We are living in the age of personalization. So many things are tailored specifically to our personal preferences—the product recommendations we see on Amazon, our Netflix interface, gym memberships and healthcare plans, even the products we buy for our pets are customized. And it’s just the beginning, as more and more companies in more and more industries are providing a hyper-personalized experience to boost customer loyalty.
One of the few industries that is still lagging in personalization is the banking industry. “Despite the necessity of driving individualized experiences,” writes Alex Jimenez, managing principal, financial services consulting at EPAM Systems, “the banking industry is struggling to keep up with retailers, media, and tech companies in delivering these highly tailored interactions and product offerings to their customers.”
As a result, customers have started using other providers for certain financial products, leading to widespread fragmentation of banking services. And according to Bain’s latest global consumer banking survey, this fragmentation is best illustrated by the rise of alternative payment methods.
Voting with your digital wallet
Payments have entered a new experience-driven era, dubbed Payments 4.X by Capgemini, a global IT services and consulting company. Capgemini’s World Payments Report 2021 found that nearly 45% of consumers frequently use mobile wallets to make payments, and estimated that businesses will soon follow suit.
“With spend predicted to increase and non-traditional payment methods poised for growth,” stated the report, “future-proofing firms will embrace the elements of Payments 4.X, including data, shared infrastructure, platform capabilities, and embedded finance to deliver superior customer experience.”
For global companies, the customer experience has to include a solution that can streamline cross-border payments. And while most banks are unable to provide that, Tier 1 banks such as J.P. Morgan are different.
Last October, for example, J.P. Morgan showcased Confirm, a global account validation service designed to enhance the efficiency of cross-border payments. “We are propelling solutions that address the demands of customers globally,” said Christine (Jang) Tan, Head of FIG Sales APAC, Payments at J.P. Morgan. “That means they need to be agile, nimble, and frictionless.”
Your need is our command
Papaya Global, a payroll and payments platform and a partner of J.P. Morgan, addresses these demands by streamlining cross-border payroll payments. Payroll providers typically outsource the payments part to all-purpose payment companies rather than develop payment capabilities of their own.
Unlike Papaya, who built the world’s first payroll-dedicated rails, all-purpose payment companies use traditional rails, causing a great deal of friction throughout the process, and offer a service that is anything but personalized.
As a client of Papaya, on the other hand, everything is tailored to your specific needs. Our platform provides a designated virtual wallet that can be used to pay its entire global workforce, local tax authorities, and benefits vendors. Each wallet holds one type of currency, but clients can open as many wallets as they need – all accessible under one single account/user – and divide the funds between them as they see fit.
You can use any of the major currencies – GBP, EUR, USD, AUD, CAD, HKD, or SGD – to fund your virtual wallets. The payments are delivered in your employees’ local currency. Our currency management offering currently supports more than 100 currencies, and Papaya’s platform allows you to seamlessly move funds between wallets.
So if, for example, a company decides to change its operations overseas – open a new location or scale back in another – and finds it needs more USD and less GBP, it can simply slide the money over.
Since using Papaya means your payroll data is built into the platform, you always know exactly how much funding each wallet requires at any point in time. The platform also lets you know when the money needs to be delivered to avoid late payments.
And because our rails rely on Tier 1 banks such as J.P. Morgan and Citibank, we can ensure speedy payments, allowing clients to fund their wallets 7-10 days later than other payment companies, which decreases exposure to FX volatility and provides flexibility for your working capital.
And it doesn’t end there. Banks or other third-party payment providers focus on the “send date,” i.e., the date the money is taken out of the account and enters the payment rails, which often leads to late payments.
Papaya’s advanced technology shifts the focus from “send date” to “land date,” that is, the date the money must land in the employee’s account, takes care of the reverse calculations, and accounts for possible delays. In other words, you determine when the payments must arrive – and our platform makes it happen.
The age of personalization in cross-border payroll payments has officially begun.
