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"To paraphrase Jobs, when technologies are innate skills, without. Sanchez also stressed the need for repeatability.
they become apps running in the background. This is true "Getting paid once is not the idea; it's getting consumers
for all technologies, not just payments." Gardner has seen to come back."
agile (iterative) development replace waterfall (sequential,
non-iterative) development over the past 16 years. Following are three complementary criteria of the design
"Waterfall development was a World War II construct, and thinking process:
agile was post-Vietnam, from the Air Force," he said. "You 1. Desirability: User experience designers, researchers,
can't take a rigid approach to combat; you have to adapt to anthropologists and ethnographers focus on
circumstance." desirability.

Among its setbacks, waterfall development was 2. Feasibility: Technology designers work out practical
cumbersome and slow. "Being overtime, over budget, over aspects and feasibility.
engineered, the first generation was awful," Gardner said. 3. Viability: Client innovation leaders are attuned to a
"Imagine telling a consumer, 'If you download this app design's viability.
on your phone, within six to nine months you'll be able to
use it, and by the way, you'll have to spend $150,000 and Sanchez said product managers holistically manage all
when I bring it live, it may not include all the things you three criteria.
wanted.'"
Reality check
Gardner went on to say that payment technology must
be conducive to agile implementation. Agreement Designing for the real world requires empathy and
Express spent five years re-engineering its platform and pragmatism, Sanchez noted. Researchers visit people in
brought it live in November 2016. The platform learns, their homes and conduct research in the field to solve
adapts and makes data-driven decisions, he noted. Over problems the right way, but also to solve the right problems.
time, it provides business owners with better and better
information, he added. "When thinking about building a mobile wallet for gas
stations, my chief product officer and I went into quick
All enterprise technology needs to get to this point, service restaurant [QSR] and petroleum verticals to study
Gardner said. When I'm traveling, I may need a translation people," Sanchez said. "It turned out the payment itself
app to read a menu. When we say, "It will take six to nine wasn't broken from a consumer perspective. Payment
months to activate this," we're creating tomorrow's legacy cards worked well. But we found other problems in the
system. "It's a fascinating world because technology must drive-through."
be seamless at the enterprise level," he said. "We're at the
beginning of what we're going to see in the Internet of After observing the high number of queues and extended
Things (IoT). And the computer is still not an appliance, wait times at gas station QSRs, First Data designed its
not yet. If you think about the IoT, the appliances have Order Ahead app. People could order on the app, pick up
become computers." their food, and payment and loyalty just happened as part
of the experience.
Design thinking
Payments' last mile
J. Scott Sanchez, Innovation Leader at First Data Corp.,
said that in addition to providing a secure, convenient When a customer in a sporting goods store says, "I think
experience, payments have moved from transactions to I want this kayak," the distance between the checkout
interactions. Conceptually, it's about facilitating the right queue and that impulse decision is payments' critical last
interactions between people while money moves in the mile, said Allan Lacoste, Director of ISO at Total Merchant
background. "We're in a good position to innovate, but I Services Inc. A tablet-carrying sales associate can act on
wish we could just skip to seamless," he said. "Call it ease and reinforce that impulse.
of use or intuition; the idea is using something without
noticing that you're transacting." "What doesn't work is a solution that requires exclusivity
and unfairly restricts our sales partners from making a
Five years ago, user-centered design thinking was new to living," Lacoste said. "Proprietary systems are out of place
First Data, Sanchez said. Today it's implemented across the in a world of connected cars, dishwashers that order
organization as product teams work with banks, shops, detergent and Amazon Go! markets where you can pick
ISOs and ISVs. We have a saying: quick it or quit it; if up your groceries and leave without taking anything out
you're not quick, they will leave you quickly, he said. of your pocket."

Sanchez, who formerly ran Intuit's Innovation Lab and He added that the IoT has created a whole new runway,
served as Vice President, Global Innovation Strategy at wide open for growth. "It will be interesting to see how
Visa, said that ultimately the objective is to give people far we can take this and how the payments landscape will
things they could never imagine, then never imagine going look in 15 years," he said.

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