By Lynn Holland, Chief Solutions Officer
Having been in the payments business for longer than I care to admit, and the opportunity to join Modo, the bank-grade payments orchestration stack, is one that I am especially excited about. Over my career, I have worked with most participants in the payments ecosystem including consumers, merchants, banks, acquirers, PSP’s, processors and value added service providers. There have been consistent shared pain points between these participants - pain points that I believe Modo has solved.
For the consumer, payments are all about convenience and security. Merchants and banks have to deliver products that make the consumer payments experience as frictionless and secure as possible. As a result of this pressure, we have seen ever growing complexity driven by the need for rapid innovation and increased regulation.
In Modo, I see a platform developed to address these complexity demons. As we see the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on how we live, the acceleration of payments towards digital technology has increased. The massive increase in delivery services, online order, and in store pick-up has further blurred the lines between the digital and physical shopping experience. As with any change in consumer behaviour, you see all of the fraud and security threats evolve to keep pace. The need for control and visibility into the payments ecosystem has never been greater.
As many companies are struggling to keep up with rapid technical change, Modo has developed a platform designed from its inception for cloud computing and interoperability. With Modo you have a microservices based architecture conceived and implemented to deliver on the benefits of a public cloud deployment model. While other solutions designed around monolithic patterns are now being ripped apart and glued back together in an attempt to support microservices and cloud deployment, Modo has this in its DNA. Another differentiator for Modo is their focus on maintaining best-in-class security while using restful APIs and open interoperability standards. This is important as companies begging to leverage the public cloud for payments and other applications that require strong security and compliance implementations.
The other demon that has long haunted businesses from the merchant to the bank is getting real-time visibility into and operable intelligence out of their payment systems. Many of the systems needed to process a payment from end-to-end are neither accessible nor capable of providing the information that organizations need to manage their business in real-time. For a merchant, having an accurate view of what has cleared, what will clear, what has settled, what is going to settle and what is reconciling with our providers is critical. Modo was conceived to provide this level of visibility and clarity into the underlying business as part of its core. The Modo COIN® is an embedded ledger system that is used to manage the state and lifecycle of transactions that gives unprecedented information and visibility to the state of payments in the platform. Modo changes the game by providing a user with easy integration to the businesses internal management and financial systems and with this visibility comes control over the payments ecosystem.
With Modo, not only do I see a scalable and secure financial transaction processing platform, but one that addresses the key weakness that is present in many of the solutions in the market today. The chance to help guide and mature this platform to help transform the payments process for our customers is one of the most exciting opportunities to come along for me. With the success that Modo has had with its early adopters, it has matured and is well positioned for growth.