Published 5/29/19
Published 5/29/19
Reading Min.

Pierre-Antoine Vacheron, Chloé Mayenobe and Antoine Leclercq tell us about the Payments division, its businesses and how it plans to become a pure player in the sector across Europe.

Natixis Payments Pierre-Antoine Vacheron Chloé Mayenobe Antoine Leclercq
(From left to right): Chloé Mayenobe, Head of Growth & Transformation; Antoine Leclercq, Chief Technology Officer; Pierre-Antoine Vacheron, Member of the Natixis Senior Management Committee in charge of Payments

How would you describe Natixis Payments?

Pierre-Antoine Vacheron: Natixis Payments is a fully-fledged payments player and really stands out from the crowd as it covers the entire value chain of payments, from issuing means of payment to acquisition by merchants, and including prepaid services, which makes it truly unique on the European market. Natixis Payments’ teams have set their goal as “Building better payments every day”, and this signature that we use across all our communications reflects our European-wide ambitions as we seek to pre-empt changes in our clients’ needs, consumers’ requirements and merchant demand, all with the aim of continually making payment more transparent, more digital and achieving the best possible performances.

Antoine Leclercq: We combine longstanding expertise in the payments space – transfers and direct debits – with our fintechs’ full digital range, as they develop innovative solutions to address today’s retail and corporate challenges. Some examples include electronic wallets, group payments and online payment.

Pierre-Antoine Vacheron: We use our expertise to support the Banques Populaires and Caisses d’Epargne networks and their customers: payment is a vital area for retail networks’ revenues, margins and their day-to-day relationships with retailers and consumers. We are also ramping up our business with our own direct clients as reflected by our recent commercial successes with Cdiscount and SNCF Mobilités. 

What lies ahead on the Natixis Payments roadmap?

Pierre-Antoine Vacheron: We now need to finish building our processing business range, particularly on Instant Payment after we were the first company to offer the service in France, and develop e-commerce solutions and means of payment issue. Integrating our fintechs into our processing business, while preserving their entrepreneurial spirit, is a vital component of our roadmap.

Chloé Mayenobe: Our strategy will be applied in both our longstanding businesses, as well as our fintechs, and we will leverage our teams’ synergies to achieve a smooth and seamless payment experience.

Tell us about the division’s new governance?

Pierre-Antoine Vacheron: We enjoy a wide diversity of experiences, so we are deriving the benefits of these very diverse skills sets and personalities, as well new expertise from the payment industry, where international experience is a key advantage in making our products more competitive and managing the division as a whole.

Chloé Mayenobe: Yes, we decided to set up a Technological team and a cross-business Growth & Transformation team, with the aim of supporting the new model for the Payments division for the years ahead. 

What does being a pure player really mean?

Pierre-Antoine Vacheron: Becoming a pure player means really transforming our business culture. And to achieve this, we need to strengthen our client relationships, think beyond our usual borders, really include our fintechs and help our teams work better together.

Chloé Mayenobe: So it means creating the right environment to foster real engagement so that all our staff can find their place and their own roadmap, and feel involved as we strive towards the same goal. The division’s leaders have a crucial role to play in this transformation, which will help us think “client-centric” morning, noon and night!

How do you think the payment sector will develop and how will this impact our products and services?

Chloé Mayenobe: We can see that today’s consumers want to be able to pay on the go. This requirement makes for limitations but also opportunities. So whether it’s with a retailer or when dealing with the public sector, we are seeing digitalization of the client experience and data is a critical aspect of this transformation that lies ahead. In this respect, integrating our digitally native fintechs into Natixis’ Payments universe is a real source of value.

Antoine Leclercq: Merchants mostly want to make the customer experience completely seamless, which means we can also offer other solutions, such as contactless payment and payment directly in store aisles rather than at check-outs. We are working on these aspects within our teams and also relying on partners such as Wynd to develop omnichannel offers and use API* to integrate the retailer’s system with the payment system. Leveraging data to combine physical and digital channels is also one of our major areas for focus and investment.

 

*API : Applications Programming Interface. IT solution that enables applications to interface and exchange services or data.