Businesses are rushing to digitize payments throughout their supply chains. Actors are now experimenting with different roles. More and more aggregators are built on open application programming interfaces (APIs), and agents are broadening their influence. Consequently, the relationships between those that use digital payments and those that provide them are becoming more complex.
From the users’ perspective, however, it can often be baffling to identify who is accountable for either detecting or offering recourse for problems.
Therein lies the prospect of a world in which responsibility is a shared construct—with stronger user trust, better value propositions and increased adoption of digital payments.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Ensure that service-level agreements enforce responsibility for all providers in the digital payments value chain. This approach may include providing users with a unified recourse mechanism.
Conduct assessments of payment service providers, such as through periodic spot checks, user ratings of agents, feedback surveys and mystery shopper activity, to suggest improvements.
Advocate for regulators to focus on provider liability regarding activities of agents, employees and other third parties. This might pay special attention to domains related to new technology, fraud and data breaches.
IN PRACTICE
