In a recent webinar, Brian Billingsley (Modo Chief Revenue Officer) walked us through how Modo can help you move your payment operations to the cloud, reduce your cost of payments acceptance, and, most importantly, regain control of your payments data and money flows.

Let’s dive in. 

Constantly Changing Economy

We live in a world that is full of constant change (and we mean constant). You have to keep a watchful eye on where volumes are shifting throughout the globe to ensure you’re ahead of the curve. Just look at the world right now as we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic - online payment methods are becoming more and more vital to business. 

Not only is the current COVID-19 pandemic something that has turned the world upside down, but there are new regulations and standards being created all the time that were making payments complex even before the pandemic. And there is a growing number of payment methods that are preferred as you move to different areas of the world, such as Boleto. Connections to all of these payment methods can become a huge driver of cost and require a lot of technical resources. As you move up the “optimization curve of payments,” the complexity of your payments stack continues to grow as does the need for more flexible infrastructure.

“It’s amazing how payments can really become a second business if you’re not careful, and can become a strategic advantage. But it can become a big driver of cost and focus away from your core business. And before Modo, there hasn’t been something there that allows you to really execute on your core business, but still hold the levers of making sure you can manage payments exactly how you want them.” - Brian Billingsley, Modo CRO

We’ve spoken with merchants who are running on legacy systems that are 50, 60, 70 years old. The #paymentsgeeks at these companies are trying to keep up with the complex world of payments without breaking the legacy infrastructure on which they’re currently running. Flexibility is vital for these merchants when they want to add a backup processor or new payment methods.

How Does Modo Ensure Payments Flexibility?

Modo works with enterprises in three key ways:

1. Moving to the cloud 
2. Reducing costs 
3. Regaining control of payments data

Cloud

Modo makes it much easier to take the payments portion of your business to the cloud. We are “bank-grade” (really). We have Bank of America & Deutsche Bank on our client list, and have been through the due diligence ringer to ensure our security is the best-of-the-best. Moving to the cloud enables flexibility and scalability in your payments infrastructure while giving you the newest technology and making use of economies of scale.

Cost

We want to help you manage your transactional cost and your overall cost of acceptance. Modo makes it easy for you to use your brand to get the best pricing, cost, and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) from your payments processors. We are driving marketplace interactions by opening up the world of payment service providers (PSPs). We are reducing your overall cost of payments acceptance by reducing the sizes of teams needed to work on building, managing and maintaining payment integrations.

Control

Last, but not least, we give you back control over your data. You get to control it, but Modo takes all the risk of securing those money flows and compliance requirements.

“We help our clients have their cake & eat it too.” - Brian Billingsley, Modo CRO

The Payments Landscape

Before today, you had to make a choice between whether you wanted to build your payments stack in-house or whether to use a one-stop payments shop. There are a few kinds of companies who have built in-house. There are those like Airbnb who have HUGE payments teams dedicated to building payments operations internally. And there are companies who have gone up the “optimization curve of payments” by starting off with one processor, then realizing they needed another, then another when moving to another country. Fast forward 20 years and they have 20-30 integrations into their systems that pull focus away from their core business.

Other companies go to a one-stop shop (companies like Adyen). These one-stop shop solutions in many cases have great global reach, but you end up paying a premium for those solutions because they hold, touch, and move money and are going to be involved in foreign exchange. One-stop shops also don’t offer proprietary payment methods like loyalty or an invoice or tab system from a B2B perspective.

With Modo, you get the flexibility and control of an in-house build along with all the benefits of outsourcing the more complex parts of payments to a third party. Modo offers a single API that allows enterprises to quickly integrate PSPs and payment methods, and do it in a flexible way. Modo supports proprietary payment methods like loyalty.

The Modo Difference

Here is a quick rundown of how Modo stands out from other payment offerings.

Pricing: Modo charges a flat SaaS service fee. 

Customer Data Ownership: You control your data, and Modo takes responsibility to make sure it’s secure and tokenized. 

Deployment: We can deploy quickly to turn on new processors and payment methods. 

Routing: Modo can set up dynamic routing options (debit routing, etc) within hours. 

Provider Economics: We’ve purposefully remained neutral in the payments marketplace and don’t hold, touch, or move your money. Modo doesn’t benefit if transactions go to one provider over another, and we want providers to compete for your business. 

Technology: Modo is cloud-native and hosts your payment infrastructure in the cloud.

Your Bank-Grade Payments Orchestration Stack

Modo’s platform is made up of five different components:

1. API
2. Connectors
3. Vault
4. Modal (embedded payment choice form)
5. Tenant Portal
   
   

Each of these elements serves a unique function inside of our payments platform and are brought together to give our clients a seamless view into their payment operations.

During the webinar, Brian walked the participants through a live demo of our online store, /Checkout API, tenant portal, and our COIN® technology. If you want to get your own walk through of the demo, reach out to us here.

In the Tenant Portal, we allow clients to see all of their transactions (regardless of channel or payments partner) balanced, to the penny, in real time. The COIN Map visually shows major trends in your payments business - where most of your volume is coming from, what your fees are, the sizes of your orders, and more. You can also drill into the details of each transaction to see order details and manage the transaction. All of your transactions from every processor and every payment method are shown in one single portal which alleviates a lot of the back office mess seen in refunds, disputes, chargeback and other issues.

Take Back Control

Because Modo is not a PSP and does not hold, touch, or move money ourselves, we are wholly committed to getting you the best value for each and every transaction every time. We encourage you to route between different processors, find the payment methods that make the most sense for your business and customers, and use the insights Modo gives you to make better decisions about your payments operations. Modo puts the control back in your hands by making sure you remain the owner of your payments data and money flows (while Modo handles the security, tokenization, and compliance issues). You get unprecedented insights into each transaction to know what is happening with your payments from all of your providers. Modo’s flexible cloud infrastructure lets you choose what payment providers you want to work with and allows you to quickly add new providers as you grow and scale.

Modo is your bank-grade payments orchestration stack, and we’re ready to help you take back control of your payments, reduce your cost of payments acceptance, and move payments to the cloud. Are you ready? Let’s do this!

Want to see a demo of your own? Reach out to Modo to schedule a demo using our contact form.