3 Ways FinTech Companies Can Help Transform Retailers To Financial Services.

Now is your chance to make connections in that world and help them expand their ecosystem. Everyone will benefit.

If there is any organisation that can seize all that FinTech has to offer, it is retailers. It is now a global trend that retailers are adopting financial services. In countries like the United States, European Union, and China, retail stores are merging their services with FinTech, giving their customers a new experience. Not too long ago, America’s biggest retailers, Walmart and Walgreens, announced they are launching their financial services. Retail giants in Nigeria such as Ebeano Stores, Shoprite, Ajayi Supermarket, Bimta Supermarket and so on must rethink new ways of improving retail experience through financial services. This new dimension of operation will become the trend due to the pandemic. The pandemic has led to a shift in consumer behaviour that now favours contactless and digital banking.

Merging retailing and financial services is a difficult task to do, however, there are ways in which business owners can navigate and coopt financial services. The truth remains: consumer behaviour will expect more convenience from retail stores, therefore, retail services and FinTechs will collaborate to make consumer experience exciting and convenient.

As more and more retailers take this action, partnering and collaborating with FinTechs will enable them build, scale and secure their financial offerings. Designing infrastructure and providing top-notch cybersecurity is at the essence of what we do, not the sideshow.

1. Enabling Retailers To Accelerate

FinTechs can help retail stores with the fundamentals of blockchain and the present modalities of digital currency. For retail stores, FinTechs need to understand the consumer behaviour of buyers and know how to produce digital products with user-friendly and helpful experience. FinTech experts must be able to identify to retail stores the concepts in FinTech and related services. The concept and opportunities of NFTs, Bitcoin and Ethereum and other buzzwords. However, they must be able to develop the core operations of financial services, which are new currency offers and opportunities. FinTech companies must ensure that these retail stores are incorporated appropriately into the FinTech ecosystem. Furthermore, with FinTech enablement, retail stores can execute online payment services.

For instance, if a retailer wanted to start with a payment platform, it’ll need to open user accounts, fund those accounts and allow users to send or spend that money (maybe even buy some crypto). Work with them to create personal controlled accounts, observe a KYC/AMC compliance process, tie a debit card to those accounts, and process the sending and receiving of funds. The key to ensuring that these transformation from retailing to financial services is thorough education of retail owners.

2. Surge Through Services.

The transformation from retail stores to financial services can also be made possible when FinTechs help retailers to expand their services by meeting the existing needs of customers. Expansion of services can come in form of collaboration. FinTechs can help retailers create custom-made digital wallets that receive all offerings from Fiat to cryptocurrency. Retailers can have FinTech companies build them custodial solutions. This can be costly. According to TechCrunch, such solutions requires expertise across security, private key management, asset-specific compliance, and managing and storing fiat currency, securities and crypto currency. Through a trusted ecosystem of APIs, retailers can manufacture financial solutions on top of those APIs or widget-based infrastructure to bring products to market faster. This allows retailers to focus on growth instead of building and managing services.

3. Focus On Cybersecurity

Another step towards transforming retailers into fintech services is to narrow in on cybersecurity. Any company in FinTech seeking to attract new customers and retain existing ones must understand cybersecurity, and this extends to the retail sector. With cybercrime trends, retail stores must be aware that one of the negatives of going into financial services is the problem of cybercrime. This standard details requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving their information security management systems. Most retail stores, rather than sweating away on cybersecurity issues operate with the domains of trusted FinTechs who are million miles ahead in cybersecurity. As retailers begin to expand their banking opportunities, using the services of FinTech who have ready-made architecture and infrastructure is key. The role of the FinTech infrastructure is to enable them to position their products, keep them secured and sell to end users.

A Final Word.

The new trends Nigerian retailers must look at is transforming their business operations to suit the modern demands of consumer experience. The present demands, especially among millennials, Gen Y and Z, is to create contactless and digital banking services where transactions can be done through FinTech means. Therefore, in order to rise up to the demands, retailers need to employ the services of experts who can help them in developing custom-made financial services. The goal of money is to spend on goods, and retail stores daily engage with buyers. Transforming into financial services is the best way not to be left out.