Buckle up for a thrilling conversation with Valentina, the dynamic COO of Bankcontact Payconiq - a front-runner in providing payment solutions in the Belgian market. In this episode, we’ll take you on a journey through the company’s evolution in the ever-changing digital payment landscape. Valentina shows us their innovative features, including meal vouchers, digital invoices and the freshly minted merchant app.
Strap in as we explore the Belgian fintech sector with Valentina's seasoned insights. Discover how Bankcontact Payconiq harnesses opportunities from regulations such as the PSD2. Amidst the industry's continuous growth, understand the shift in consumer adoption, especially in digital payments during the pandemic. Join us for a comprehensive understanding of the digital payments landscape and anticipate the future.
Thank you for tuning into our podcast about global trends in the FinTech industry.
Check out our podcast channel.
Learn more about The Connector.
Follow us on LinkedIn.
Cheers
Koen Vanderhoydonk
koen.vanderhoydonk@jointheconnector.com
#FinTech #RegTech #Scaleup #WealthTech
Buckle up for a thrilling conversation with Valentina, the dynamic COO of Bankcontact Payconiq - a front-runner in providing payment solutions in the Belgian market. In this episode, we’ll take you on a journey through the company’s evolution in the ever-changing digital payment landscape. Valentina shows us their innovative features, including meal vouchers, digital invoices and the freshly minted merchant app.
Strap in as we explore the Belgian fintech sector with Valentina's seasoned insights. Discover how Bankcontact Payconiq harnesses opportunities from regulations such as the PSD2. Amidst the industry's continuous growth, understand the shift in consumer adoption, especially in digital payments during the pandemic. Join us for a comprehensive understanding of the digital payments landscape and anticipate the future.
Thank you for tuning into our podcast about global trends in the FinTech industry.
Check out our podcast channel.
Learn more about The Connector.
Follow us on LinkedIn.
Cheers
Koen Vanderhoydonk
koen.vanderhoydonk@jointheconnector.com
#FinTech #RegTech #Scaleup #WealthTech
Welcome to the Connector podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting FinTechs, banks and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen van der Hoijdon as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of our Connector and Belgium FinTech podcast streaming live from the digital finance summit in Brussels. And now I have somebody with me who's in the market for such a long time, so I'm super proud to have you guys. It's Valentina representing Bank Contact Peconic, but can you explain the audience who you are and what you guys do? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:Hello, I'm Valentina. I'm the chief operating officer of Bank Contact Peconic.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:Bank Contact. Peconic is a provider of payment solutions for the Belgian market. People that will listen will probably recognize Bank Contact and Peconic as really household brands, products that you used to pay your peers, your friends, in a shop online. And that's what we do. We provide the solutions to the market indirectly via network or partners and directly to our own merchant and consumer portfolio.
Speaker 2:Oh great, and that's predominantly in the Belgian market.
Speaker 3:Yes, we are really an operator in the Belgian market for the Belgian consumers and merchants.
Speaker 2:And that's why I'm so proud, because I'm Belgian too. What brings you actually to DFS and what would you like to get out of it?
Speaker 3:So we are a partner as a company of Fintech Belgian since the beginning. So it's years that we are iterating and co-creating with all the Fintechs that are members Coming here now. I've already just was greeting people in the corridor left and right because we know so many. We have really been doing nice business with them and today I'm representing the company and hope to give good insights and get some from the others.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice, nice. It's good that there's people that have a long outside in relationship and have a strong belief in all the good things that are happening within the Belgium innovation industry. Well, in your view, talking about digital payments, the landscape is sort of evolving in the recent years. What do you think, or what has been the role for your company in this bigger play?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so indeed the market has grown. So that's the first thing. There are a lot of new operators that have come in the market in the last years.
Speaker 1:For us.
Speaker 3:It was a very good thing because we provide solutions also to them. So obviously it's more business opportunities, new value proposition that you can bring to the market. So this is one thing more actors. The second is there have been new opportunities, also brought by regulation, the PSD2. And we as a company have taken advantage of those opportunities in the first hand.
Speaker 3:So, now, for example, we are operating as a payment institution directly, meaning we have direct contacts with merchants and consumers. And the third one that's also interesting for all of us here, it's there's really been a shift in consumer adoption, especially in the realm of digital payments. People in the last years also due to COVID-19, obviously have really been interested in trying digital payments and they've sticked with them. So obviously for us it's a new playing field and it's a very rich one.
Speaker 2:And can you share with us some of the innovative things that you brought to the market?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I'm working here Only a few.
Speaker 3:Yeah, indeed, I'm working here since four years and we never stop pushing things out. But we've been working right now at three important things. The first one is our consumers can already pay with mill vouchers in our app. But this is such an interesting space where consumers really are interested in doing more and doing extra things, so we're working on that. We're also working at an experience around digital invoices, so how you can easier pay your invoice in our app, and then this is going to come around January. And then, very proud to say, last week we launched our merchant app, so our merchants have their own app with which they can generate a payment Launched last week. We are contacting our merchants. Last 48 hours, wonderful pickup, so we are really excited. And still, you're here and I'm still here, but there's other people at the office managing all the requests.
Speaker 2:So you're sort of happy to be at the event today and not in the office. Okay, well, I think you mentioned that earlier, that that there is indeed a lot of increase in competition. But competition also means collaboration. You already pointed that out. But when you looked yourself at what you called merchants a lot. But how would you find yourself against, for example, fintechs?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the nice thing which is cute, I think quite peculiar to payments is that companies that compete on product A also can collaborate on product B. So it's quite modular. You're not only a competitor or only a partner, and that's how we look at this thing. So we really look at other companies, other fintech, in okay, can we do something together? And we are really not closing collaborations as a way of doing this, okay, understood, understood Well.
Speaker 2:regulation is a thing in our industry, regardless of your payment investments, anything you talk about, you already called open banking, psd2, psd3 is coming. How do you look at the regulations? Is it the blessing or is it a curse?
Speaker 3:to be very direct, both Meaning To be very direct.
Speaker 3:To be very direct, meaning payment industry is highly regulated and obviously because it touches people's money. But compared to other functional areas, we had the blessing of having regulations like PSD2 that really created new opportunity. It created the market, a new way of looking at things. It's not like that always with other areas, so that's why we're looking at things. Does this regulation bring opportunities? We hope also that the regulator sees it like we do so really trying to create new things. But this is how we approach it standard. If that creates values to our consumers, to our merchants and so to ourselves, that's where we're going to look for that opportunity.
Speaker 2:So you would actually say that you use regulations to innovate?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we try to do so. I mean, not every piece of regulation allows that, for sure. But there are two ways of looking at things. Either it's a constriction and only a constriction, or you can also take some good business ideas or good business opportunities out of that.
Speaker 2:I personally also agree with the latter. I think that makes sense. Well, you guys are in the middle of the payment field and I just come back from Singapore, singapore Fintech Festival and well, it's amazing to see what is the innovation happening, for example, in Asia. But what do you see as the most emerging technologies that are happening within your space?
Speaker 3:I mean, the agenda is really full today about Gen AI. What's Gen AI? Did not hear about it? Brand new thing. So we are really looking at that, as I think, everybody else in this conference. We are obviously trying to pitch the opportunities. We're also seeing the risks of that, Because when you start thinking we were saying before, we look at opportunities and the opportunities are huge potentially, but when you start thinking about putting that and testing technology in front of the consumers and then you hear about Gen AI tools, hallucinating and saying strange things, that's where you start saying, OK, I mean, are we ready? Do we want to do it now? So the way we are approaching this now is try to test the technology with a selected number of use cases that are only internal. So we're not putting this to the customer yet.
Speaker 2:We're going to validate the technology and, in case everything goes well as we hope, we're going to scale it to a wider range of use cases, and I know I'm asking a tricky question, and if the answer is no, that's totally fine. But are you able to reveal a little bit of the project that you're doing internally?
Speaker 3:So we started with really internal use cases, and the internal use cases are mainly in the area of our operations and our customer care, because customer care is a department that goes inside so internal processes but also potentially to the consumer. So it's the easiest one to test it without impacting negatively the consumer but also with the potential of bringing outwards the fastest. That's the range that we are.
Speaker 2:Thank you for answering that question. Now we are in a questioning mode. In terms of difficult questions, I mean bank contact payconic, as you said in the beginning, it's very active on the Belgium markets. Are there any plans to go across the boundaries of Belgium?
Speaker 3:So bank contact payconic really has a Belgian soul and we do business abroad indirectly because some of our partners are active abroad and bring our products abroad. We don't do active or proactive entry in your market. So you will see, in our transaction there are a lot of countries that are represented, but that's thanks to our network of partners. We're not setting up shop in other countries in Europe or elsewhere, because our core focus and our really reason to be is the Belgium market.
Speaker 2:It's the Belgium market. Well, now we're looking a bit ahead long term visions, goals. It's the time of the year when you sort of reflect so what is still in shop for bank contact payconic.
Speaker 3:A lot. We have a rich pipeline of initiatives. Now, obviously, the payment market it's like the 10th time we say that. It's very dynamic, it evolves all the time. So making a pipeline that is very specific, it's useful in the short term, perhaps not so useful in the long term. So what we're trying to do is what is our true north? Our true north is valuable payment solutions for the Belgian market. Once you have this in mind, then you do a pipeline of okay, which USP, which unique selling proposition we can bring, which gap is in the market? I mean, where do we see value? And we create this pipeline and regularly we revise that pipeline because market conditions have changed, technology is new. I mean, something is not relevant, so it's a recurring reassessment of our priors. That's what we do.
Speaker 2:So you will be busy, I guess. I think so. I think so too. Well, we're almost at the end of our podcast, and I always like to end up with one specific question, and that's a very simple one when can people contact you?
Speaker 3:People can contact us via the Pekonipe Bank Contact app. You can easily reach us from that channel or from our website, and people can contact me specifically via LinkedIn with my profile or my email address, which is Valentinakerusoatbankontapekoniccom which is a long one.
Speaker 2:That's a long one. Well, I didn't chose my own last name, iris. It's a long one too, valentina. Thank you so much for being in this podcast. I hope you have a blast today at DFS. Thank you, thank you very much for coming and thank you also to the audience for tuning in. Stay tuned, morris coming. See you, bye, bye bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of the Connector Podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to wwwjointheconnectorcom or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.