Coral Commerce Limited

Orchestration sounds complicated. What? Another day another post (no one clapping?) - ok, we'll keep it short-ish then! You're a business needing to implement payment flows both in and out of your organization. This may be #collections or #disbursements, payments or #payouts, #deposits or #withdrawals, supply chain payments, B2C / B2B or both (sometimes we even have B2B2B2B2B2C, lots of B's these days, fractional payment processing? or something like that 😅 ). You know your market or perhaps you're new and still learning. You are bragging about how good your new #ecommerce platform is, but not so much your actual business capabilities yet (startup founder); or you are an e-commerce juggernaut or global brand with a need to expand beyond your current horizons (old hand); or you simply need someone to help you manage all those payment and service provider flows you signed up for, pay for, and fight with (corporate); or you wish to optimize your checkout journey/s and reduce your churn or decline rates (everyone). You know more than your peers, so much so, you see yourself as beyond an expert and even the much vaunted 'influencer', so you want to create your own #payment company; or you have a large portfolio of #merchants that need managing through a single portal; or you are an ISO with grand ambitions and wish to rapidly expand in your chosen markets; or you are all of these above and more. You've heard about #aggregation and now think payment #facilitation is the way to go, but boy, those new Visa rules for #payfacs just scare the heck out of you? You need #orchestration and it is the simplest service to onboard. Connect with us at #CoralCommerce, comment right here or write us at [email protected]. We'll onboard you immediately, give you a sandbox to play with, discuss with you every concern and ambition, connect you with all our applicable service providers, or connect to a selection of your own. Our team will wear your brand for as long as you are contracted with us, connecting you to every partner you need to be successful at your business. And we won't charge you a single dime upfront, we won't control the merchant commercial agreements between you and your sponsors, in fact we connect you directly with them to negotiate your own terms. We co manage all of the above, a fully featured tier 1 payment gateway, embedded as your own, multi currency enabled and ready to help you improve your payment checkout journeys, and manage your supply chain and 3rd party vendor payment flows. Wallets, cards, mobile money or bank accounts, your customers can pay any way you choose for your markets too. See, its easy, Orchestration 101 😆 (Yes yes, we route your payment flows, we offer branding tools and tiers for all phases of the payment flows, we do both hosted and direct checkout integrations, and so on, but we don't expect you to drive those, we do this as part of your team - see more at coralcommerce.com).

Let's talk fees and costs on this bright Monday morning! Basic CoralCommerce 'logic' tells us the following: "Offer a PCI DSS certified orchestration service enabled via a single API to multiple payment sponsors, using our own experienced team managed as the payfac or merchant's own, charging no upfront fees whilst enabling multiple payment types in multiple currencies globally, for which we collect a small orchestration fee in arrears, must be the best outcome for all." (or we are crazy, but you can't prove that!) Bad maths, awesome business - for merchants and payfacs alike. Cost is one of the key reasons clients use an orchestration platform like CoralCommerce, as they not only save on upfront costs, they also integrate only once to access multiple payment sponsors globally that they end up owning their own commercial agreements with. CoralCommerce may introduce them to these sponsors and then step aside or they may bring us their own partners to integrate to. This is true orchestration for us and why we love talking about its benefits to payfacs and brands alike! Since we are a joint-risk service provider, our clients don't pay upfront for 3rd party payment or service provider integrations, and they only start paying a nominal orchestration fee once they have started their own processing, billed separately and in arrears. So whether they use our partners or their own, we integrate and help manage the technical onboarding and the payment operations in partnership with them for the duration of our agreement. Large brands with global or regional ambitions and payment facilitators alike require more complex partnerships when multiple jurisdictions, currencies or countries are included, complexity orchestration partners like CoralCommerce can help simplify and manage. Orchestration has become an excellent service model to expand through and even to embed as your own. We talk here of our own orchestration service, but it is generally true for many. Orchestration works and is very economical! If you are a company needing to expand beyond one or two payment sponsors for any reason, you wish to own your own commercial payment / service agreements, or you wish to create your own payment company using a branded payment provider, look to payment or service orchestration. If you need help in better understanding the solutions available to you, talk with us at [email protected] #payment #orchestration #coralcommerce #fees #commercials

Friday thoughts (written by JDL): today is different as I want to write something on the back of my D-Day post that was about people getting things done, no matter how hard. Starting up CoralCommerce in Oct 2019 was never about payments, or transactions, or proving we could build something in our 50's. It was always about people, and if I know one thing, from Accra to Nairobi, from Cape Town to Cairo, Africa is filled with innovative, artistic, smart people who do the impossible every single day. Inspired we thought let's create a layer, a solution, across Africa that brings all these exciting people together through commerce, connecting banks, payment partners and networks to clients, connecting extraordinary brands to payment and services companies, enabling easy access to digital commerce, whilst staying true to our goals without pivoting into partner or client business segments. We have had the honor for the past four years of quietly building alongside these inspirations, meeting people who think outside the box, who build solutions despite a lack of reliable power or Internet provision, who continue to make the most incredible designs and solutions for the world despite political upheaval, despite being far from home, despite being displaced for reasons not their own. People who endure. People of Africa show endurance like few others do in my experience. Our team too learnt this and built out a payment and services orchestration platform that spans the continent even as we start in South America doing the same. From card to mobile money to wallets to account payments, we are privileged to see digital commerce across the continent growing every single day! We have had competitors say terrible things (who hasn't experienced losers like that). Companies competing for business by breaking down competitors with rumors (In Afrikaans "skinner" is the better word!) are never around for long. And clients who believe that nonsense were never going to be good clients anyway. So we endured. Whilst always driven by our clients as part of their teams, we have had tough times, projects with banks that take two years or more to launch, amazing startups that fail for reasons outside their control, projects being shelved due to the 'economy', valuable human resources leaving, and often just poor timing that sees us too late for an opportunity. But we endure. Today CoralCommerce spans most of the primary markets in Africa, connects big brands to banks, payment gateways and mobile networks in Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Benin, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, the DRC, Namibia, and South Africa. And we connect some of the biggest brands in payments and services to some of the most extraordinary digital retailers, businesses and partners globally, but Africa is our jewel, it is a digital home to us! Our growth is thanks to our community members who make all this possible. Clients who never stop innovating. Thank you for your endurance!

Meeting your first 'boss' in the "Card"field (apologies to Bethesda Game Studios for this twisted reference, but we are a little 'Star'struck right now 😅 ) One of the misunderstood actions within payment processing in our experience has been how funds flow behind each transaction. The process is critical to understand as it affects a merchant's cashflow. Acquiring banks or acquirers (licensed companies acting as acquirers) manage the following phases of a transaction flow within card payments: - on receiving your payment request they request in turn an authorization from the cardholder's bank which would 'lock' the funds on the card, - they initiate the settlement instruction 'periodically' to move funds from the cardholder's account to the merchant account managed by the acquiring bank; - they move the funds from the merchant account to the merchant's linked business account; and - they co manage the risk by using all kinds of fraud detection tools. The acquirer is usually a black box to a merchant, but control the merchant's funds, when settlements are sent and received and the detail behind that transfer. CoralCommerce operates across the globe* seeing regional issues that are common: - Acquirers often outsource their settlement flow and this can leave merchants exposed. So determining this upfront from an acquirer is import. Simply ask the question: who manages your settlements, you or a 3rd party? - Acquirers and PSPs often tout digital wallet services as 'real' settlements when you can see your funds in a 'wallet', except you can only withdraw it when it 'clears'. It's not a real merchant settlement, but only a digital reflection if what is happening with your cash. Ask when you get your actual cash! - Acquirers or their agent often have inexperienced staff who may submit their settlement files late. This means submissions to issuers via a card network are late, late submissions lead to more disputes as cardholders become irate. - Acquirers or their agent often compile settlement files for merchant payments manually or semi manually, which leaves the merchant to the task of reconciling edited spreadsheets to determine the payments included in each payout to their account. This occurs almost monthly for most banks in many regions in the world, but can be monitored through daily and settlement recons by merchants. All acquirer issues here are outside the merchant's direct control since none of the above actions may be known to you. Like knowing that mini boss's weakness, informing yourself is key. Ask questions before signing agreements. We can help - [email protected] (For 'fintech' 'influencers', yes, issuers are the big bosses 🙄 we know, we can draw you a diagram if you like) *we wish it's the universe, but our 'A class' doesn't have a grav drive yet #acquirers #card #payments #cashflow #merchants #starfield #settlement #recon

Customer engagement (yeah, we're going there...) Online commerce communities grow when their product or service appeals to a market. Quick growth can follow, everyone including those (pesky) shareholders are happy and bonuses are paid. Suddenly disputes pour in, subscription renewals fail, misery follows. WTH happened! The issue with online #commerce #engagements is that it's virtual and with that comes 'blind' trust in how you have presented your product or service to the visitor who proceeds to buy it from you, as well as how you manage that #purchase once the #customer raises issues with you regarding their expectation. Expectations are built by your presentation of your product / service to your market and the terms of use. Expectations want to be fulfilled or else customers complain, often leading to #disputes that lead to refunds or, worse, charged back #transactions (#chargebacks). Then, in retrospect, you will find the cause happened well before a dispute is raised by such a customer. We can place money on the table (don't get excited, it's Monopoly) that #communication lets you down long before product failure does. If you present a product, make clear exactly what the customer can expect. Don't embellish ('lying' but we would never say that), don't over promise on your services, but present a short true description that has no ambiguity. Show your #pricing without hidden fees and state clearly what that buys. #CoralCommerce actually checks your numbers to ensure they balance out in the final total, shipping and taxes included. It's not that we don't trust you, but... Do this to ensure the customer always pays what they see in their shopping cart or #checkout confirmation, to help you reduce any chance of disputes. Check your #terms regularly, make sure that they comply to your local #regulations for distance selling, online sales, general commerce laws and so on. If you use #recurring #billing or subscription services then you are even more liable to miss updates from the regulators on how customers must be informed and treated during said subscription services. Check your terms (yes, we said this before, so check them!) and make sure you are compliant. Examples of how not to do subscription services are many, sadly. You can look at brands like Adobe who are now being sued by the US Gov, not a position you want to be in. Quite a few translation / language apps are very likely to see the same actions from government regulators soon unless they change their lock-in flows, so do not emulate them at all. As we posted before, focus on value not lock-in when selling subscription or recurring services to your customers. Make your dispute user journeys simple, easy to understand and navigate, and quick to resolve. We promise you that it will save a ton of frustrations if you do. Oh, and if lock-in is your preference, then #tokenization will annihilate your business soon, as it puts the customer back in control.

Frictionless Frustrations (deep for a Tuesday, we know) Yep, we mean those 3ds declines you see in your payment history 😑 One of the most annoying issues we hear most often about is the frictionless flow within 3DS authentications that lead to declines without customer intervention. These are usually classified as 'potential fraud' declines where the customer's bank determines the transaction to be fraudulent (25%, 50%, 75% certainty and so on) . Many of our Africa based acquiring partners experience this when attempting to process cross border or even local transaction authorizations. For some this decline has become the "new" DNH (do not honor) decline reason. CoralCommerce follows Visa's advice here by echoing that we encourage merchants to submit as much information about the payee and payment as possible during the payment request itself. CoralCommerce also includes as much information in our submissions as we receive from a merchant and can determine technically during their request flow to help inform our acquirers and the customer's bank / issuer as extensively as possible. Equally as a merchant, issuer permitting, you are able to request the bank default their authentication check to the challenge flow instead of the frictionless flow. However this is subject to issuers consent so not always a possibility to execute in the current version of 3ds. General though more information during submissions lead to less declines during authentication and potentially improves the approval rate for authorizations. Stuck in authentication hell? Let us help guide you through the pain at [email protected] #payment #authentication #cards #digital #ecommerce #coralcommerce

Transaction Laundering! (scared you, didn't we?) Yes, thats a term and it is being directly linked to 'money laundering', which very much places it into the 'seedy' side of life. Visa's definition of Transaction Laundering or 'factoring': 'transaction laundering occurs when an illicit business surreptitiously uses payment services through a front-organization posing as a legitimate merchant.' Illicit, not illegal, is the term used here and its the heart of the issue with Transaction Laundering as it is a wider term. Payment companies may have a harder time detecting illicit activity in this context as legal activity in one country can still be illicit (as in immoral or unlicensed and so on) in another. P0rn, gambling or other services that the card schemes usually term 'high brand risk' businesses may attempt to process through standard ecomm accounts which historically is what most experienced payment teams would have come across. The good news is that the card associations have improved their machine learning systems to such an amazing level that detecting potential transaction laundering from a merchant has become possible within a very short period of attempted trade. Within CoralCommerce, we too have managed to learn how to respond to this issue with near 100% accuracy, including behavioral, social and 'card brand provided' services to lock down businesses that attempt to launder payments, in partnership with our acquirers and clients. Regulatory pressures around the world make it really important for service providers processing payments to ensure the authenticity of transaction sources. We can help. Contact us on [email protected] for more information. #transaction #laundering #digital #payments #cards #processing (DALL-E making an excellent attempt at depicting Transaction Laundering with 'almost' no errors 😅 )

Transaction Reconciliation (recon) is often likened to stock-taking in terms of frustration and let's be honest, pure boredom! But it is equally important to a business so we need to drag you through the why. Reconciling the payments to a merchant with the transaction history of that period the payment is for, is critical and a good payment platform will provide a merchant with the tools to be able to verify the payment amount correctly as a result of at least two primary reconciliation flows mentioned below. Two of the most important checks within our transaction flows are daily and settlement recons, and they are explained below to help educate merchants on what can be done to ensure accurate cashflow between their processing and business accounts. Daily reconciliation is when a payment system ensures that it agrees with the transaction history held by the acquiring bank. This feature helps ensure that we remain in lockstep with the sponsoring bank's system so that we open each new day reconciled in the number of transactions and their statuses for example. Settlement reconciliation is when a payment system reconciles the number of transactions and their statuses for every settlement flow that occurs between the acquiring bank and its merchants, and these are usually based on several unique bits of information passed during each transaction processed on such a payment system. Large brands or companies tend to have next-day, daily or even realtime settlements, though this issuing split into two types of 'realtime' cashflow models. The bank either settles to a virtual wallet or account, in which case the cashflow has not yet occurred, but the settlement amount is correctly reflected in that virtual account or wallet; or the bank settles directly to the merchant's bank account (pay-away) which is through an immediate payment method will show as an adjusted cash balance in that merchant's business account. At #CoralCommerce we always provide the reports and tools our partners and their merchants need for these reconciliations, though we cannot guarantee it relieves the boredom of spreadsheets! The more exciting news regarding recons (yes, we said 'exciting') is the introduction of AI tools that will help the users through the process more effectively than before, assisting in the analysis of the volumes, the accuracy of settlements and the segmentation of the outcomes (disputes, declines, reasons and so on). Contact us for more information on your recon flows and how we may be able to assist you either through our technology or experience, at [email protected] #payments #digital #reconciliations #processing (DALL-E's interpretation of financial reconciliation - Perhaps we grade it a 'C'?)

The view of subscriptions from the outside... In the news right now is the case of US Gov versus Adobe and it is very obvious that the brand is in for a hard time to anyone experienced in payment subscription services (https://lnkd.in/gg3MzD29). Johan de Lange has written on the subject before, but given the airtime of the case above, we want to remind merchants again to look carefully at how they implement subscription services. The best approach is often to look at the service as an outsider. An external view of your subscription service or recurring billing shows up a lot of issues you most often won't consider if you only look at it from within your business as a revenue stream and the customer as a PAN or token. Regulators often come across as inconsiderate when in fact all they do is view your service as an outsider. Their perspective and view of your offering is therefore very different from your own, which, lets be honest, is often filled with stand-ups, budget considerations, program versus product fights, onboarding challenges, carrots & sticks, and perhaps a quick look at whether your billing partners are ok with the gist of your offer. Think like the regulator does in your country or market region. Take the honest road and look at what your subscription service looks like to outsiders. Most often than not it looks like a lock-in effort, which is exactly a regulator's reason for battle. You should evaluate your offer in the following manner: lock-in versus convenience. Lock-in may make FMs smile, as having subscribers is a guaranteed revenue stream, but are customers happy or consenting subscribers, which is what you should carefully consider or else a regulator will consider it for you, usually with terrible results. If you cannot sell your subscription or recurring billing service as a convenience to your customers then in all honesty why are you offering the service at all? The market is fast switching to tokenization and once that is rolled out across all regions and used in higher volumes, a bad subscription service will end abruptly, not only because regulators will take action, but because customers will simply revoke your right to bill them. Plan your subscription services as a tool of convenience for your customers and not as a prison sentence. Learn from Adobe's battle and do the opposite (most of the time) or chat to us if you need help, initial engagements are all free and once you feel more in-depth help is needed, you can chat with our consulting team - [email protected] #subscriptions #recurring #payments #adobe #coralcommerce

Friday Thoughts: Paying respect (pun intended)! My thoughts this past month have been personally focused on people who make a difference when no one else is looking, who get the job done when no one else posts about it on X, who grinds a 9 to 5 mentoring others without bragging about it on Instagram, who does charity for others without using it to boost themselves. Maybe D-Day had something to do with these thoughts surfacing, appreciating people who ‘just get on with it’. I’ve had some amazing experiences over the years where others sowed into our businesses and lives without asking for anything in return. Amazing individuals like Malcolm Felgate who taught me so much about what is important in financial systems, Jeremy Wilmot who enlightened my view of payments globally and risked my South African accent spoiling a prestige Spanish wedding, Pierre Swart who took a chance on me just as the internet bubble burst in 2000, Gary Palmer whose amazing team and person directly impacted my understanding of card issuing and the possibilities, Barry Harrison whose never ending patience with a stubborn employee helped shape my understanding of financial services in Retail, Eddie Gonzalez who helped a failing employer of mine to desparately complete an exciting retail opportunity without any reward at the time, David Monty who took our conversations during Alpha Telecom days and an introduction to payment systems / Barclays Group and blew out the lights with Tuxedo Money and since then tell.money, Andre Louw and Eddie Carpenter who spent years patiently teaching me about the opportunities within Telco and VAS, the Vietnamese ‘gentleman’ that is Chan Ly Nguyen, Terry Day and Matthew Day who are absolute gentlemen!, and the ever patient Jeffrey Ohrenstein who has seen us through the worst of times as mentor and chairman. They are all just a small sample of the people who crossed paths with us and who made an amazing impact that I personally and we as a team will always appreciate. The reason I post them here is because they continued to do this even to this day with people. They continue to be to others what they were to us. So I am proud to say that we built our businesses standing on their (and others) shoulders and it is my hope that we can do to others what they taught us with their examples! Today I see young founders who are chasing their dreams, some or most I would venture, at any cost, without a moment’s thought of the people on whose shoulders they build their dreams. You’re not the quant you think you are unless you also include those who came before, who supported you, who contributed even in small ways to the person and company you are today. D-Day would never have been as successful had ‘brothers’ not ‘banded’ together to get through the darkest days and share in the ultimate victory. We could all do the same in fintech today. Trust me when I say victory celebrations are far sweeter in a group than as an individual! Pay it forward!