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broadening their knowledge base beyond just payments Banks fronted credit card funds to merchants before
by becoming well-versed in their chosen verticals' trends, batches had settled, gaining a competitive advantage
regulations and marketing strategy. And by surrounding over third-party acquirers and their average 48-hour wait
themselves with industry experts, MLSs fully participate times.
in solving specific industry needs.
Waiting 30 days to receive paper copies of bank statements
"We will see more people starting more companies to seems inconceivable today but was common practice 30
solve more problems and seize more opportunities – many years ago. After decades of gradual banking infrastructure
of which will never land on Silicon Valley's radar," Case upgrades, the Federal Reserve established the Faster
wrote. "And I believe the leaders behind these emerging Payments Task Force in 2017, with the goal of enabling U.S.
companies will end up being the most diverse group of bank account holders to securely send and receive real-
CEOs America has ever produced." time payments by 2020.

Beyond app marketplaces Deluxe Corp. founder W.R. Hotchkiss invented the
Case's timeline placed the three waves of the internet as checkbook 105 years ago, a product that has steadily
follows: the first wave of building the internet took place evolved from paper to electronic. Michael Reed, payments
between 1985 and 1999. The second wave, which occurred division president at Deluxe, said the company observed
between 2000 and 2015, introduced the app economy and how checks were used and designed digital processes to
mobile revolution, with ecommerce start-ups growing on take the friction away. "Seeing all these checks provides us
top of the internet. The third and current wave began in with detailed use cases of the jobs they're performing," he
2016, ushering in the IoE era. said. "We saw checks mailed with sticky notes. Over time,
we built software to manage unstructured data so banks
It took guts for Case to proclaim the end of the app and would know how to apply it."
mobile revolution in 2016, but the long arc of payments Same theme, different props
history supports his opinion. In the not-too-distant
past, MLSs were selling and leasing countertop, virtual, Siamac Rezaiezadeh, head of product marketing at
integrated, portable and mobile POS devices. When the GoCardless, agreed independent software vendors are
era of dedicated devices began to slowly fade, few MLSs or empowering financial institutions. He recalled that 10
ISOs wanted to accept it. years ago, banks were trying to solve too many problems
across a broad stack. Data sets weren't unified across
Free terminal programs delivered the first blow, messing personal accounts, business accounts, loans and credit
with profit margins and forcing many ISOs to adopt cards, he noted.
new business models. Competitively priced integrated
solutions delivered the second blow, making complex, "Slowly over time, fintechs ate into that stack," Rezaiezadeh
interconnected systems available to small and midsize said. "By focusing on small areas, they solved huge
merchants. Distributed software solutions delivered a problems for a wide number of organizations. But their
near-fatal punch by making payments available anytime, advanced technology platforms are not the end product,
anywhere, which provided merchants and consumers only a starting point."
alternative options to dedicated devices.
Brad Giles, senior vice president, marketing and sales
Today's apps and app marketplaces are following a similar enablement at Ingenico Group, mentioned that some
trajectory. In the early days of the app economy and mobile prototype models never make it out of his company's
revolution, we learned to say, "There's an app for that." But innovation lab. "We love to fail at innovation," he said.
lately we aren't thinking as much about which app to use "We'll swing and miss a few times to get that one solution
for a particular product or service. When we walk into a that delights our customers."
coffee shop, our pumpkin spice latte is waiting. When we
hail a ride, our driver arrives in minutes, greeting us by Giles pointed out that before World War II, the interstate
name. In the IoE, POS devices and apps share a crowded highway system only had two lanes, because commerce
stage with smartphones, tablets, digital signage, and voice- hadn't caught up. "It took a decade and a half for the
enabled and payments-enabled intelligent appliances. trucking system to explode and change the dynamic of
Everyone is connected, transacting and communicating. our society," he said. "Today, we're going through the same
thing digitally. The themes keep repeating; it's the same
Paper to electronic script, just different props."

As payments industry veterans may recall, digitalizing
paper transactions was the original value proposition. Dale S. Laszig, senior staff writer at The Green Sheet and managing
Merchants, accustomed to taking paper receipts to the director at DSL Direct LLC, is a payments industry journalist and content
bank, learned to transmit batches electronically. development specialist. She can be reached at dale@dsldirectllc.co and
on Twitter at @DSLdirect.

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