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products and services, some solutions have been more ef-
The ve
The very point of salery point of sale fective than others. The best examples he has seen are truly
original and reflect the core values of the companies that
design them, he stated.

"Fintechs should spend less time copying other companies
and more time leveraging their own unique capabilities,"
Patel said. "Begin at the intersection of your audience and
your product or company, then build something quickly
Hope, recovery ride and release it. Most of all, be authentic. If it's truly about
helping others, there's no need to overmarket it or capital-
ize on it."
payment rails Leverage native capabilities

The best way for companies to be true to themselves is to
By Dale S. Lasizg fully understand their target markets, Patel stated. By plac-
ing the customer first, they can avoid the "me too" trap and
t's hard to imagine where we'd be in the current crisis be more than an imitator. He added that PayRange designs
without sturdy, flexible and resilient payment rails. products and services with three audiences in mind: con-
Built on a solid foundation of redundant networking sumers, operators and the communities we serve. In Feb-
I and communications technologies, these rails are ruary 2020, the company secured a $70 million funding
moving funds and keeping the global economy moving round to digitize unattended retail machines at no upfront
forward. ACH networks are expediting Payroll Protection cost to machine owners, using a hardware-as-a-service
Plan (PPP) and unemployment benefits. Card brands and (Haas) model.
prepaid service providers are providing unbanked and
underbanked civilians with access to financial services. Michael Kitchen, chief revenue officer at PayRange, ob-
Mobile wallets and ecommerce solutions are overcoming served that the prohibitive cost of new hardware was pre-
supply chain barriers to essential products and services venting numerous owners from upgrading their equip-
when businesses around the world are shuttered. ment. The HaaS model eliminated that barrier, he reported,
garnering thousands of early sign-ups.
Third-party service providers that had previously worked
behind the scenes are making news as they help consum- "We have only begun our initial rollout of the program and
ers and small and midsize business owners. The Green Sheet are already signing up ten thousand machines a week,"
reports on their generous acts in breaking news and fea- Kitchen said in a statement. "We are very pleased with the
ture articles. Our newswire is alive with examples of new early results of this program and expect demand will out-
solutions designed to overcome collective challenges and strip our initial one million device supply."
launched seemingly overnight.
From nice to necessary
In a recent interview with The Green Sheet, Paresh Patel, History has shown that the innovation lifecycle is remark-
CEO at PayRange Inc., described a new pay-later feature
in his company's unattended laundromat app. The project ably similar across products, industries and eras. When ini-
tially introduced, many products are seen as luxuries, but
took about 48 hours to create, from concept through pro-
duction, he recalled. Noting that epic unemployment rates as adoption grows, they become embedded in the fabric
of our lives. Over time, electronic payments have evolved
had motivated PayRange engineers to accelerate develop-
ment and get the solution to market, he said, "We knew this from standalone hardware to subscription service models.
Through this journey, service offerings have become in-
is not the time for anyone to skip washing clothes. Con-
sumers whose credit cards are declined at our self-serve teroperable, embedded and invisible.
kiosks are now able to complete their transactions."
The common wisdom is that merchants only think of their
Pay it forward payments mechanisms during a crisis, which is where we
find ourselves today. Except that this time, it's the world
Eighty percent of consumers who have used the pay-lat- that is shut down. The POS is working exactly as it should,
er feature have already repaid the company, Patel noted. because these payment rails are built to last, and they carry
"Imagine how frustrating it would be to take a basket of the very best of our industry know-how in every transac-
clothes to the common area laundry room, only to have tion.
your card declined," he added. "In these trying times, we
want to save people from yet another inconvenience." Dale S. Laszig, senior staff writer at The Green Sheet and managing
director at DSL Direct LLC, is a payments industry journalist and content
Patel observed that while the global pandemic is motivat- development specialist. She can be reached at dale@dsldirectllc.com
ing numerous fintechs to jump into the market with new and on Twitter at @DSLdirect.
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