COMMERCE NOW

Summary

On this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, Steve Kremer, Director of Sales in the Payments division at Diebold Nixdorf, and Sarah Grotta, Director of Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group, sat down with PaymentsJournal to discuss the most popular payment method, both in the United States and globally: Debit.  Listen in for a  discussion of why modernizing debit payments is crucial in both the banking and retail sectors.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/insights/blog/get-your-message-out

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/-/media/diebold/files/banking/insights/qa-faq/mindshare-payments-innovation.pdf

Related Links:

https://www.paymentsjournal.com/the-time-to-revitalize-debit-rails-is-now/

LinkedIn Profiles -

Steve Kremer

Sarah Grotta

Transcription: 

Speaker 1:

On this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, DN Steve Creamer, Director of Sales in the Payments Division joins the PaymentsJournal's, Ryan Mac, for a discussion on why modernizing debit payments is crucial in both the banking and retail sectors.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast. In here is your host, Ryan Mac

Ryan:

Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast, I'm your host Ryan Mac. Now, debit is the most popular form of payment in the US and globally and it is influenced by the growing popularity of digital payments and preferences of millennials. Now, it is projected that debit transactions will continue to grow and remain the highest transaction type of consumer payment. Now, modernizing these payment systems will become table stakes. And solutions that have reusable technology that can support multiple channels are key when implemented in phases, especially when starting with one that has the high rewards and low risks, AKA debit. To unpack this further, I'm joined by Steve Creamer, who is the Director of Sales for the Payments Division at Diebold Nixdorf and Sarah Grotta who is the Director of the Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisor Group. So, there's certainly a lot of information to unpack on today's episode.

Ryan:

So, without any further delays, let's start the show. So, Steve and Sarah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode. And I'm really excited to talk about our subject to hear today that's really focusing around debit because of all of the interesting news and statistics that we've started to see come out of just the debit side of the paintings' ecosystem here. Now, to get our conversation started here today, we've got this fantastic chart provided to us by Mercator Advisor Group that's taking a look at MasterCard and Visa Debit and prepaid volumes versus credit and charge card volumes in the United States. So, Steven, if you could, maybe you could kind of unpack this chart for our audience here today and maybe pull out some of the kind of the key highlights or what you find interesting of what this data is representing.

Steve:

Thanks, Ryan. In seeing this data, I really had to pause for a moment and let this information sink in. It certainly is very interesting that in United States, the dollar amount spent with debit cards increased by 14% in 2020, and also that debit card transactions continued to outpace credit cards two to one, the terms of number of transactions. We may all have our own personal bias on preference between debit and credit and some of us may have a preference for using credit over debit for certain types of transactions, but we need to be careful not to our own views, to administer relevance of the data on the continued strong debit usage.

Steve:

Did the impact of the pandemic and stimulus money have some impact on increase of debit usage in 2020? I think it did, but I also think that the pandemic also accelerated the consumer migration to digital payment channels and debit is still the most popular form of retail payment, and it's not going away at any time soon. Once you really look at the information that Sarah summarized so well, it really makes a lot of sense, especially when including the influence of younger generations that are growing in importance and how debit is leveraged on a global basis. Close to 83% of younger consumers use a debit card and not credit and that's understandable at their age. Many may have not had the ability to obtain credit, and they also seen or heard so many negative stories about how credit card debt that they formulate a consumer behavior outside of credit usage.

Steve:

Given the high percentage use of debit now, and with the ever-growing payment e-commerce options, we can really see why debit usage continues to grow. An important note is that the continued popular debit is by no means unique to United States. For instance, in India, I think there are 900 million debit cards versus only 55 million credit cards. And in Europe it varies by country, but debit continues to make a very, very strong showing. From a consumer convenience standpoint, we can see the advantages of using debit over other payment rails. And then finally for the retailer, there are real economic advantages of debit based processing solutions as debit interchange fees are typically much lower than for credit cards. I think at this point, it probably be good to turn over to Sarah and allow her to provide some additional insights into her report.

Sarah:

Yeah. Thanks so much for that. And really, I liked your overview, particularly the comparison with other countries. Certainly, I think the US is somewhat unique in its history, its legacy of being very credit card-focused that isn't necessarily the case around the world. And certainly, things like the economics play into that. The fact that particularly in the US, we really, really love those credit card rewards. So, it was kind of interesting, I agree, I think this was really pushed by the pandemic when we saw the debit card volumes for the first time tip over in above the credit card numbers. And let me clarify, looking at this chart, that we are looking at debit card purchases. We did make some calculations to extract some of the debit push payments, right? So, that would be MasterCard send or Visa Direct.

Sarah:

So, we're really looking at something closer to an apples-apples comparison of just debit card purchases from MasterCard and Visa in comparison to what's happening on the credit card side. So, I think as we look forward and as we start to see purchasing habits maybe coming back to something that looked a little bit more like pre-pandemic patterns, so more things like purchases for eating out purchases, for travel in particular, I think that we'll start to see the credit card numbers start to come back up again. But I do think for many of the reasons that you pointed out Steve, I think that we will still continue to see very, very strong debit card growth for the foreseeable future.

Ryan:

Steven and Sarah, thank you so much for that. Now, to kind of just recap a lot of what was said there, obviously historically, in the US we have seen debit cards outpace credit in terms of transaction volumes. But also, then as we were kind of pointing out, in 2020, we did see that percentage gap changed dramatically with debit card volume seeing that 14% growth over 2019 numbers. Now, Steven, as you pointed out, I think that there's a fair amount of that double digit growth was related and due to the pandemic. And as Sarah kind of stated there at the end that she foresees this growth in debit being a continuing trend. But beyond the pandemic, are there other reasons that you could kind of sight or maybe glean to, of why it is that debit may remain a preferred payment method of choice for consumers?

Steve:

Yeah. Ryan, I think that's a great question. And in that, I think it's always important to keep the customer experience in the forefront. And the thing about debit is that it's a 24/7 always-on experience. Consumers expect to seamlessly get cash out of, if they're using an ATM or if they're making a purchase, they expect it to be approved right away. And that's true if it's in-person or if it's a debit being used online. As noted in Sarah's report, 40% of debit transactions, I think in US were made in a card-not-present mode. So, consumers want to make sure their cards and data are safe and that they can quickly pay for what they want. But what we're hearing from our customers, both banks and retailers, but primarily the banks, are that the debit networks are being challenged with new payment types and they're spending a lot of time and money on the overall upkeep and maintenance of their debit networks.

Steve:

As you know, the debit system has been around since the early 1970s and many of the systems that are used to process these cards have really not changed since, or if they have, it's been for band aid updates for their old technology. Legacy debit payment platforms were designed to quickly and securely approve and process of payment or withdrawal, which has always been authenticated with a card. The future payments

Summary

On this episode of COMMERCE NOW Jens Audenaert, SVP/GM of Payments at Diebold Nixdorf, and Tim Sloane, VP of Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group sat down with PaymentsJournal to discuss the current trends in the banking industry and how traditional banks can use these trends to remain relevant in an industry full of new technology.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/insights/blog/blurring-the-line-between-transaction-and-payment 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/-/media/diebold/files/banking/insights/qa-faq/mindshare_cryptocurrency.pdf

Related Links:

https://www.paymentsjournal.com/traditional-banks-are-getting-a-digital-makeover/

LinkedIn Profiles -

Jens Audenaert

Tim Sloane

Transcription: 

Speaker 1:                        On this special episode of Commerce Now, DN's Jens Audenaert, SVP and GM of payments, joins Payment Journal's Ryan Mack to discuss how traditional banks are being forced to adapt in order to remain relevant in an industry full of new technology.

Speaker 2:                        [00:00:30] Welcome to the Payments Journal podcast. And here is your host, Ryan Mack.

Ryan Mack:                      Welcome to the Payments Journal podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Mack.

                                           Increasingly we're seeing the payment become implicit in the transactions of all kinds of services. To be explicit, the payment is being made invisible. You can get a ride, a coffee, and a lot more, without pulling out your cash or a credit card.

                                           As more and more services start to offer their [00:01:00] own payment schemes to ease friction for consumers, introduce loyalty, lower costs, and generate additional revenue streams, traditional banks, processors, and card issuers are being reduced or even eliminated. This trend heralds the tipping point in the ongoing struggle for banks and issuers to remain relevant. The new business model being forced upon the traditional banking stalwarts is making them rethink everything from time to market, to which emerging payment methods to accept.

                                           As payments become more frictionless, the banking industry struggles [00:01:30] with how to cultivate and maintain customer loyalty. Consumers can choose from multiple payment alternatives, even when their bank doesn't offer it as a service. So to unpack this topic in further detail, I have Jens Audenaert, who is the SVP and GM of payments at Diebold Nixdorf, and Tim Sloane, the VP of payments innovation at Mercator Advisor Group.

                                           There's certainly a lot to unpack on today's episode, so without any further delays, let's start the show.

                                           So Jens and Tim, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode, where [00:02:00] we're taking a deep dive into an important question that's going on in the industry, and one that I don't think I would've ever thought that I would have had to ask here, and it's banks maintaining relevancy in this new payments landscape.

                                           So Jens, I want to start with you for the first question. So taking a look at the payments industry, what are some of the key trends that you're seeing in banking and payments today?

Jens Audenaert:              Sure. And first of all, thanks Ryan for having me on the podcast, Tim, it's great to be here with you.

                                           I think when we think [00:02:30] about trends in the payment space, there's obviously a lot of them, but one of the key trends that we've been seeing for a number of years now is really the dramatic rise of digital payment vehicles and the associated transaction volumes. And like many things digital, that's been accelerated in the last 18 months because of the COVID pandemic. We've seen contactless transaction volumes go through the roof. But again, it's been an underlying foundational trend that we've seen for a number of years.

                                           And a lot of it has to with [00:03:00] consumer expectations, really. If you think about how people buy goods and services these days in many instances, you don't even think about the payment anymore. You can buy a coffee through an app, you can get a car service through an app. And so consumers have really started to expect these very seamless, integrated payment experiences.

                                           And I think that's very relevant for retail banks, because a lot of those experiences are being delivered by fintech, by neo-banks. And [00:03:30] so for retail banks, they really have to think through, how do we remain relevant when a consumer doesn't really necessarily associate their card or their primary bank with that payment transaction? That's obviously a threat to retail banks, but it's also an enormous opportunity for them to think through, how do we adapt in a way that we can actually offer these additional services to our consumers?

Tim Sloane:                      I totally agree with that. As payments become invisible and merchants want to make [00:04:00] payments invisible, you see the card on file volume starting to move to an environment where automatic acceptance is done. You also have voice payments taking place in an increasingly large environment, where they talk to their Amazon Alexa or their Google speaker, and they're asking for something to be delivered, it's delivered automatically, and the payment becomes invisible. So [00:04:30] how a financial institution can drive itself to be top of wallet in those environments is critical. And that's what's happening now. Further off, we see things shifting to IOT type payments where it's entirely automated and decisions are being made by the machine.

Ryan Mack:                      Yeah. And one thing to kind of point to there. I mean, Tim, you brought up in terms of invisible payments, and I certainly think that that is a very interesting component of this as well too. But every time I hear the term invisible [00:05:00] payments, I also think invisible brands as well too. Which, to Jens, you were talking about there as well too, kind of from a financial institution perspective. And it is okay, well, how do we ensure that our brand still remains relevant to our audience and our clients and our members today? So the next question then that I've got for you, Jens, if I could start with you, is how do you think banks will really maintain their stickiness with the consumers when the trend is really kind of moving away from, as we were talking about there, even being associated with the payment [00:05:30] part of it?

Jens Audenaert:              Yeah, it's a great question. And Tim, I loved how you phrased that as well.

                                           I think for a bank it's really around, when you think about remaining relevant, it's making sure that you're actually funding and processing those transactions for your consumers. And so it's really staying abreast and keeping up with the innovation that's expected of the banks.

                                           And sadly, if you think about the ever increasing rate of change in the space, if banks look internally, many banks are actually realizing that they have a decades old infrastructure, [00:06:00] old code, very monolithic, millions of lines of code, and it's really, really hard to adapt to the trends in the market. And so I think this is where banks really have to think around what's the infrastructure that I need so that I can very easily adapt to the changes that we see in the market and that I can actually meet consumer expectations. And that's really hard with the old technology.

                                           So this is where having technology that can be deployed in the cloud, if it's microservices, [00:06:30] architecture enabled and API first, things that are really easy to adapt, that's really what's going to be important here. At the end of the day, it's about being able to test and design and deploy new services for your consumers in a matter of weeks or months. And many retail banks today, that could be a process that takes over a year. And so it's really that agility that banks have to work on and have to look at when they think about modernizing their technology infrastructure.

Tim Sloane:                      I totally agree with you. If you take [00:07:00] a look at what it costs, when Uber was on the rise, you saw Capital One, Discover, Amex, offering $20 or more if a consumer would put their card into that mobile app. And that's a significant amount of money that they're trying to use marketing dollars to become top of wallet. But that's not sustainable. Those cards are going to churn, not just at the end of the card life, but when [00:07:30] lost, stolen, or something else happens and the card has to be replaced. And so if they haven't moved to a tokenized infrastructure that enables that card on file to remain a

Summary:
In this episode of COMMERCE NOW, Anja Popp and Bill Inzeo help you get to know your shopper types and offer the right customer journey.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/-/media/diebold/files/retail/insights/mindshare-shopper-journey.pdf

Related Links:

https://retailexperience.store/

LinkedIn Profiles -

Anja Popp

Bill Inzeo

Transcription: 

Jerry:                     Hello everyone and thanks for listening in. I would like to welcome today's guest Bill Inzeo Product and Solutions Global Strategy for Zebra Technologies. Welcome Bill. Thanks for joining me today.

Bill Inzeo:            Thank you for having me.

Jerry:                     And we're also fortunate to [00:00:30] have Anja Popp with us. Anya is our senior analyst in Market Intelligence here at Diebold Nixdorf. Thank you Anya for joining us.

Anja Popp:          Thank you, Jerry. It's my pleasure to be here.

Jerry:                     So let's get started. Retail in the shopping experience has changed tremendously during today's challenging environments. Some changes were brought on by technological advances with the now common mobile devices. Other changes were forced by a global pandemic as consumers rethink their own shopping needs. Regardless of the reason we've experienced accelerated changes to [00:01:00] the consumer and staff journeys that retailers need to contend with. Let's start with the technology portion. Are shoppers drawn to certain technologies that a retailer provides? Bill, what's your take?

Bill Inzeo:            Yeah, I think that's absolutely the case. Technologies that can provide really any level of convenience to the customers can be a draw and look no further than the checkout experience in retail in particular. There's customers that are going to select a retailer or certain retailers, not only for the types of products that they sell, but also for the [00:01:30] way in which they can actually conduct their shopping trip, especially in a post-pandemic environment where options like self-checkout are going to appeal to a subset of customers in a way that looks different today than it did in 2019, because there's a whole personal safety aspect and element to that decision-making.

Jerry:                     Interesting. Anja, what are your thoughts on it?

Anja Popp:          Yeah, that's a great question, Jerry. And thanks for the insight from Bill as well. I would say yes, shoppers are drawn to certain technologies. At least if retailers manage to build an experience [00:02:00] that corresponds with each shopper's core motivation behind adopting a solution. So maybe if I may add a little color to my response, so we were specifically digging into technology adoption in the grocery segment. We had 15,000 grocery shopper voices from 15 countries in there. And based on all these data points, we were working with Nielson as our research partner to conduct a segmentation analysis. And that analysis actually returned five core motivations that influence [00:02:30] shopper interest in retail technology. And that would be ease. So really ease of use, simplicity.

                                The self-sufficiency part. So some shoppers really have a core motivation to be very self-determined in their shopper journey. It's the information part or the information motivation, and both self-sufficiency and information are actually also have a strong correlation to efficiency by the way. There's trust, as the fourth motivator. And then there's new and exciting experiences. [00:03:00] There's also one strong obstacle that I see that retailers need to overcome for technology adoption. And that is simply long-standing habits. That always has to be put into the equation as well.

Jerry:                     Those are great insights. It's always interesting to see the march of technological advances and how it affects consumers and retailers alike. What about force changes now? COVID forced all consumers to rethink their needs, journeys, and what their expectations are. What's been impacted the most from this? Anja, what interesting findings [00:03:30] did we find with the Diebold Nixdorf/Nielsen survey learned from consumers? Did we see a change when we surveyed before COVID versus a year later?

Anja Popp:          I would say yes, absolutely. First of all, it seems that many retailers saw the sign of the times and they leveraged technology to provide a response to the challenges that were raised by the pandemic and consumers noticed that. So when we asked grocery shoppers about their experiences during the pandemic, the perception that retailers have promoted new technology based ways [00:04:00] to shop that protect people, like for example, self-checkout concepts, those usually ranked within the top three responses about these experiences that shoppers were making during the pandemic. Self-checkout, by the way, that was definitely a winning solution across the pandemic.

                                So we saw double digit shares of respondents that have turned to self-checkout for the first time during the COVID pandemic, even in countries where the technology is already established for quite a while. So maybe I can [00:04:30] use the US as an example here. So we saw well over 20% of our respondents stating that they started using self-checkouts since the pandemic, and that's bringing total adoption in the US up to over 80% actually. The core reason for that remaining small group of non-users was actually that they are simply used to the staff checkout. So you remember, I stated in my first response to you that longstanding habits are a motivation that retailers always have to put into the equation for designing successful [00:05:00] roll-outs.

Jerry:                     I really love this data and I get to see it happen all the time. My wife can't stand self-checkout, but during the pandemic I think she followed your data. She went to it because of those concerns and she changed her behavior based on that. It was something she didn't do before and afterwards she tends to do more often. We learn more and more every time we ask the consumer direct questions. I love it. Bill, what are you seeing today?

Bill Inzeo:            What Anja and I have been seeing [00:05:30] is very similar. When we're talking to our customers at Zebra and hearing from them, the challenges that they're helping their customers with, we continue to confirm, I think what everybody's keenly aware of, which is that the pandemic has been an accelerator of nearly all aspects of our lives generally. And that includes the tech savviness of the customers and the shift in how they are interacting with the retailers and how they're shopping. And that shifts in business to online shopping. And then beyond just the shift [00:06:00] to online shopping to the in-store or curbside pickup modalities, really out of necessity for our personal safety was the equivalent of a once in a lifetime accelerant. Well, we hope once in a lifetime.

                                And I think the motivation behind ensuring our own personal safety and the pathway to that being technology has changed not just how the customers think about how to leverage technology, but it's also putting the retailers in a position where they're starting to reconsider how they're going to leverage technology in the new normal, [00:06:30] and then help their customers along the way. And that additional layer of options for those customers, both to shop online and then pick up in the store in several different ways has created a new complexity for the retailers at their operation that they're still really wrestling with right now. And technology is going to be one of the many and probably the leading solution to that new complexity.

Jerry:                     Yeah, totally agree. There's no doubt the benefit technology brings to the shopping experience and store operations. However, and this is personal to me, [00:07:00] I'm a big believer in focusing on adoption rather than just implementation. You want consumers to prefer this new method. And that means taking it beyond just installation and technically working. How should retailers adjust their thinking to achieve success? Bill, as one of the leading technology providers what insights can you share from your experiences?

Bill Inzeo:            Well, I can tell you that at the end of the day, it's all about value. It always is, and it'll always be about the value of the technology to the customer. [00:07:30] As we've been discussing, we've seen a level of technology adoption sooner than we would have had we not had this global pandemic occur. And that adoption level that we've seen in the shift that we're monitoring, and we're starting to see continue to show up in our customers, is likely to maintain and if not continue to expand. So from there, it's really just a matter of building on that new adoption. So the building blocks will be comprised of value components. And Anja talked to some of these, convenience, [00:08:00] personal safety, which has a completely new definition to customers. The financial value, so how can the technology bring savings to the customers? And the ease of use. If it feels like unnecessary bells and whistles, it may feel too

Summary:
In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, Elliot Maras, editor from Kiosk Marketplace and Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced Self-Service Solutions at Diebold Nixdorf discuss the continuation of innovation in retail self-service and how self-service can offer a better customer experience.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/retail/solutions/self-service/innovation

Related Links:

Kiosk Marketplace.com - https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/podcasts/expert-offers-insight-on-how-self-service-improves-the-customer-journey/

Retail Customer Experience.com - https://www.kioskmarketplace.com/podcasts/expert-offers-insight-on-how-self-service-improves-the-customer-journey/

LinkedIn Profiles -

Matt Redwood
Elliot Maras

Transcription: 

Speaker 1:                           In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, our very own Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced Self-Service Solutions, joins Elliott Maras, the Editor of Kiosk Marketplace, where they will discuss self-service innovations, and how [00:00:30] retailers rely on self-service for a better customer experience.

Elliott Maras:                       Welcome to self-serve kiosks. The innovation continues. The consumers have spoken. Not a day goes by that a new self-service solution is not introduced.

                                                In recent years, restaurants have taken a very visible role, introducing self-serve kiosks. In addition, retailers, from high-end department stores to supermarkets [00:01:00] to convenience stores, are relying on kiosks to serve customers faster and offer a better customer experience.

                                                This past year, COVID-19 avoidance of human to human interaction has pushed retailers to offer more self-serve kiosks. I'm Elliott Maris, the Editor of Kiosk Marketplace. Joining me today is Matt Redwood, Director of Advanced [00:01:30] Self-Service Solutions at Diebold Nixdorf.

                                                Matt, how did we get here? What did retailers see, that made self-service journeys so necessary?

Matt Redwood:                I think one word really kind of encapsulates the journey that retailers have been on with self-service, and that's flexibility. When you look at the journey that we've been on as an industry with self-service, in the very early days, it was very much about [00:02:00] removing cost, removing labor, from the front end.

                                                If you look at why retailers are really deploying self-service now, and how they're deploying them, it's really more focused on how they can deliver a much more flexible operating model within their stores. So rather than stripping staff out of the stores as a cost saving, they actually redistribute those staff. Because what they've realized is we've got to a critical mass now, where consumers want, demand, and expect a self-service offering in the [00:02:30] store. They very much see it as a faster, easier way of checking out in a store, that gives them much more control over the interaction with that retailer.

                                                And that's a very, very important point, because if the consumer is demanding that, the retailer no longer has to push that as an offering that that is being driven by their own demands, and what that means is they can then take staff that would ordinarily be serving the customer, and they can put them into other parts of the store, to deliver the best consumer [00:03:00] experience. So if you look, a lot of data, particularly around self-serve kiosks, some of the bugbears of consumers is that they have to queue to check out or interact at the front end, or there isn't staff where they want it, either in the aisles or in the main body of the store, where they expect a good level of service. And self-service really ticks those box, because it allows retailers to put higher density of checkouts or order points [00:03:30] within the store. That in turn will reduce the amount of queues, increase the throughput through the store, so you get a better consumer experience, and it frees up staff to then go and provide a different functionality within the store, or a consumer experience, better consumer experience elsewhere in the store.

                                                So it really delivers against the two big bugbears of the consumer, as well as gives the retailer much greater flexibility, and I think the flexibility piece has really been [00:04:00] key over the last 18 months, in terms of, if you look at the different changes in rules and regulations and shopping habits and consumer trends that retailers have had to contend with, the self-service device has really given them much greater flexibility to be able to deal with those changing trends on a daily basis.

Elliott Maras:                       Are successful retailers done, after they've implemented self-service across their footprint?

Matt Redwood:                Absolutely not. So, the [00:04:30] really interesting thing about self-service, is that it bridges two very fast-moving industries.

                                                One is consumers, consumer expectations, consumer trends, and the second is technology, and if you think about those two entities, they both move at an incredibly fast speed, and what that means is the retailer has to constantly move. They have to constantly change. They have to constantly adapt. They have to constantly upgrade and evolve their experience [00:05:00] within their stores, to keep up with both technology that's moving extremely quickly, but also consumer demands, which evolve extremely quickly. So I don't think there's ever a self-service environment or deployment that sits still for a very, very long period of time. It's a constantly evolving, constantly changing landscape, and retailers have really got to stay on top of that.

                                                If you look at the marketplace today, it's very much about differentiation. So it's [00:05:30] not just about putting self-service devices into a store. It's now about putting the right self-service combination for your store, and actually tailoring that offering to that particular store. But more than that, what other innovation or other technologies can you bolt on to self-service, to enrich that consumer experience even even further? And I think there's a bit of a race at the moment for differentiation and consumer experience, so retailers are constantly looking, constantly evolving, [00:06:00] constantly adding to the self-service experience, to try and differentiate themselves and their brand from their competition.

Elliott Maras:                       If expectations from consumers are to be more in control and achieve greater speed and efficiency, how can a retailer improve an existing self-service journey?

Matt Redwood:                So I think there's a couple of things to look at here. Obviously, a retailer will always want to sweat the asset for as long a period as possible, [00:06:30] but trends change. As I said, consumer trends change, technology trends change, and just expectations in terms of service offering changes within a store. So there's a lot a retailer can do to constantly evolve the self-service devices that they currently have in store.

                                                I always say, which is sometimes an unpopular opinion, that the technology is easy, but getting a self-service device up and running is the easiest bit. Operationalizing that technology is the bit that really delivers the most amount of value. And if you [00:07:00] think about the moving parts associated with operationalizing a device within the store, it may be changes to staff, or efficiency of staff, and maybe different consumers, different proficiency levels, different times of the day, therefore different peak or different stresses on that particular store, and there's a lot that retailers can do operationally to improve the performance of the devices within the store.

                                                The second piece is evolving the actual technology, and if you think about [00:07:30] a common trend that's talked about a lot, cash, the demise of cash, everyone talks about the demise of cash, but if you look at cash utilization from a global perspective, it's disappearing or not disappearing at different rates in different mar

Summary:
In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, we dive into the 25 year partnership Diebold Nixdorf has with America First Credit Union. Manish Choudhary the Sr. Vice President, Software for DN talks about how important connected commerce remains for banks and credit Unions.

Related Content: 

https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/portfolio/software/payments

Transcription:

Mike:           Welcome to our show and on today's program, we have Manish Choudhary from Diebold Nixdorf, Manish, How are you?

Manish:           Very good. Thanks Mike, for having me here.

Mike:           Oh my gosh. You're very welcome. We're talking today about your partnership with America First Credit Union, and Diebold Nixdorf, and just to kind of get a lay of the land here. Can you tell us about your partnership with America first and what you guys are doing?

Manish:           Absolutely. Mike, so as you know, Diebold Nixdorf, is a global technology company enabling connected commerce for banks and retailers across the globe. Serving top a hundred financial institutions, top retailers. America First is a federal credit union with almost 81 years old institution with 128 location. It has the eighth largest credit assets in the US. It's the sixth largest credit union with almost a million and one members. Diebold Nixdorf and our partnership with America First is a 25 year old partnership where we recently announced our payment software, which will drive the payment transactions and payments switching capabilities with America First. 

Mike:        Wow.  You guys have been with them for 25 years. Oh my gosh. That's quite a relationship. Well, I mean, that's congratulations right there for sure

Mike:           So let's get back to the software part of it. So how does the software, how does this work for America First? How does it benefit them?

Manish:            Yeah, so think about, I think if I were to double click on the payment conversation, so payment industry, as you know, is getting disrupted, it's getting disrupted because of new cloud technologies. It's getting disrupted because there are new real-time payment types, new contemporary payment types, which are evolving. There is innovation in speed of deployment, speed of consumption in the payment platforms and binding payment, which we've been working on is absolutely the right answer. And I'll tell you why it is probably one of the most contemporary payments, software implements payment, new payment types at speed and scale faster than anywhere else. It is a API first pure cloud native architecture. It is one of the most secure enterprise payment software available with scalable microservices. So from the credit union's perspective, it actually future proof, the technology and as the consumer behaviors are changing the credit unions as the, the consumers of the credit unions are looking for more and more new contemporary ways of doing transactions. This actually addresses today's needs, but it also addresses the future needs for America First and how the customers are going to consume some of the new payment technologies. 

Mike:           I mean, as you well know, I mean, it changes by the second. I mean, by the time this interview is done, something major will have happened in the payment space. So it's got tp be  future-proof is such a key, key aspect of technology today.

Manish:           Yeah, you're right. If you think about, you know, by the time we started talking and now there are millions and millions of new digital payments, which got processed and the banks really wanted a scalable infrastructure to actually handle those peaks and loads and balances.

Mike:           So, so how is this going to help America First, obviously, obviously they're planning for the future. They're planning, they're being flexible. How else does it help them, you know, obviously be more attractive to members and, and whatnot.

Manish:           Absolutely. So if you think about, as I mentioned, the, the consumer expectations are changing. We believe credit unions are competing with the large banks, and they're also competing with the tech coming in from mobile wallets and, you know, E transactions and others. So we at Diebold Nixdorf believe we really want to be at the right intersection of how to provide the right experience to our customers, to have them provide that experience to their customers. And in some ways, and I do believe like any other industry, the competition in credit unions that extremely high consumers switch between credit unions or banks and their, their experiences are changing. We believe the, the new payment platform really provides them. So for example, doing cardless transactions or non card based transactions, or enabling instant loans and instant payments in future or access to modern payment types,, you know, and I believe if the credit unions do not provide that somebody else will.

Manish:           So in some ways we believe that this whole payment platform and future proofing, the technology opens up all of those avenues. So while it opens up the avenues for payment, it also seamlessly extends the traditional capabilities on the ATM side. So for example, America First is, is going to use the personalized marketing campaign to serve its customers, the seamless security, which is connected to the platform on the ATM side, also comes along with it. You can walk to a ATM and without the card, you can actually do transactions by using video technology. So there's a lot of enabling technologies and options that you get created with this new platform.

Mike:           I'm liking the, what was the, the video technology with the ATM. And you can actually, how does that work?

Manish:      Yeah, so the, the, the other part of our software is the modernizing the entire ATM stack. And we call them as digital value added services. So I, you know, I usually walk to an ATM and sometimes I have my debit card and sometimes I leave it at home. I can actually walk in, press a button, talk to a teller, verify my identity, do transactions and transactions and not just deposit and withdrawals. I can E-Verify. I can possibly look at opening up an account or doing some mortgage applications, right. With the channel. Then I'm able to talk to somebody or even a better example. I would say, Mike is if you're in New York city and you have you own 10 restaurants at the end of the day, you really want to get all the cash deposited into your ATM account, without giving passwords, pin numbers and account numbers. To those 10 employees, you can actually set it up on your mobile phone, give a QR code. And the 10 people can actually deposit all of the money and they can withdraw next day morning. And they're going back to open up the restaurant. So it's just enabling these small and medium businesses and the new use cases as self-service and digitization is becoming more and more common, especially after the pandemic. 

Mike:           I was just about to ask you, have you, is this all a result? I mean, this was stuff was going to happen anyway, but it really sounds like everything was accelerated because of the pandemic, all these really cool digital offerings out there right now.

Manish:           Absolutely. Absolutely. We are seeing it globally. One of the advantage we have is, you know, the fact that you operate in a hundred countries, we can assemble the use cases and our learnings or what we are seeing. So pandemic definitely shifted. So the recent lockdowns banks migrated close to 70% of their deposits from teller to self service. And out of those 70%, almost 50% of those that actually aggregate get ATM's. Now that's a huge shift. That's a huge shift, which wouldn't have been possible. So this acceleration of digital transformation at credit unions and ATM, and I think we are at the right intersection and the technology is really, really helping in terms of accelerating those things. 

Mike:           And getting back to America First, and this is what America First is taking advantage of right now, right? So this is what they're going to be doing.

Manish:           Absolutely. I think we are really, really excited about the implementation and our teams are jointly working together. As we think about getting the lining payments, modernizing the payment infrastructure, modernizing the ATM and enabling a lot more capabilities for future like cash recycling. You know, we're extremely excited about the opportunities, which a self-serve integrated platform is able to provide you

Mike:           Good stuff, man. Any, any, anything else to wrap up? Because this is a very timely conversation obviously, and a lot of credit lines are going through this right now. Maybe not to the extent of that America First is, but I'm hoping that they will, you know, a lot of them are, a lot of them are on their digital journeys. Let's just put it that way. And, and a lot of them accelerated their digital journeys last year, but it sounds like really America First is really taking advantage of the technology out there to be not only attractive to their members, but to really, you know, compete with the big folks too.

Manish:           Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the only thing I would add to wrap up is I think, you know, we are extremely excited about this partnership. You know, we believe our, our teams, you know, my, my ambition is to really, really creating the most sophisticated payments software stack in the industry and writin

Summary:
In this Special Podcast Zebra Technologies and Diebold Nixdorf come together to discuss how retail is being disrupted on multiple fronts while trying to meet demanding consumer expectations. Retailers need to simultaneously transform their it landscape ensure high availability, align well-orchestrated staff processes and offer the ultimate consumer experience across all channels all while trying to keep profitable. Retailers are investing in mobility solutions to ensure satisfying and safe consumers and staff journeys.

Related Content: 

https://retailexperience.store/

Related Links:

LinkedIn Profiles -
Jerry Langfitt
Philippe Dauphin
Mark Thomson

DieboldNixdorf.com
Zebra Technologies

Transcription: 

Jerry Langfitt (00:16):

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'd like to welcome. Today's guest Philippe Dauphin VP global retail solutions from Diebold Nixdorf.

Philippe Dauphin (00:25):

Thanks Jerry and thanks for the invite I am happy to be here.

Jerry Langfitt (00:29):

And also from Zebra Technologies, Europe, Mark Thomson, director, retail, and hospitality. Thank you for joining us today, Mark

Mark Thomson (00:36):

Jerry. Thanks for the welcome thanks for having me. I am very happy to be here to talk about where retail is right now.

Jerry Langfitt (00:45):

Great. Let's dive right in. Retail is being disrupted on multiple fronts while trying to meet demanding consumer expectations. Retailers need to simultaneously transform their IT landscape ensure high availability, align well-orchestrated staff processes and offer the ultimate consumer experience across all channels all while trying to keep profitable. Retailers are investing in mobility solutions to ensure satisfying and safe consumers and staff journeys. Philippe let's dive in. What are the latest trends you see happening in the retail industry?

Philippe Dauphin (01:20):

Yeah, I see three major trends. I'm not sure that they are new, there were there but, but they are more of use since the COVID. The first trend is really this necessity, you know, to combine the online and the offline. So we just cannot go ahead having silos if they want to be really consumer centric. This is a major, the first trend. The second one, to create some new consumer journeys and adapt. The third trend, there is a huge opportunity to digitalize some staff journey’s to bring more efficiency and in this context mobility will definitely be important.

Jerry Langfitt (02:06):

That's really interesting. Philippe, Mark, what do you think?

Mark Thomson (02:10):

Well, I can't help but agree with Philippe. And I think for me, the main driver of change actually is the consumer retailers need to be very clear about the expectations and the relationship that they have with their target customers and how those are changing. And, and it's the customer very much. Now that is demanding changes in the way that we allow them to shop. I guess technology is also an important factor here because is in a sense enabling that change, that could be anything from mobile technology, changing the way retailers get access to information. So customers, but also the ability for us as shoppers to get online and to have access to online and e-commerce shopping. So technology and customer behavior, both converging to dry some change. And Phillip is right. COVID has certainly accelerated that. But most of this is, is changed. That was already happening prior to COVID; COVID is just shine a spotlight on it.

Jerry Langfitt (03:12):

That's a great perspective Mark. Now, from the retailer's perspective, how do you see them embracing this transformation? What are the steps they're taking? How are they reacting to this?

Mark Thomson (03:22):

It's a good question because they are they're reacting differently. They're not all reacting in the same way. It's a, it's an industry like, like any others as an all industry is that there are pioneers and there are laggards. However, when you get a, a worldwide change or shock to the system, like COVID over the last 12 to 18 months, what happens is some of those laggards, unfortunately fall by the wayside because COVID and the pandemic took no prisoners. But what we're saying for the more pioneering retailers is what they're doing is they're actually accelerating transformation strategies. And some of them the best in my opinion, are the ones where they're involving not just the IT teams, because transformation doesn't start with IT. It actually starts with the whole business. And they're involving people from multiple departments from IT, HR loss prevention, as well as store operations and things like, I guess an example might be project to empower staff in the store with more access to technology or that that involves store operations. It clearly involves IT. There's potential for it to evolve HR in terms of the information that staff might have access to, etc. So what were certainly seeing and the conversations we're having with retailers is increasingly they're involving multiple teams and departments within the retailer. And I think that can only be a positive thing.

Jerry Langfitt (04:52):

It definitely is going to take a village to change that kind of culture. And within the retailer to serve the consumers better. Philippe, What do you see retailers doing?

Philippe Dauphin (05:02):

Yeah, I would agree with what thought wasn't mentioned by Mark, because at the end of the day, all retailers have very good IT departments because they want to evaluate different technologies, implement them. And so on the purchasing department to purchase at the right price. But what is sometimes missing is really to start by focusing again on the journey’s, because technology should not be the goal. It's just a way to which goal and the goal is to improve this consumer journeys. I give you an example recently, for instance, discussing with retailers, whether it be able to the COVID time to give us some technologies around the self-service checkout, you know, the low, for instance, to control the checkout via a mobile device, but the application for these two applications, one is to have a no-touch approach instead of touching the screen, you can control it from your smartphone as an example, or second usage. You can set up for handicap people, but again, technology is the easy part, the most complicated part, and the focus in that you should be on the consumer journeys or on the stature.

Jerry Langfitt (06:20):

That's an interesting perspective, Philippe. Thank you. So let's talk about the mobility technology. How do you think the industry is going to be disrupted by this arc? What do you t

Summary:
In this episode of COMMERCE NOW we discuss how retailers need, now more than ever before, more modular and flexible software, services and systems when selecting their self-service partners.

Related Content: 

Modularity Whitepaper 

Related Links:

LinkedIn Profiles -
Jerry Langfitt
Matt Redwood

DieboldNixdorf.com

Transcription:

Jerry Langfitt (00:16):

Hi everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I would like to welcome today's guest Matt Redwood, who leads our advanced self-service global solutions at people Diebold Nixdorf. Welcome Matt, and thanks for joining me today.

Matt Redwood (00:27):

Hey Jerry. Thanks for having me always good to speak to you.

Jerry Langfitt (00:30):

Now let's start off at a 50,000 foot view of what's going on in retail. There's certainly experienced a hyper compressed and instantaneous change in consumer behavior, of course, caused by the pandemic. This ended up being a massive shock to their operation and it infrastructure. The quick fixes have now turned into long terms needs and rubber banded and duct tape journeys. Now have to last longer, be more scalable and continue to evolve. As consumer sentiment continues to change, regardless of what's going on in everyone's health systems in their countries, retailers need to react with the same speed as the customer. This is more than just putting up plexiglass barriers. They have to really rethink many of their current consumer journeys while adding new ones immediately. What do you think retailers are experienced and learned about what their legacy systems and current infrastructure both can and unfortunately cannot do.

Matt Redwood (01:23):

Absolutely. So it's a great question, Jerry. So generally trends in retail happen over a period of time. It's an evolutionary step. If you take the shift to convenience store shopping as an example, that's a trend that's happened over multiple years. I think what retailers have really experienced in the last 12 to 18 months is a revolutionary step. That's been forced by the global pandemic. And what that's done is it's exposed the weakness in their infrastructure, the weakness in their current store, operating best practices and ultimately the technology that enables that. And it's really forced retailers to think very, very differently, not only about the strategy of the day, but also how they can build in flexibility for tomorrow. God willing that another pandemic doesn't happen, but this could be the start of a very volatile stage where they're retail, where retailers really have to change on the fly constantly to changing demands either from a legal standpoint or from a customer driven demand aspect. So they need that flexibility. They need that scalability, and ultimately they need the ability to change extremely quickly and to react to any demands that are effectively flipped in upon them.

Jerry Langfitt (02:42):

Now, one thing I don't understand is how did we get here? What got us to this point of difficult to change and the mobility of some it processes?

Matt Redwood (02:53):

Oh, so I think that's just honestly legacy it. So I'll ask VP of retail cause at a washing business where you buy the hardware, you buy the software, you buy the services for that particular application in isolation, from everything else and the legacy. It was a very good example of that type of infrastructure, where you had maybe a supplier who specialize in self service and now they want to kiosk another one at point of sale. And you always had these isolated solutions that existed on their own and there was no interconnectivity. So it was very difficult for retailers to really piece together. I had different customer journeys or react to new customer journeys because they either had to make changes across each touch point, which was costly, expensive and took time. Well, there just wasn't the flexibility in the infrastructure to be able to do it and really modularity and a need for openness has been driven out of this pandemic, modularity the ability to be arranged or fit it together in a variety of ways is the dictionary definition. Openness is openness. And it's the combination of these two factors. The retailers are really looking forward to make sure that they don't fall into that.

Jerry Langfitt (04:06):

What got us to this point of difficulty to change and the immobility built into it processes. Okay.

Matt Redwood (04:12):

I think honestly it was just his legacy technology. The technology environment with particularly within big retailers is a very complex one. If you think about, you've got a hard way, you've got software, you've got ecosystem, you've got services, even taking the hardware in isolation, you have different components with different life cycles. You have different stuff like compatibility. And on top of that, I think we've had a legacy situation where suppliers in the industry have created solutions in isolation and RSVP Highland limit it. The dishwasher situation. You have one provider of a piece of hardware with a piece of software and services to run it. I'm not saying closed loop system. And what it means is that retailers are almost forced to take different touchpoints with different solutions and implement them into their environment. And these solutions would also almost operate in complete isolation to everything else in the store.

Matt Redwood (05:11):

So not only does that build in complexity and in flexibility, because if you make a change on one, you have to replicate changes across multiple touch points. It's very complex to manage very costly to manage. And ultimately you're not getting that level of flexibility. I mean, two very positive things to come out of this pandemic is the retailers have really understood that actually what they need is modularity and they need openness on the Southwest side to be able to take more control of their own destiny in terms of what functionality they have, what roadmap they want to drive and ultimately what experience they want to implement in their stores and what modular hardware do they need to be able to support that. And I think we tended to really focus now instead of having these in isolation is to have an ecosystem of technologies or touch points within their stools or talking to each other. That means that they can move in a great degree of flexibility they can have at the LT and responding to trending trends or requirements that may be happening in the market. I don't want to bet they're not boxed into a corner as they've been.

Jerry Langfitt (06:19):

Yeah, it's funny. You should say that Matt, because despite the pandemic we saw progressive retailers evolving even before 2020 S Watson Tesco and others were already looking at new journeys and building greater flexibility into their operations and it processes, what do these progressive retailers see and how did they react? What did they do different?

Matt Redwood (06:39):

I mean, ultimately that shift that those retailers took, which was, I guess, proactive ahead has become dynamic. I know that they will see the pandemic catheter, but they, they witnessed the fact that retail technology is a very co

Summary:
In this special episode of COMMERCE NOW we team up with APIs Unplugged podcast to discuss using APIs to succeed as an incumbent in a disrupted fintech space.

Related Content: 

The API Evolution: We’ve Reached Critical Mass

APIs UnPlugged Podcast

Related Links:

LinkedIn Profiles -
Bruce Diesel
Matt McLarty

Transcription:

Speaker 1:                           00:15                     On today's special episode of Commerce Now, Bruce Diesel from Diebold Nixdorf joins Matt McLarty from API's unplugged podcast. They will discuss a theme around API's to succeed as an incumbent in a disrupted space.

Matt McLarty:                   00:38                     Hi everyone. Welcome to API's unplugged. I'm Matt McLarty, the global leader of API strategy at MuleSoft, and great to have you here as always. Mr Mike Amundsen, what's going on in Kentucky?

Mike Amundsen:             00:51                     Hey, how you doing? Actually we've had great weather in the last week, or so. It's been really enjoyable. I was just out for a walk just before we started our session here which I haven't been able to do, so I'm in a good mood, and I'm ready to go.

Matt McLarty:                   01:04                     Right. We're on the upswing. We're a year into, at least for me, lock down.

Mike Amundsen:             01:11                     Oh, yeah.

Matt McLarty:                   01:12                     I think it's almost... I think it's two days shy of the anniversary, but you never know. Things are looking up. Great. Well today we have a pretty exciting topic, and exciting guest. I feel like we've talked about financial services on previous episodes, but we haven't really done a focused episode on financial services which we're already into the second season which that's amazing because I think that API's are always rightly associated with disruption. So much of the digital economy landscape is being... There's upheaval from disruption happening, and in terms of industries financial services is a big one.

                                                                                And I think we hear a lot about fintech, fintech association with API's, open banking regulations, and so on. So I think... We've got a guest who's going to be talking from, I would say, from both sides of the disruptor and the disrupted in the financial services space, and as a fintech that's been in the industry for a while. Our guest is Bruce Diesel who is a product manager, and API subject matter expert at Diebold Nixdorf. Bruce, welcome to API's Unplugged.

Bruce Diesel:                      02:38                     Thank you Matt. Thank you for having me, and Mike, great to meet you guys.

Matt McLarty:                   02:43                     Excellent. So I mentioned that Diebold Nixdorf's position being what I would call a long term fintech provider as a global company with a big presence in the ATM point of sale, and other financial services spaces. But to start off, we always like to do this, we'd love to hear your background, Bruce. What has been your path into what we call the API economy?

Bruce Diesel:                      03:19                     I come from a traditional engineering background. I studied electronic engineering back in the 80s, and the subjects that really interested me were the software, and the software engineering side of my courses. And as I'm sure most of you know that as the end of the 80s, 90s, that was really the breeding ground of the object to oriented paradigm, and C++ was coming out. And this idea that you would have these component objects software world that really took my fancy, and it was really interesting for me. Coming out of university I started a... I was one of the founders of a software migration company, and a lot of our business was in the ATM's back in South Africa, and we were building a lot of bespoke solutions.

                                                                                I personally had always been really interested in the whole packaging of software concept, and how do we achieve the same things that we do in the digital, electronics world? These integrated circuits, IC's where we... When we look at the acceleration, and the rapid growth that digital electronics have achieved... Look at your mobile device today compared to where we were 40 years ago. And I always believed that that's where software was going to go. We could create these standard interfaces, these standard components that could be re-used, composed into better solutions, and bigger solutions, and that really fascinated me.

                                                                                I think we went through... We all know back in the UNEX days you have these utilities that you connect through pipes, and filters, and your command line, and we went into object orientation, and then compartmentation where we tried to package these things into operable components. Com, Corba, all of those, beams. But they were really complex. I think if we look back at the complexity of putting those solutions together was still to high. There was a componentization side, but also the engineering, the production process. We started improving STLC, becoming agile, and web services started to come around, and finally I think we are now belatedly getting to the point where web services, and API, or restful API's are really starting to become a day facto standard that allows things to interoperable.

                                                                                And I'm really excited about the fact that this could be finally the promise of these composable solutions. I think we've seen the promise a few times before so let's not think too many things about it, but... At DN I came through my knowledge of the industry, became a subject matter expect, but I was... Late last year I was offered the opportunity to take on board a new product portfolio. In fact, completely new product portfolio of being API as a product which I jumped at because to me we have this massive portfolio of capabilities that we jut take... There's so much friction in our ability to bring those capabilities into our customers. Big PS engagements, and that really, I thought... This just was a confluence of so many things in my career that really... I jumped at it, and I thought that this is a great opportunity to actually make a big difference for the organization.

Mike Amundsen:             07:28                     Yeah. You mentioned DN, Diebold Nixdorf. What I find fascinating in what you're telling me is you're in API product management now, right?

Bruce Diesel:                      07:41                     Yep.

Mike Amundsen:             07:41                     Your role is to help bring this API component, this API economy, all the things that we talked about... I grew up in the same space you did. It's fantastic. We've got object oriented, and [inaudible

Summary:
In this episode of COMMERCE NOW we discuss fuel and convenience and how things have changed and continue to change and what fuel and convenience retailers need to do to keep up with these changes.

Related Content: 

What are your Shopper's Thinking?

Nielsen Survey: Retail Personas

Related Links:

LinkedIn Profiles -
Jerry Langfitt
Reint Jan Holterman

DieboldNixdorf.com

Transcription:

Jerry Langfitt:                     00:14                     Well, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I would like to welcome today's guest RJ Holterman. Who works with a fuel and convenience group at Diebold Nixdorf. Welcome RJ, thanks for joining me today.

RJ Holterman:                    00:24                     Thank you, Jerry. Thanks for having me today, I'm looking forward to this conversation

Jerry Langfitt:                     00:29                     Today, we're going to talk about fuel and convenience and how everything has changed and how everything is still changing. And what fuel and convenience retailers need to do. RJ, what do you see happening in the fuel and convenience market today?

RJ Holterman:                    00:43                     Well, I think like in other segments of retail, we see a huge transition going on. And with saying that, I think in the end convenience stores are unique, but no longer really separate or set apart from the other types of stores. And especially I think in today's challenging economic environment, you'll see that fuel and convenience retailers are facing a critical inflection point. If you just look at, for instance, the number of people driving less in the US, one reason study found that more than 60 million Americans had stopped commuting. And that the numbers of people getting gas once a week had fallen by almost a third compared to the pre pandemic months of January and February, one year ago. So at the same time, an increase in the oil supply has triggered a significant drop in oil prices. And as demand for fuel remains low, fuel and convenience store retailers must adapt in order to survive.

Jerry Langfitt:                     01:37                     So with convenience sales that I've read are up. Most of them have grown, most of the store count might've stayed either the same or just slightly off compared to fashion retailers. What's going on and how is COVID 19 affecting how people are reacting to the benefits of a convenience store?

RJ Holterman:                    01:58                     Yeah, I think especially now with this whole pandemic, people who do leave the house or even are allowed to leave the house in some countries. Typically prefer to keep the distance from other customers and store staff. So that will lead them from, let's say the very crowded and big grocery stores and supermarkets and they rather would visit a smaller stores with less people in it. So they have less chance or lower chance to contract COVID. So you see that people will visit convenience stores more rather than the big supermarkets.

Jerry Langfitt:                     02:32                     Well, with the fuel industry in transition and rapidly needing to do more than just fuel. How do they need to really look at this and change their operating model or what their goals are?

RJ Holterman:                    02:44                     Like you'll see is that, the fuel industry is rapidly moving beyond the traditional forecourt interactions. And retailers seek to offer additional services, expanded services in order to achieve a one-stop shopping experience. While adapting, their business model from fuel plus to plus fuel. At the same time, consumers expect a seamless shopping experience that can start at home or on the go or wherever they are and then continue at the petrol station. So it's not just they visit the store, but typically journeys have started hours, minutes, days before they entered the petrol station. And this also requires retailers to be able to combine lets say, the offline with online journeys.

Jerry Langfitt:                     03:28                     So there's a lot of changing consumer behavior, as we've already talked about with COVID. But there's also just, people are seeing the need for convenience even more now. How can we react or what are we seeing with that changes in the consumer behavior?

RJ Holterman:                    03:42                     What we are seeing indeed is increased demand for new ways to shop. So that's online to offline. But also think about people who order products, but want to pick them up at a convenient location. So curbside pickups and desire for low touch interactions with staff or with other customers even. So that also leads to new ways how people want to go in about store. So with higher needs for self service, with new digital ways to pay, in the end people want to have more control over their own shopping journeys. And that's also very relevant, I think for C stores.

Jerry Langfitt:                     04:23                     That's really interesting. Because when you say relevant for C-stores not that they've kept themselves apart, but they're a separate industry. But the greater retail industry still affects them from grocery stores, to big box. And C stores need to look at how to gain those new understandings with the consumer. So that's really interesting to hear.

RJ Holterman:                    04:44                     Yeah, I think so too. Last year, at Diebold Nixdorf, we work together with Nielsen to do a survey with over 15,000 consumers in 15 countries. To find out different shopping patterns and also the impact of technology on that. And in the end, how can retailers help these customers or these shoppers to improve their overall shopping experience. And it's a long study. You can download it on a Diebold Nixdorf website if you want to. But what I would like to highlight there is, that we in the end found that there're six different personas or types of consumers across the board. And one of these personas that we eventually called aspirational tech fans. We found those are typically the young urban people sociable. Always chasing for the latest trends and continues to looking for new experiences that they can share them through the favorite social channels.

                                                                                And at the other end of this spectrum, you will find what we call the well-balanced traditionalist. These people tend to be very content with the current approach to shopping and have no desire to engage more frequently with technology. Interestingly enough, both aspirational tech fans and the hesitant potentials show the largest preference for C stores for doing the shopping trips. For instance, these aspirational tech fans hate waiting in line. And being in a constant hurry with a fast and furious lifestyle. The busy jobs and hobbies and friends, well life in general, you can say. And based on the 15,000 cons

Summary:
In this special episode, COMMERCE NOW teams up with Kiosk Marketplace to discuss Self-Service Kiosks and how they are quickly becoming ubiquitous with museums and airports using them for years and McDonald’s successful push in the QSRs industry. Now add the convergence of consumer preference for self-service, COVID related avoidance of human to human interaction and retailers automating tasks to free staff for more involved duties and you have self-service kiosks truly hitting its stride. 

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QSR Infographic
K-TWO Kiosk: Offer Customers a Transformed In-Store Experience

Related Links:

LinkedIn Profiles-
Carl Von Sydow
Elliot Maras 

DieboldNixdorf.com
KioskMarketplace.com

Transcription:

Elliot Maras:                       00:16                     Welcome to Kiosks and the Self-Service Consumer Journey. I'm Elliot Maras, the editor of Kiosk Marketplace. Joining me today is Carl von Sydow, director of Self-Service for the Americas at Diebold Nixdorf. Self-Service Kiosks are quickly becoming ubiquitous while museums and airports have been using them for several years. In the last two years, McDonald's has made a big splash with kiosks in the QSR industry. Many other restaurants and retailers have since come on board. When you add the convergence of consumer preference for self-service, COVID related avoidance of human to human interaction and retailers automating tasks to free staff for more involved duties, self-service kiosks are truly hitting their stride. Retailers from a wide variety of industries are looking harder at self-service. Dave & Buster's for example, is using kiosks to power up playing cards and food ordering. IKEA uses kiosks in their bistros for food ordering and grocery retailers.

                                                                                The always open proverbial essential retailers are expanding food courts and leveraging kiosks in their food journeys. 2020 was a challenging year for everyone, but the kiosks have played a big role in meeting the need for safety. COVID-19 has heightened demand for self-service as a way to improve customer safety. While much of the technology that went into action had already been developed prior to COVID-19, the technology found new use as customers scrambled to improve their safety. The pace of kiosk introductions has never been faster than it is today, with no end in sight. All indications point to self-service kiosks playing a bigger role than ever going forward. Carl, why did we see an increase in kiosk journeys over the past year?

Carl von Sydow:                02:08                     Hi, Elliot. Nice to meet you and a very good introduction to the topic. You covered a lot of good areas there. And some of them you mentioned already is the answer to that question. We have had kiosks all over the place for quite a lot of years in airports and museums as we said, but what I feel right now is that the concept of a kiosk is merging with the traditional self-checkout solution that we have seen primarily within grocery retailers. But these two are now merging together, offering new, much more exciting combinations and form factors et cetera for self service. And then we have the drivers, like you mentioned, we have experienced the last 14 months with COVID, which has really pushed self-service to the front of a lot of retailers mind.

Elliot Maras:                       03:11                     Tell me why are new retailers in different industries looking more closely at self-service kiosks?

Carl von Sydow:                03:18                     Yeah. We have several examples, you mentioned two of them, Dave & Buster's, IKEA, we have several different grocery customers as well. The business model is not only self-checkouts anymore for traditional grocery retailer. They want to add more different customer journeys. It's all about addressing different customer journeys. We use that word quite often in our daily work. Nowadays, it starts with the customer journey and within a customer demography for a typical story, you can have several different subgroups and you need to identify what different subgroups do you have perhaps in your business and try to find the best customer journeys for that little subgroup to make them come to your store or restaurant or whatever it is more often than elsewhere.

                                                                                And the mix between kiosks and self-service and form factors offer this opportunity now in a completely different way than before. You mentioned IKEA. IKEA is adding so many different customer journeys now for self-service with kiosks, not only in the bistro, but elsewhere, there are a lot of exciting projects going on there. Just identify groups of customers and that customer journey and then find the right solution for them and then implement it. So it's somehow... It is driven by customer journey expectations, customer expect higher variety of customer journeys when they go to the store, but also by technology. We have the technology now to offer different customer journeys and form factors. So it's a combination I would say that drives a lot of retailers into this area now.

Elliot Maras:                       05:16                     Well, speaking of technology Carl, what new innovations do you see enhancing kiosks?

Carl von Sydow:                05:24                     Yeah. That's also very interesting question. A lot of... Since we start with the fact that we are sort of merging kiosks to tradition kiosks with some kind of self-service, self-checkout with perhaps payment, identifying products or ordering products on the screen, we are adding technologies like RFID for fashion retailers or reading different barcode types in a different way than before. Identifying the customer traditionally is done with loyalty cards or programs like that. But now we can also add, with the help of our mobile companies that has pushed face recognition into every man's telephone right now, mobile phones. So adding face recognition as a tool for verifying age, for age restricted item, that is a great enhancing of the kiosk/self-service solution because otherwise, age verification drives staff intervention and take... Increase the time of your customer journey. You want to eliminate all these pain points and if you can find technology that makes that customer journey easier and faster for the customer, it's also a great thing.

                                                                                Another area is for QSR ordering. Imagine that you are a mother and you have three kids and you go to your local or your preferred QSR restaurant. Instead of ordering the same and go through the whole order every time, with the different meals for the kids and all that, with face recognition connected to a loyalty program where we have approved that you can do this, you can have the kiosk identifying you as a customer, "Welcome back. Do you want to use the same order as you did last time?" And then we have the whole order for the family already there and you just press OK. A lot of these things is to make the customer journey faster. A lot of these things are coming strongly now.

Elliot Maras:                       07:39                     That's a lot of different technologies, that you're up to speed on. But tell me, what self-service innovations has your company introduced in the last year?

Carl von Sydow: