If you think global business is challenging, imagine how those challenges look to David Thompson, executive vice president, global operations and technology and CIO of Western Union. The company operates in 200 countries around the world (which is pretty much all of them, depending on how you count). And some customers are in quite remote locations.
In part one of our two-part interview, Thompson explained how using big data to do real-time risk assessments helps the company instantly know which transactions are trustworthy and which aren't, even when operating in high-fraud locations. In part two, he explains how Western Union's technology helps the company work with its customers no matter where they are. Read on for a look at his work with payment engines, APIs, and security.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): You joined the company five years ago with a mandate to create digital transformation. What are some of Western Union's new offerings since then?
Thompson:
For one thing, we've been enabling many different payment types in our digital payment platform. Let's say you're in the Netherlands. iDEAL is a very common payment type in that country. In Japan, it may be JCB. In Germany, it's SOFORT. These additional payment types are all enabled in our platform so senders can choose how they fund transactions.
Then for the receiver, they can receive their payment in cash, or in one of the many types of wallets in the marketplace. For example, in Africa, a lot of people want to use the M-Pesa wallet. That allows users a lot of flexibility, and that flexibility is really a strong competitive advantage for Western Union. So our team is focused on going local and really meeting the needs of our customers, wherever they are.
TEP: What other changes are you making?
Thompson: Inside the company, we're using many different technologies to build an internal payment engine. We consider that a microservice within our overall ecosystem. We have a full API layer which allows us to create user interfaces and microservices.
We have a B2B business and as we've created these modular capabilities for our business users, we can enable them in other products within Western Union. It's really allowed us to move fast and be very nimble as we see new things. For instance, we can turn on Apple Pay in Jamaica very rapidly with our platform.
TEP: What kinds of changes are you making for customers in remote areas?
Thompson: In our industry, just like banks, we need to know our customers. KYC (know your customer) is an important area for all financial institutions. Many of our customers have only mobile technology or live in rural areas. So to address KYC, we've enabled an imaging capability where customers can upload documents that validate their identities. If it requires a human interaction, we can send them to one of our locations that allow us to ingest legal documents and identity documents.
Having that capability allows us to work in so many locations, including remote ones. It's a huge game changer for us, since many of our customers are unbanked or underbanked. Let's say you have a remote village in the Philippines, and there's a farmer there who doesn't have a car but has to walk miles to a local village. There may not be a bank there, but there's probably a Western Union office.
This has really allowed us to migrate our customers from a retail environment to a pure digital environment. And where we're seeing most of the growth in the digital platform is either new customers or existing customers who transact in both digital and retail.
TEP: How do you handle authentication in these locations?
Thompson: Cybersecurity and identity management are important for us, so in our digital platform we have digital fingerprinting capabilities using MAC addresses that tell us this is really the device of this person. We can also use location and other data elements that consumers provide for further authentication. If someone is transacting in a remote village in the Philippines, and all of a sudden they're in Costa Rica, that could be an indication of risk, either fraud or that the device was stolen. These data elements can trigger additional reviews and questions to consumers that help us validate transactions. Many countries have laws that require us to record transaction history, and we can use that data for digital fingerprinting as well.
In India and the Philippines, the governments each created a global identity matrix where citizens can register their biometrics. In our retail locations, we can recognize a consumer's fingerprint in those countries. And in the Philippines, we're working with lawmakers to use facial recognition.
I came from the technology industry and I was accustomed to always having technology around me. So when I came to a big global company operating in 200 countries and territories it was significantly more complex. If I go to a remote location, LexisNexis and Experian may not operate there. There may not be much power or a land line. That may be the most complex thing for me – to create a technological solution that works anywhere and keeps the customer in mind.
