regents. This project
will involve real technical and non-technical deliverables and
challenge students to deliver real value. It’s large enough to
warrant a structured project development methodology, a key
educational goal, and can be completed with less than 800
hours of resource time. Broken into phases to ensure valuable
feedback can be shared by the Global Payment’s executives,
students will be graded upon the project while also gaining
access to corporate leaders.
FinTech Atlanta has been encouraged by early University
response, undergraduate and graduate interest as well as the
increased commercial interest in industry leaders to sponsor
these types of activities.
About Fintech Atlanta
FinTech Atlanta is a coalition of companies (from Fortune 500s
to startups) and organizations working to cement Atlanta as the
recognized global capital of financial technology. The group’s
priorities are to fund and fuel efforts to RECRUIT, RETAIN and
EXPAND businesses and jobs across the FinTech ecosystem in
metro Atlanta and the state of Georgia.
Christopher Justice
President, Global Gaming Solutions business at Global Payments
Christopher Justice rings over 20 years of experience delivering results for high growth payments companies.
As the President of the Global Gaming Solutions business for Global Payments, Chris is responsible for
leading the company’s strategy and execution of omni-channel solutions across the globe that streamline a
player’s ability to play.
10

EXPERT INTERVIEW
The Power of Co-creation in Payments
>Co•cre•a•tion /kəʊˈkriːˈeɪʃ(ə)n/ *verb*: The co-operative
and collaborative process of creating a product by multiple
external parties.
PCM: Winston, your work is in an
exciting and fast changing area of
technology, involving both FinTechs
and ecosystems. One topic which
you are very passionate about is ‘Cocreation’.
Can you define ‘Co-creation’
for us and explain its relevance to the
world of Payments?
Winston: Passionate is a nice way to
lead into this topic, as co-creation is an
emotive word. Our society has become
more specialised and complex – and our
industry has responded by extending its
capabilities through corporate mergers,
innovation labs and by cultivating
talent. But many of these acquisitive
approaches are resource intensive, time
consuming and largely irreversible. At
IBM and many other large corporates,
we have been investigating more
dynamic and loosely coupled ways for
institutions to co-operate over a defined
period; to meet an objective and be able
to easily disengage.
We have come to call this new way of
working as co-creation.
The precursor to co-creation
was Alliances, where competing
organisations came together to achieve
economies of scale, or non-competitors
coming together to share expertise and
capabilities. As the economic pressures
changed and skills gain from these
alliances evolved, these co-operations
became more intertwined and started to
generate new products and intellectual
property (IP) – leading to co-creation.
In its fundamental form, the process of
co-creation can be broken down into
three phases – Prospecting, Build &
Commercialisation.
The Prospecting phase begins with
identifying and substantiating the idea.
It can be simple ideas or elaborate
visions for complex products or services.
It results in one or more candidate
solutions and a high-level assessment of
the market potential. This is followed by
the Build phase which finalises the cocreation
partnership to reflect technical,
economic/financial, and IP ownership
aspects, along with a business plan
and the construction of a Minimum
Viable Product (MVP). The final phase
of Commercialisation takes the MVP
through the rest of the product lifecycle
to meet market ready status; defining the
marketing, sales, operation and support
for the co-created solution.
I have found Co-creation to be ideal for
situations with a complex environment,
many participants, strong competitive
forces and processes that extend over a
long value chain. All are characteristics
that you would recognise in the Payment
industry. We have a myriad of participants
from acquirers, processors, issuing
banks, card networks, independent
sales organizations to gateways.
The complexity of products such as
traditional payment cards combined
with recent alternative technologies
such as payment enabled refrigerators
to smartwatches is spurring changes
in consumer and corporate payment
behaviours. Likewise, blockchain
technology is on the brink of changing
how consumer and corporate payments
are verified.
11

EXPERT INTERVIEW
PCM: I can see the relevance of cocreation
and no doubt, there are
challenges in introducing this new
way of working. What are some of the
challenges and considerations facing
organisations who are looking to
adopt Co-creation as a way of working
in the digital ecosystem?
Winston: Several inhibitors to the
development of co-creation partnerships
have been identified. You will probably
not be surprised to learn that most of the
inhibitors appear and impact the very
beginning of the process, where risk and
uncertainties are at its highest. These
are my top five considerations when
embarking on co-creation.
Perception – The perceived value of
contribution and competition between
potential partners is the immediate
hurdle to a possible co-creation
partnership. Each party must bring a
level of perceived value to initiate the
partnership discussion and establish
a common vision. On the other hand,
each party must be aware of its
competitive position and scrutiny from
anti-competitive regulators.
Legal clarity - The protection of partners’
existing IP together with clarity of
ownership of newly created IP are
important areas to put in place at the
beginning of the co-creation process.
However, we must recognise that the
process of innovation is naturally
shrouded with uncertainty and makes
it difficult to determine clarity upfront.
A governance model that allows for
the systematic and periodic review
of IP ownership with allowance for
adjustment would be a prudent model
that avoids acrimonious separations.
Organisation – Financial institutions are
organised, at best, to be competitive.
Roles & responsibilities in the co-creation
space will be unclear. In defining new
roles and responsibilities it would be
prudent to take best practises from other
industries e.g. pharmaceutical, which
has a longer history of co-creation. The
goal is to adapt as the creation process
progresses.
Financials – Establishing an internal
business case for innovation is tricky.
With the added dimension of external
parties and unproven revenue models,
the effort is complex and sensitive. It
should be approached with the context
like R&D, where the long shots are
undertaken with the expectation that
not everything will pay off.
Methods and skills – As expected
when breaking new grounds, the lack
of defined process, techniques, and
reusable assets suited for co-creation
is a challenge. The challenge is not
with the technology, but primarily with
the governance and decision making
process between different corporate
entities.
PCM: Despite these challenges, are
you seeing evidence of adoption and
success?
Winston: Yes, there has been a growing
number of success cases, particularly
in the pharmaceutical industry, where
such collaborative corporate practices
first started. Nevertheless, we have
started to see evidence of an increasing
maturity within financial services.
Within the Payments domain there are
several interesting on-going initiatives
which I am involved in. One financial
institution is leveraging the FinTech
ecosystem to externalise parts of their
innovation function, as they work
together to integrate the FinTech’s
functionality – effectively finishing ‘partbaked’
solutions and deploying solutions
faster than an agile development team
can.
A second financial institution is working
with IBM to build a payment data
processing utility which will provide
analytical data services in a post GDPR
regulatory environment – not only
providing a GDPR related service, but
also an avenue to monetise data from
the data controlling company.
PCM: What are some other candidate
areas in Payments that would be
suited for co-creation?
Winston: Co-creation is a great way to
diversify innovation risk. I believe that
using the co-creation approach to tackle
some of the Payment industry’s major
uncertainties would be ideal. I would
love to see more co-creation initiatives
address
a. Emerging bifurcation of
payments between retail and online
payments even as the payment
ecosystem becomes more complex. A
co-creation partnership between the
large merchants, with the ability to
influence customers’ payment choices,
and financial institutions who own the
payment rails could see new hybrid
payment products that bridge this
divide.
b. Monetisation of payments
data. Data streams are more valuable
when they are granular (e.g. product
level data) and multidimensional (e.g.
location data), making data cooperation
and partnerships critical to successful
monetisation of data. The clarity of data
ownership afforded through co-creation
will be an additional help.
c. New products and business
models arising from the new PSD2
related payment value chain. The
arrival of Open Banking APIs and Third
Party Payment Service Providers (TPP)
is a rich opportunity for incumbents
to experiment with co-creating new
business models, products and services.
12

EXPERT INTERVIEW
PCM: What are some upcoming
developments that IBM and yourself
are working on which would mature
this new topic of Co-creation?
Winston: My focus on advancing cocreation
has been on two fronts. Firstly,
as a member of IBM’s Academy of
Technology, with its charter to study
and promote technical growth, we have
been working with many organisations
to identify and define best practices
to accelerate the development of cocreation.
To date, it has provided us with
a solutions classification, an anatomy of
the co creation partnerships and lessons
learnt about barriers and criteria for
success and a risk assessment method.
We are currently working on expanding
its work to provide further insights into
root cause, architecture implications,
governance and assets.
Secondly, there is a growing number of
Regulatory and Industry Sandboxes.
An Industry Sandbox is a new concept
designed for multiple corporates, startup
and established companies alike
to come together to test and validate
solutions in an off-market environment.
I believe strongly in the role of Industry
Sandboxes in advancing co-creation
capabilities and have been working
with many industry participants and
regulators to define and promote its
use. In my opinion, these kinds of
sandboxes are prime environments for
cultivating co-creation – providing all
parties with common technology stack,
re-usable architecture assets and most
importantly, transparency amongst its
participants.
I expect to see sandboxes become part
and parcel of everyday co-creation.
About IBM
IBM is a global cloud platform and
cognitive solutions company, which
has continually evolved over the past
century to remain at the forefront of
technological innovation.
Our capabilities in data and analytics,
cloud, mobile, social and security have
helped the UK evolve to become one
of the world’s most digitally advanced
nations.
This digital revolution empowers us and
our clients to gather and analyse data
in ways that have never been possible
before—helping UK organisations unlock
new insights and usher in a new era of
cognitive business.
Winston Yong
Chief Architect at IBM Industry Platform
Winston is an executive architect at IBM with over 20 years of financial
services and consulting experience. As a chief architect in IBM’s business
unit which specialises in using blockchain, cognitive, and cybersecurity
capabilities to establish digital platforms and ecosystems; he provides
technical leadership to IBM’s clients to drive innovation in the financial
services sector.
13

Spotlight
You think you have what it takes to start a
business in a super-hot market?
PCM takes a close look at some of the most
innovative and promising startup companies in the
payment industry.

STARTUP SPOTLIGHT
Funderbeam: the world’s first “start-up
stock exchange”– built on blockchain
The team at Funderbeam
PCM: Tell us about Funderbeam. How did this idea come
to be?
Kaidi: The beginning of Funderbeam goes all the way back to
2013, when we started to play with the idea of a trading game.
This was a stock market game for young adults to make all
their investment mistakes in a virtual world instead of going
to the main markets and losing money.
At the same time, we had been seeing how small and medium
size enterprises struggle to fund their growth and how their
access to capital was limited, particularly cross-border. So we
started to think: what if instead of a game, we create something
real?
The first screenshots were drawn, some research was done
and then it was clear to the whole team that there would be no
game — there will be a global start-up stock market.
PCM: Why is it called Funderbeam?
Kaidi: Funderbeam consists of 3 words - “Founder” or
“Funding” and “Beam”. When we first cre-ated Funderbeam,
we help founders and investors find each other, and the “beam”
express-es the help in this eternal search.
PCM: Why is Funderbeam needed?
Kaidi: There’s the fundamental problem with investments into
private companies. Early stage in-vestors are keen to support
startups, but there is basically no liquidity. It demands loads
of funds and patience, does not allow crowd (read: startup
fans) to join the investments and deals are pretty much
local. Besides this data to make investments or follow the
invest-ments is pretty much hectic. So Funderbeam has built
investing&trading&data service to solve this.
PCM: What makes Funderbeam different?
Kaidi: Funderbeam is the world’s first “start-up stock
exchange”–built on blockchain. We allow founders to raise
capital more efficiently, from investors all over the world,
and most im-portantly, we allow investors to easily trade
their investments, meaning that they no longer are forced to
make a commitment that ties them down for years and years.
(the estimate is around 9 years on average for early stage
investments.)
On top of this, we offer the best data intelligence for researching
early stage companies, and it’s completely free. This allows
investors to research the industries that they are in-vesting
into, and benchmark their potential cases to other companies.
PCM:What were some of your biggest challenges for
launching this business?
Kaidi: When you are trailblazing through new territory, there
are always an abundance of chal-lenges that you have to
overcome. When—as in our case—you are creating innovation
in the financial sector, one of the main challenges is regulation.
However, in our case, we also see this as our biggest strength:
We are working directly with the regulator, and being a regulated
platform is what makes us attractive compared to the ICOs
that have been the craze of 2017 so far. Kaidi, our CEO, was the
head of Nasdaq Tallinn before she founded Funderbeam, and
our other Co-founder Urmas has worked as a regulator himself.
PCM: Tell us about your expansion plans and how you go
about choosing the next region you expand into?
Kaidi: Our expansion is related to the strong local partner. It
may be stock exchange, accelerator, some VC fund or regulator
15

STARTUP SPOTLIGHT
itself. So far we have been successful with partnering up strong
players and work on the next ones as we speak.
As an example, we launched a partnership with Zagreb Stock
Exchange, and we have had amazing results in the region based
on thins.
PCM: What are the 3 things you want people to know about
your company?
Kaidi: At Funderbeam, we like to say, “Imagine if Bloomberg,
Angellist and Nasdaq had a baby”. This is what people need to
know: We are 3-in-1, combining the three essential parts of
fos-tering growth: Data, Access to capital/investment cases,
and liquidity.
PCM:Any exciting news / announcements you would like
to share?
Kaidi: Two things:
1) We just reached 1000 trades on our secondary market.
With this we have proved to the whole world that there is
liquidity in startup market.
2) Next week, we’ll be pitching at The European
Parliament for the “European Fintech Awards”. Wish us luck!!
Kaidi Ruusalepp
Founder & CEO at Funderbeam
Kaidi is former CEO of Nasdaq Tallinn Stock
Exchange and of the Central Securities Depository.
Co-Founder of Estonian Service Industry
Association. Member of Startup Europe Advisory
Board at European Commission. A lawyer by
training, she co-authored the Estonian Digital
Signatures Act of 2000 -- landmark legislation
that enables secure digital identities and, in turn,
the country’s booming electronic economy. She
is founder of the blockchain-based global stock
exchange Funderbeam.
16

Payment Collective
To get a more complete view on the all
businesses in the payments ecosystem, in this
rubric PCM showcases how merchants deal
with payments and fintech challenges.

Bas Winkel
Director Performance Management & Financial Operations at bol.com
Bas joined bol.com in 2004 to scale up the Logistics department with 50% (from two to three employees.
Up to 2007 he worked on various process improvement projects focusing on more grip on the supply chain
and planning of incoming goods. In 2007 he started leading the ‘Financial Operations’ team, responsible for
all payment- and order processing and fraud detection. This team has grown to over 50 FTE both Business
and IT, still focusing on process stability and reduction/ automation of all waste. The volume has grown
to over 50 million transactions in 2016.
Bas also leads the ‘Performance Management’ team, responsible for managing over 16.000 partners that
are active at bol.coms marketplace (30 FTE). Monitoring the behavior with automation is key to scalable
growth of this business model (with a turnover share of 30% in 2016).
Before bol.com Bas worked at Free Record Shop as a consultant, on various assignments in the Financial
department.

Payment Collective - The story of a
Merchant with bol.com
PAYMENT COLLECTIVE
PCM: As an eCommerce merchant what are the most
important factors that influence your selection for a
Payments partner?
Bas: We always first focus on customer/ user demand and then
think of the best way to meet those needs. The Dutch/Belgian
payment method landscape is fairly simple and you only need
three payment methods to broadly meet customers demand.
Three things are important here: reach, conversion and cost.
It only makes sense to offer payment methods that are in
demand, that have a fast conversion and that are fairly priced.
We only use PSP’s for all card payment methods, because we
do not wish to be held back by all compliance rules imposed
by PCI. All other methods are either a direct connect to a
bank (iDEAL) or a complete in-house solution (for payment
after delivery).What we seek in a partner for payments is
an extremely high skillset in automation/ IT for instance to
integrate seamlessly on our payment page. This next to off
course reliability in the services and good support from both
sales and operations teams.
PCM: What challenges do you face currently when it comes
to Payments processing?
Bas: The landscape is changing rapidly in both innovation
(startups filling in gaps that large financial institutions left
untouched) and regulation. PSD2 is currently a big question
mark in terms of what the demands will be on our business
(e.g. do we need to change anything to keep doing what we do).
It is not a good sign that in the Netherlands the implementation
deadline of January will not be met. It was moved to “spring”,
which is a fairly undefined period. Yet again, no certainty for
businesses which is harmful.
PCM: How can PSPs help in overcoming these challenges?
Bas: Everybody in the financial domain/ fintech industry
should gather and team up or seek connection to influence
the policy makers. PSP’s could play a defining role here, but
also industry associations could fill that need.
PCM: What is the meaning of the concept “co-creation”
to you and how do you see bol.com benefiting from it?
Have you implemented this concept in your line of work
yet, how?
Bas: “Co-creation” is finding new ways with (a) partner(s) to
meet customer needs and keep within the PCI or regulatory
boundaries. An example is a credit card implementation we
did with Ingenico a couple of years ago. Together we made
a custom integration to make the customer feel at bol.com,
whilst all credit card data is stored at Ingenico. Within the PCI
limits we made the most customer friendly flow possible at that
time. At this moment it is time for a revamp, as technological
possibilities have evolved and there are now better ways to
achieve a seamless flow for our customers using card payments.
PCM: Tell us about a dream payment concept that will
change how people pay online for products? And do you
see this happening in the future?
Bas: Payments should not be a barrier from a customer
perspective. It is all about trust, convenience and loyalty.
Ideally, a customer does not need to do any payment
transaction when shopping. They can pay whenever and
wherever they want. It is also not limited to “online”. From a
loyalty perspective it would be awesome if customers could
also pay at a pickup in a store using their mobile phone that is
linked to their bol.com account and payment options.
PCM: If that “dream concept” ever happens and gets
implemented in your operations, how will it affect your
payment operations? What would be the advantages and
disadvantages?
Bas: More convenience means less barriers when paying,
means higher fraud risk. We are already excellent at finding
en reducing fraud, but in future this needs to evolve to selflearning
algorithms that can reduce risk and at the same time
widen the convenience for customers.
PCM: Finally, what are a few words of advice you would like
to tell professionals who are looking to get into payments
and more specifically payments from the merchant end?
Bas: Always focus on the need of your customer (in this case
the merchant). Medium to large business have different needs
than small to medium size merchants. Better to choose one of
these groups to keep that focus. Offer only regional payment
methods that have reach, conversion and fair cost. Evolve to
a tech company first and payments second.
About bol.com
Since its launch in 1999, bol.com has been one of the most
popular stores in the Netherlands and Belgium. Due to its wide
selection, excellent service and convenient shopping, bol.com
enjoys the confidence of approximately 6.5 million customers in
the Netherlands and Belgium. This appreciation is reflected in
the many awards bol.com has won. In March 2016, for example,
bol.com was pronounced ‘Best Web Store in the Netherlands’. In
addition, shoppers voted bol.com ‘Best Online Department Store
in the Netherlands’ and ‘Best Web Store in Belgium’ in both 2015
and 2016. With a selection of nearly 15 million products, all of
these customers keep finding what they’re looking for. Bol.com
offers the largest selection within dozens of specialty stores,
including books and e-books in Dutch and other languages,
music, movies, games, electronics, toys, jewelry, watches, baby
products, gardening and DIY products, as well as everything for
the home, pets, sports, leisure and personal care. Bol.com is
part of Ahold Delhaize.
19

WORKSHOPS
Payment Services
Directive 2
(PSD2)
Pending Challenges and
Hidden Opportunities
Payments & Cards Network’s Group PSD2 workshop is
designed to dive deeper into the business and opportunities
side of PSD2 and give attendees an understanding of how
PSD2 will affect their business and what they can do.
GET IN TOUCH NOW
Andrew Mullineux
Business Leader Contracts - Payments | FinTech
andrew@teampcn.com
+31 20 3030 257

Executive Profiles
In this rubric we are introducing inspiring
professionals of the financial technology industry
and look into their careers and ambitions. This is
a collaboration in partnership with Atlanta Trend.

EXECUTIVE PROFILES
Elavon’s Jamie
Walker
by Robert Green
Elavon CEO Jamie Walker attributes much of his success to
the wonderful upbringing he obtained from his parents. “My
mother taught discipline and my father taught me how to
problem solve,” he says. “Best of all, I was allowed to make
mistakes and learn from them in a stable environment.”
Jamie Walker was born and grew up in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, attending Chestnut Hill Academy preparatory
school from kindergarten through 12th grade. “I was a big math
guy in school and I loved physics,” he says, “so I’ve always been
more of a fact based person.” Walker’s father was an executive
with PNC Bank where he ran its ATM business and his mother
worked as an event planner. In his school years, he played ice
hockey and baseball.
Because he wanted a change in location after high school,
Walker looked at two colleges in the south – Washington &
Lee and Emory. “Frankly, Washington & Lee’s cafeteria looked
exactly like the one in my high school and that made my
18-year-old brain think that it wouldn’t be enough of a change
for me,” he says, “plus I knew that I would be playing baseball
at Emory.” Moving to Atlanta, he majored in Accounting and
Marketing. Upon graduation, he went into public accounting
with Ernst & Young in 1999.
“I got great training at EY,” says Walker. “I learned how to
navigate through an organization, how to manage my own
time and how to pay constant attention to details.” His first
client with EY was a payment processor based in Atlanta called
Nova Information Systems. “I wasn’t exclusive on Nova, but I
probably gave them 60% of my time,” he says. In May of 2001,
Walker got an unexpected offer from the CFO of Nova to join
his team as a permanent employee. “It was an exciting offer
because Nova was growing so fast, but I needed to take time to
decide whether or not to leave a career in public accounting,”
he said. “I decided to take the offer, but before joining Nova
was acquired by U.S. Bank.
Walker immediately went into the Financial Operations
Group where he had eight people working for him. The first
major job had to do with the purchase of Nova by U.S. Bank.
“I volunteered to spend time at U.S. Bank headquarters in
Minneapolis working on the integration of finance. The year
I spent going up there was very helpful in my getting to know
the company and people,” he says.
By 2002, he had taken over the entire Financial Operations
Group and had 60 people working for him. “We were growing
rapidly in Europe,” he says. “In 2003 we did three large
acquisitions in the UK, Poland and Norway. This doubled the
size of the company in Europe and I spent 75% of my time over
the next 18 months in Europe.”
By this time, Walker had become the Senior Vice President of
the Financial Operations Group and was setting up a Global
Financial Operations Group so that he could consolidate
finances from all countries under one shared service. In 2005,
the company bought Citibank’s European card portfolio, which
was quite large. “I was spending even more time than ever in
Europe,” he says.
“We were extremely busy during this time period and I have to
say I learned a lot from my direct boss, CFO Steve Stevenson,”
Walker says. “He was very honest and transparent. He taught
me how to make tough decisions. I also learned that you have
to have the right people working for you. It’s impossible to do
everything yourself.”
In 2008, when Stevenson left Elavon, Walker became CFO.
Walker had developed a great relationship with then CEO
Stuart Harvey because they had worked together on numerous
acquisitions. “He coached me a lot and helped me to grow,” he
says.
It goes without saying that the major event of his early years as
CFO of Elavon were taken up by the financial crisis. “I think we
managed it pretty well,” says Walker. “U.S. Bank didn’t have a
single losing quarter, nor did we have to do any
22

EXECUTIVE PROFILES
layoffs. Everyone at U.S. Bank took a 5% pay cut, but I think
that actually helped us preserve our culture. We’ve always been
an ‘all in this together’ kind of workplace,” he says. Elavon did
make moves during this time, however, venturing into Spain
and Latin America and also starting their own global gateway
or e-business.
In late 2015, Walker was selected to become the Chief
Administrative Officer for Payments at U.S. Bank. “That move
really took me out of Elavon operations,” he says. “Instead, my
job was to look at strategy for the next three years in payments
and figure out the opportunities to grow. I got to step back and
look at things from a high level. Essentially, I was taking an
analyst’s view of the company,” he says.
Although he knew that he wanted to become a CEO one day, he
didn’t expect the chance to come so soon. Elavon CEO Simon
Haslam decided to leave the company at the end of 2016 and the
opportunity presented itself. After doing an executive search,
U.S. Bank selected Walker to become the CEO of Elavon in
February of this year.
As CEO of the company, Walker is especially proud to recite
some of the company’s main accomplishments. “Elavon is
the fifth largest merchant acquirer in the US and the sixth
largest in Europe. We have a vast distribution network through
many large banks and other distributors. Most of all, we have
one single platform which allows greater profitability for our
shareholders,” he says. Elavon is also much further ahead of
their competitors on the EMV conversion.
In the future, Walker expects that the company will focus more
on ecommerce and card-not-present transactions. They will
invest more in new innovation via their internal “start-up,”
known as the “Grove” and will probably be more acquisitive.
Elavon has a low percentage of big box retailers,” and that has
become a blessing at this point,” he says. “These retailers are
struggling and so are the owners of the real estate beneath
them.”
The company’s main vertical concentrations are airlines,
hospitality and healthcare. They are number one in airlines
and number five in healthcare. “I’m sure that we benefit from
the fact that the transactions we tend to focus on are not easy
transactions,” he says. “There tends to be a higher barrier to
entry in these verticals.” Things are going well for the company.
For all his success, Walker makes it a point to give credit to
the executives who came before him and set an example that
he tries to follow today.
“Shailesh Kotwal our vice chairman of payments has pushed
my focus and drive towards building a unique value proposition
for our customers through our combined strengths. Also his
ability to ask the tough questions and hold me accountable has
prepared me for the role,” Walker says.
“Pam Joseph was CEO and Chairman of Elavon and also Vice
Chairman of U.S. Bank and working for her was great. Pam
was extremely loyal to her people – she took care of you. She
expected a lot,” he says, “you didn’t want to ever be unprepared
– but she took care of you and pushed you at the same time.”
“Mike Passilla was CEO of Elavon in recent years and he was
such a decent, wonderful guy, very genuine. I learned a lot
about sales from Mike, among other things,” he says.
At 41, Walker is probably the youngest CEO of a major payment
processor in the U.S., but he feels certain that his age is
irrelevant. “I’ve been in this business nearly two decades,” he
says, “and I’m very confident about the future.”
Walker has now lived in Atlanta since college and loves it
here. He is married and has two boys who attend Woodward
Academy.
23

PAYMENTS
ARE GLOBAL.
WE MAKE
INVESTING
GLOBAL TOO.
Investing in start-ups is local, expensive and has no liquidity.
On Funderbeam, we allow you to invest into great companies
cross-border, and as the first platform in the world,
we also let you trade your investments.
Meet our community of investors
from almost 100 countries on Funderbeam.com
.com

HOT JOBS
Hot Jobs
HEAD OF GLOBAL DIGITAL
CUSTOMER ACQUISITION
Rome, Italy
PAYMENTS & FRAUD MANAGER -
OPERATIONS
Dublin, Ireland
PROGRAMME MANAGER
Munich, Germany
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT DIRECTOR
EAST & SOUTHERN AFRICA
Nairobi, Kenya
SALES & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
EXECUTIVE
Malta
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
DIRECTOR
Atlanta, United States
DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
SYSTEMS INTEGRATORS
San Mateo, United States
DIRECTOR / VICE PRESIDENT OF
SALES, EASTERN REGION
New York, United States
SENIOR BACKEND DEVELOPER-
BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS
Dusseldorf, Germany
PSD2 CONSULTANTS -
BUSINESS & TECHNICAL
Amsterdam, Netherlands
HEAD OF APAC
Hong Kong
HEAD OF EMEA
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
These are the latest job opportunities we have available!
For more information please visit www.teampcn.com/jobs
or check out our international Job Board at www.payment.jobs
25

Events
EVENTS
Barcelona, Spain
The Exchange Summit is the leading event dedicated to E-Invoicing
and bringing together experienced practitioners and innovative
strategists to provide an in-depth learning and networking experience.
Meet and network with experts, thought leaders and professionals in
E-Invoicing, Purchase to Pay, E-Procurement, Supply Chain Finance,
AR/AP.
9-10
9-11
Discount Code: PayCN150
Copenhagen, Denmark
Shoptalk Europe is the only large pan-European event for innovation
in retail and ecommerce, and covers the evolution of how consumers
discover, shop and buy. They fill a major industry gap by bringing
together over 2,000 innovators, including 250+ world-class speakers,
from all of Europe, all ecosystem stakeholders and all industry verticals.
London, United Kingdom
Discount Code: GMPCN15
The Global Money Transfer Summit, the most recognised conference
in the remittance industry and the major industry event will gather
money transfer professionals from across the globe to discuss the
challenges facing the industry head on. This is the remittance industry’s
chance to not only hear from our influential speakers, but also network
with their fellow industry peers.
12-14
10-11
12-14
22-25
Discount Code: PCN250
Las Vegas, United States
Money20/20 US is the world’s most important event covering
payments and financial services innovation for connected commerce
at the intersection of mobile, retail, marketing services, data and
technology. With 11,000+ attendees from 4,500 Companies and 85
Countries, including 1,700+ CEOs and 400+ speakers, expected at
our 2017 US event, Money20/20 is critical to realizing the vision of
disruptive ways in which consumers and businesses manage, spend
and borrow money.
26

Payments & Cards
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