Barry Stearn, Director, Brand Partnership Success, talks to our Senior Vice President, Marketing Communications, Liesl Smith, at RetailEXPO19 in London. They talk about the current payments landscape and pain point for services in the retail industry.

How important is it for FreedomPay to be here [at RetailEXPO] today?

It’s crucial that FreedomPay have a presence here today for RetailEXPO. Our whole organization is built around delivering success and revenues through our partner channel, and that obviously spans our product set of eCommerce, card present, moto and mobile as well. So, for us to be here in our own right and supporting our partners such as Oracle, Agilysys, Omnico in their journey and joining us on our journey across different territories such as Europe, it’s absolutely crucial.

Have you had good feedback already at the show?

Absolutely! It’s been quite a whirlwind of engagement so far, our building blocks are leveraging our relationships in our US organizations and our established integrations and taking advantage of them across different territories as well, so it’s been a very collaborative and an exciting journey so far and I’m sure over the course of the two days it’s going to get even more in depth and intense.

And when working with these partners, what are you seeing as the pain points for merchants today?

Again, you could verticalize that question and you could look at supportive different functionality across different verticals. Again, as we’re speaking at a retail event that’s not to say that FreedomPay aren’t very successful in other verticals such as hospitality, F&B and lodging. If we bring it back down to the retail point of view it’s about a general acceptance, and ubiquitous of integrations, so being able to accept card payments across a full omnichannel experience and ensuring that you support all local card brands in different territories.  Also, the standard processes of reliability, speed of transaction and obviously compliance and security are very relevant today.