Connective Payments: a consultancy dedicated to payments

Five years ago, Ward Hagenaar and Jeroen van Dijk teamed up to establish Connective Payments, a consulting firm dedicated to the payments industry. “We started due to our joint passion for payments and our desire to help companies in the payments value chain create value for their business,” explain the co-founders.

Since inception, Connective Payments has worked for a range of leading industry players, including the likes of banking institutions ABN Amro and ING; payment providers Ingenico ePayments, EMS, Payvision and Arvato Financial Solutions; financial software providers such as FIS; international merchants like Allego and Bitdefender; as well as the international card schemes. "Our clients cover the entire payments value chain, from major retailers, payment schemes, alternative payment providers, open invoice providers, omnichannel cross border acquirers, card issuers, banks, to mobility service providers, solution vendors and fintech start-ups,” explains Hagenaar.

The services the Netherlands-based boutique consulting firm offers relate to payments strategy, PSD2, customer on-boarding and customer journey, operational excellence, project and change management, and working in ecosystems. Hagenaar; “We are pleased to see that our approach of co-creation is working well to bring success to the organisations we serve. To become successful, we knew that we would have to combine profound payments knowledge and experience throughout all disciplines, from management, sales and operations to agile, compliance, legal and technology. We act as team players and we leverage our industry knowledge within our customer’s team.”

Over the course of the past five years, the payments landscape has seen significant change. While major banks, credit card and domestic debit schemes, and financial giants have long controlled the scene, their dominance has been falling amid a disruptive, tech-driven landscape. According to one estimate, the global payments industry is worth over $100 trillion, and in particular innovative start-ups – take for instance Adyen, PayTM and Stripe – are eating into the market share of incumbents. Since 2014, investors have globally poured over $130 billion into ground-breaking technologies like blockchain.

Meanwhile, changing consumer behavior is redrawing the market. P2P models are expanding the payments’ footprint, and new competition driven by trends in retail (cashless, cardless and mobile payments) means that major tech giants like Apple, Google and Samsung and retailers like Amazon and Alibaba now also play a role in the payments chain. Moreover, the banks' monopoly on customer data and relationship is gone in Europe with the introduction of the PSD2 directive, handing merchants or processing companies the opportunity to access valuable consumer data in order to provide more innovative payments services and products.

“When we started Connective Payments the whole payments value chain was already in flux. Since then, things have only become more exciting,” concludes Hagenaar.