How New Technologies Are Shaping the Future of Online Payments - with Anton Hristov from DSK Bank

This talk focuses on the evolution of payment processing within DSK Bank in Bulgaria, highlighting their shift towards customer-centric payment solutions. The speaker discusses how the bank adopted an approach similar to major companies like Netflix and Apple, by first understanding customer preferences before developing products. They present data on the demographic landscape of Bulgaria, emphasizing the growing trend of mobile payments through digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay. With over 400,000 transactions per month and a significant increase in the adoption of these payment methods, the talk illustrates their success in streamlining online payments. Additionally, the speaker introduces a new payment method called Click to Pay, set to launch in Bulgaria soon, which promises even faster transaction speeds. They also cover case studies of merchants like Speedy and Domino's, showcasing how these innovations have enhanced customer experience and reduced operational challenges.

Hello guys and girls. Uh as you heard uh I'm part of uh the biggest bank in Bulgaria, GSK Bank. But uh I'm so glad that uh I'm here after our colleagues from IMAC cuz actually you know in in the life there is nothing uh in chance. Uh before being part of DSK bank I was also part of EMAC. So yeah, everything in life is not by any

chance. Uh but now uh because maybe uh when you hear a bank uh maybe you you expect something uh how to say maybe something a little bit boring or whatever. But let's say that today uh you will see a lot of uh videos, a lot of examples, a lot of use cases because I really hate uh let's say to describe a product that we offer to the

merchants. So today you will see a lot of uh data a lot of uh use cases in order to uh realize what basically we provide to to And of course uh when I switch to the the first slide, this is what you expect to see. A lot of sheeps of course, but why uh you see this? Because uh a couple of years ago, uh basically in our

bank, we decided that we want to be different. We want to be different compared to the rest of the banks uh here and now. And why I'm telling you this uh it is because uh here you can see four examples of uh companies that basically uh broke the uh typical approach of uh communication between merchants and service providers in general. So let's say that most of the

uh uh service providers what they do they create a product and then uh they start selling this product to different merchants whatever what the companies that you see uh below so Netflix, Apple, Gmail, Uber what they do uh they uh provide a different kind of approach. So from outside to inside. So first they check what are their customers, what are their uh preferences and then based on

that create the product that after that they spread to them. Uh so this is what we uh uh started to to to do a couple of years ago and now uh I will show you how we started. Basically the first thing that we did was uh uh to realize uh what is the demographic uh things in Bulgaria. So basically uh regarding the Bulgarian population uh who are

these uh people, what is their age, what are their preferences as as you can see in this slide uh let's say 1.7 million of people are uh in the age between 18 and 50 years old. So as you can see even now I see that some of you are uh making pictures with their with phones. Of course all these people are using these phones uh to do

everything in their life to order things to pay their bills whatever. Uh and basically this is uh the potential that we see as our customers uh people that are going to pay uh in online stores in e-commerce in general. Uh but when we realized that uh these people are let's say between these ages we we decided okay how they want to pay they want to pay cash

they want to pay with a card or they want to pay with their phone and then we realized that okay maybe not now maybe after a couple of years all the people will using their phone to pay whatever they want and basically uh below in the slide you can see that at this point according According to different sources, uh the the the user that are paying with

Apple Pay or Google Pay are uh around 1 million, which is really a huge a huge uh data regarding what is our population, what are the uh the the data regarding the people that are buying online etc. So in general if I can say uh uh um what what we realized a couple of years ago that as you can see 35 uh% of all people uh basically

prefer to use Apple Pay or I will show you one very short video uh where you can see what exactly is Apple Pay or Google Pay and basically what is the uh how to say the biggest difference compared to the traditional uh payment with a card. Just I will ask the colleagues to turn on the video. So you can see now two screens uh in the left

screen is uh payment uh with Apple Pay on the right side is payment standard payment with the card. So in the right side uh you can see that you need to put the data uh after that you need to pass through the uh mandatory uh 3DS verification which basically is uh how to say uh different compared to uh the different banks and basically it takes a lot

of time. uh what you see in the left side uh of the the video is that the payment with Apple Pay uh happened for 15 seconds while in the red side you will see that the video will stop uh around uh 40 seconds. So in general the payments with Apple Pay or Google Pay we can say that they're three time faster and what is the most important

thing in incommerce is that uh when the end customers is in checkout page the order should happen as soon as uh faster. Ah yes thanks. So uh just very short introduction uh when we started to provide Apple Pay and Google Pay this button that you can see on the screen uh let's say one year after the official launch uh currently we have uh this is the date

of uh the database of DSK bank. So basically we have more than 1,000 merchants more than uh 400,000 uh transaction per month and you can see that uh more than 25% of all these 400,000 transactions are done through Apple Pay and Google Pay. Uh this is basically how this feature developed through the years. You can see that we started in July 2023. You can see that uh

there is a growth uh in each uh of the periods and uh now in March uh this year uh we reach this uh 25% and basically uh according to our predictions to end of the year we'll reach 35 maybe even 40%. But this is uh how to say one part of uh payments with uh digital wallets because actually very very soon maybe after a couple of months

something new is going to happen in Bulgaria. Uh again it's not uh new for Europe but for Bulgaria especially will be completely new. There will be a completely uh other uh type of payment. But before showing you this uh I will uh put you another video. Maybe you can turn it on. Uh it's a real example of uh one of our customers. It's called Quan services. So

basically they're selling uh different type of uh uh laptops etc etc. So you can see on the video on the right side that uh basically uh this Apple Pay and Google Pay uh can be one step uh before in the checkout. So this is uh another example that the checkout can be pretty faster and when you choose a specific product automatically on the uh downside you see

the button Apple pay. So again if uh on the previous slides you saw that uh uh the payment with epo pay is done for 15 seconds here is maybe seven something like that. And regarding uh Oh, one moment. Can you just turn it on? This is a video that illustrates this new payment method that I'm saying about. So here you can see that this guy want to

buy something that is very cool but he's trying to find his card cuz basically he need to put the data He's looking it everywhere. Finally he finds it and then what happened? It's sold out. It's sold out. This can happen in uh very big online stores but also can happen in uh smaller stores where the availability of the products is uh small. And now you can see

the solution. Just one moment to switch on the next video. So now you see this button. It's called click to pay which allows customers to uh buy with oneclick payment. So this is uh how to say the new payment that will be a wife in Bulgaria till end of the year and let's say that it's uh very very similar to Apple Pay and Google Pay just uh

the brand that basically provides it are both Visa and Mastercard. Uh so again uh what you need to do in order to pay as an end customer uh with click to pay you you you need to have an initial on boarding uh and after that for every second every uh every every other payment you you don't need to pass through this 3DS verification and again the payment

uh will be done with one click when this is going to be uh wife in Bulgaria as I mentioned till end of the year uh we are planning this to be live in uh Q3. Can you switch cuz Yeah. Uh in Q3 will be live in Bulgaria. uh the most important thing uh that we can say is that uh according to visit mastercard prediction uh let's say

in general click to pay Apple pay and google pay these three type of methods 95% of all the people in 2030 uh will pay by some of this way so nobody after four or five years will put manually the the date of uh his or her And now uh I will show you uh two examples of u merchants that basically had some issues and uh uh thanks

to us basically we resolve these issues. So the first merchant is uh speedy uh just I will put the video what what is their uh biggest issue is the cash. I mean uh no matter if you're a small or a big company, you will have cash because a lot of the people uh basically are paying with uh uh with uh with cash and basically they wanted to

provide uh an option for the end customers to pay initially. So what they they did basically uh let's say all uh all online merchants online shops that basically uh have the option to to pay in advance. If you don't choose to pay in advance but you choose the cash on delivery option then uh when uh the order is finalized uh after a couple of days speedy will

uh deliver this product and then you receive a text message. Okay, your order will be uh tomorrow in your place. Uh you can pick it up. And basically in this uh text message there is a uh redirection to our uh payment page which allows customers to pay with uh with cart initially or with Apple Pay and Google Pay. As you can see this was not live. So

basically before integration with us speedy didn't provide this option. So uh what they did you can see for the first two months 20,000 uh successful payments most of them uh one-third of them with Apple Pay and Google Pay. So from one perspective they reduce the cash from other perspective what they did they save a lot of time because their couriers uh let's say didn't uh have to

spend time okay uh you can pay with cash you can pay with a car to a POS terminal basically uh they check their calculations that uh with this uh solution their couriers uh had more time to deliver more parcels uh per Other uh example is Domino's. Perhaps uh every one of us have ordered something from Domino's. Uh everybody uh loves pizza. So uh the use case with

them is that they had uh a problem with uh some transaction that were uh rejected. So people are ordering pizza then they uh go to the uh payment page of their previous payment provider and they needed to uh pass uh uh their manually their manual data after uh we we launch uh our payment solution we provided pay and Google pay and you can see that uh the

result 42% of all transaction I'm talking about u a couple of thousand per want have happened with Apple Pay and Google Pay. So basically we can say that uh for 42% of all transaction it wasn't required to pass through 3DS and the transaction happened three times the third uh it's not let's say use case but it's something that basically happen to every merchant. So uh if you

sell some products it's completely normal these products to be returned on any reason you know if you sell fashion quotes let's say most of the times what people do they order uh I don't know shoes or whatever but they don't know what is exactly their size so they order three or four sizes then they check okay which of them are okay for me and then return back

the the the rest the remaining So what you can see here is that uh these are official data of Bulgarian e-commerce association uh that around between 9 and 30% of all the parsers are undelivered and also between 8 and 12% of all parsers are returned as you know according to Bulgarian legislation everything can be returned back in a period of 14 days. So basically what the most

of the online merchants do uh if somebody have pay initially and then the uh some the the the the order is returned on any reason. What most of the merchants do they call the merchant they say what is the reason of uh you want to return the parcel and then uh please tell me uh your bank account we'll do uh um a bank transfer etc etc. So

a lot of resources that uh need to be uh uh need to happen a lot of people that need to do uh this manually. Basically what we provide uh as an option to uh to the merchant is uh one online portal. We call it merchant portal. Uh just if you can turn it on. So basically uh in this portal uh the merchants can see all their transactions.

First uh you can see some details regarding this transaction. Is it successful? Is it unsuccessful? If it's unsuccessful, what is the reason? There are different codes of the rejection. So you can see that uh for example uh a specific person uh that uh of the rejection. So we can see that uh for example uh a specific person uh the transaction was rejected because uh he hasn't enough

money in his bank card or maybe any other reason. So here um if there is a return uh package return parcel basically with only one click you can see now in the screen in the uh up right side there is a a button for a refund and we u basically with one click the sum will be back to the uh bank cardart of the end customer. Other

thing that is uh pretty uh useful uh now the video will go there in the right side you see the behavior of the customer. So you know in O e-commerce in e-commerce in general the most important thing is the data. So you need to know what happened. So basically how many seconds the customer was on the payment page what happened there everything as a behavior you can

see and you can extract as data and after that to you to to to analyze what are the reasons for example uh today I have 100 orders 20 of them were rejected and you can see that uh it took for example 40 seconds to this uh rejected orders to the customers that do the rejected orders in order to uh to do something whatever I mean data is

the uh really the most important. So this is uh u something that we provide to all the merchant and basically it helps them to uh reduce the costs and of course reduce the uh resources in terms of people in terms of time. Yes, maybe for financial people this is uh very hard to uh to to to realize it because most of the times merchant and the financial

people that operates the merchant are looking only for the prices but of course the the the time and the resources are also uh very and I think this is uh mostly of uh my presentation uh let's say that we have uh also a zone there I think it's number 55 you can see our logo you can come here uh you can uh talk with me and my

colleagues. We are here today and tomorrow. So I'll be happy to respond to any questions that you might have. Thank you. [Applause]