Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Tracy Metzger, COO of Vesta (Part 4)

Tracy Metzger: There is a need today to go out and find a consolidated way to leverage all of these different great technologies that are bespoke in their way of implementation. There is a need to find a way through a single point of interface, to leverage all of these great solutions, and make it easy for a merchant to adopt this technology without having to adopt this technology and without having to manage a myriad of different business relationships. It becomes difficult from an integration standpoint, on an ongoing change management standpoint.

While it’s not necessarily a silver bullet, it’s a much needed way for customers to go out and manage their fraud. Of course, Vesta is somewhat like that, but there are so many different solutions out there. There’re also other things. Veering away from what we do at Vesta, there’re also challenges in other industries.

If I were thinking about starting a business today, where I first started in this industry was with a company that did a lot of work in fuel and oil. One of the biggest challenges we have in card acceptance right now is the migration of chip card-based acceptance in the fuel pump.

You look at what’s happening where there’s a liability offset by accepting chip-based cards. It keeps getting pushed back. The way that these fuel pumps work today, it’s a cost prohibitive solution. If there’s a way a company could find a hardware solution or maybe a digital wallet solution that’s ubiquitous in a sense that it works across all different fuel pumps and companies, there’s a huge market out there to help these fuel companies deal with the challenges they face with fraud.

If you look at fuel pumps today, they’re one of the largest points of compromise for credit cards. Skimming devices are prevalent. If you look at the challenge that these companies face and the cost it takes, in some cases, to outfit their fuel pumps with new technology, some of them are field-upgradeable but you’re still looking at $7,000 to $10,000 per pump. In some of the older pumps, you’re looking at a full tear out. It’s got a domino effect. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars just to accept a chip card.

Sramana Mitra: As that one evolves, there’s going to be more. Right now, pumps only accept either credit cards or you go inside and pay in cash. If we had to go to mobile payments, they’re not set up to do any of that.

Tracy Metzger: There’re a lot of locations that suffer from this. They keep getting pushed back on their demands from Visa and MasterCard to become EMV-compliant because it’s just too cost-prohibitive. If you can find a way to get a better solution in place without the cost of doing it, I think that’s a tremendous win.

Sramana Mitra: Very good pointer. This is exactly the kind of things that I’m looking for. Thank you for that.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Tracy Metzger, COO of Vesta
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