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6. Use Man in the Desert Sell- Going forward, payments industry partners will continue to shape our
ing, a philosophy designed collective future, helping retailers make commerce more flexible, connected,
to anticipate customer needs interactive and secure. As a journalist who will never run out of stories and a
and exceed expectations. consumer who will happily engage with cool new products for years to come, I
7. Create an air of excitement. eagerly await more principled disruptions.
Customers can feel this excite-
ment when they enter a store. Dale S. Laszig, senior staff writer at The Green Sheet and managing director at DSL Direct LLC, is
"Three steps in the door, you a payments industry journalist and content strategist. She can be reached at dale@dsldirectllc.
know if the place has it," the com and on Twitter at @DSLdirect.
company wrote.

I've seen the same principles at play
at leading retailers and financial ser-
vice providers, especially during the
recent pandemic, when people put
aside their differences to help each
other. In interviewing payments in-
dustry leaders, I found numerous
examples of payments industry pro-
fessionals helping retailers, restaura-
teurs and hoteliers survive a global
business shutdown.

Future looking bright
The pandemic provided a proving
ground for payment technologies
originally designed to be fun and
convenient that were hastily de-
ployed to meet essential needs. A
June 2021 study by JPMorgan and
FreedomPay, titled Preparing for the
Return of Demand: How America's Re-
tail & Hospitality Elite Tackle Disrup-
tion with New Commerce Investment,
surveyed 50 senior executives to
understand how the pandemic im-
pacted technology investments and
infrastructure.

Survey respondents became more
willing to take risks during the crisis,
according to the report, and reward-
ed companies that stepped in to help
them. Executives surveyed plan to
focus on "multi-dimensional, inter-
connected needs" in future technol-
ogy investments, researchers found.

"COVID-19 has moved the vendor
relationship from supplier to partner,"
researchers wrote. "At the same time,
it has increased stakeholder appetite
for rapid innovation, creating new
openings for niche suppliers and
startups." Software and hardware
partners helped in-house teams
with design, project management,
training and compliance, they added.

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