Kristia Poppe June 3, 2020 The payments industry has been central to business innovation for the last generation, one defined as the technology revolution. From the dawn of the internet, with ecommerce as the driver for payment gateways, and the advent of the smartphone, a vehicle for mobile payments, to wireless developments like near field communication as a boon for contactless acceptance, the payments industry has always been first to make those driving technologies really work and reach their potential to turn our wildest dreams into everyday reality.

What’s interesting to me about this dynamic among the payments industry and its adjacent technologies is the varying speed with which societies around the world adopt the payment methods afforded by new frontiers of innovation. And as advanced as we think we are here in the United States, we often lag—by years—adoption of new payment technologies behind our counterparts in Asia and Europe, especially.  

Adapting to Survive

Now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, American business is responding to the crisis by adapting to survive. In March, our company launched its own COVID-19 Survival Kit, which features a set of currently available technologies that many small and mid-sized companies had simply failed to integrate. The pandemic has made fringe or “nice-to-have” technologies central and essential.

Among these technologies are advancements that we in the industry may have taken for granted and quietly acquiesced to a slow-march of adoption, instead of hustling, as we are now, to make these tools more accessible to our customers and bank partners. These tools include:

·      Contactless/NFC payments like ApplePay

·      Digital Gift Cards

·      Payment Gateways

·      Mobile Payments

·      Point-of-Sale Systems with integrated management applications

·      Virtual Terminals

If You Build It, They Will Come

The beauty of these technologies is that we’ve been building them, as an industry, all along, based on our knowledge that early adopters would fund the existence of each respective technology until the time arrived where they would be universal in application. Unlike many industries, those of us in payments were actually ready for COVID-19! What we had to adjust was our mentality, particularly with regard to each merchant and their needs.

Before COVID-19, we may have underestimated each merchant’s needs for solutions that would “weatherproof” their business for virtually any economic season, whether it was a housing-fueled downturn, cyclical cooling of the economy, or, as we’ve seen, a 100-year public health crisis. And due to the lack of urgency associated with good times, perhaps we could afford to underestimate the situation.

Changing Our Mindset

Not anymore. Now, the small town boutique not only needs a good card terminal at the counter, but also a mobile solution to do curbside transactions, a payment gateway to enable ecommerce, digital gift cards to enable easy community investment for the future, and contactless to protect the health of its employees and customers, not to mention an integrated system that keeps financial and operational performance in-sync. 

Fortunately, we were ready, and we’ve mobilized quickly. While we haven’t triaged every American small business, just as the federal and state governments haven’t gotten assistance to every individual and business affected by the pandemic, we are well on our way. Just give us time. And by the time we’re finished, looking at those comparative technology adoption rates among countries will be remarkably different. But if I can certify one thing for our partners and merchants, it’s the fact that we will never stop innovating, so that we can be ready for you and whatever you’re facing.

What I love most about our industry is how tightly aligned our survival is with that of our partners and merchants. Unlike some industries, the payments industry feasts only when our customers do, and when they starve, we do, too.  Knowing that value proposition, and living with it every day, keeps us honest and keeps us moving forward.

Together.

Kevin Jones April 21, 2020 You often hear us in the payments and financial technology industries as we implore you to shop local, supporting your community’s small businesses that include restaurants, bars and breweries, salons, and boutique shops. Too often, this imperative is misunderstood as a feel-good marketing campaign.

But make no mistake, the shop local movement is about something very real. It’s how we build more vibrant, sustainable communities that meet our needs, economically, culturally, and by virtually any measure of quality of life, whether you’re in places the size of Los Angeles, Nashville, Greenville, South Carolina, or my tiny hometown of West Jefferson, North Carolina.

The numbers don’t lie. There are nearly 30 million small businesses in America, and they employ nearly two-thirds of the workforce. If you’re looking purely to make an economic impact directly in the lives of your friends, neighbors, and fellow church-goers, you really couldn’t have a better strategy than eating at that family-owned restaurant, having your car repaired with your hometown mechanic or dealership, or getting that spa treatment at the beauty shop around the corner. Your locally-spent dollars keep people employed and keep the economy progressing in normal times, and they are helping these folks survive in the unprecedented times since the outbreak of COVID-19.

As if that weren’t enough, shopping local, eating local, and drinking local goes way beyond helping your individual neighbors and friends. Out of every dollar you spend locally, 67 cents stay in your community. Furthermore, that same dollar is taxed at a local level up to four times, on average.  Think about everything your tax dollars pay for in your community:  schools; roads, parks and greenways; the arts; parades and community events; loans and grants for startups; programs to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, and much, much more.

It’s been noted in study after study that promoting small businesses strengthens the middle class, reduces income inequality, creates local supply chains, achieves higher wages and benefits, bolsters civic and social well-being, and makes business simply fairer in pricing and terms. When I was forming my plan for Celero nearly two years ago, I decided to double down on my belief in the resilience and sustainability of American small business. I knew we’d face hard times again, but like many, I didn’t think it would happen so soon. 

But my belief is rooted in the knowledge that we are, in fact, all in this together—in good times and bad. For all of us who want our communities to survive now and thrive when good times are here again (and I’ll bet that survey would yield somewhere near 100 percent of us), we need to act like we do at church. Let’s have our behaviors exemplify our beliefs. Even in times of social distancing, we can support our beloved small, local businesses. Utilize curbside, takeout, and delivery services whenever you can, and buy virtual gift cards to invest in these businesses when you can’t.

Let’s get through this by focusing on the health of our families and friends and by extending a hand to those small businesses that mean so much to our way of life. Let’s work together to save our neighbors and save our communities.