Local Payment Methods for Fast-Growing and Emerging Markets

Local Payment Methods in Fast-growing and Emerging Markets

Hello Mr. Breuss, you are a successful provider in a specific ecommerce niche. Could you please elaborate more on what is your offering and what kind of customers are you targeting?

Local Payment Methods (LPM) allow people in specific countries to pay for online-purchases when they don’t want to use a payment card. These solutions are now becoming mainstream, because card-payment is not the main payment preference in many countries.

Nikulipe is focusing on countries and regions that are currently neglected in hopes of empowering consumers from Fast-Growing and Emerging Markets to take part in global e-commerce. To achieve this, Nikulipe solves cross-border payment complexities and streamlines access to Local Payment Methods (LPMs) for Fintechs, PSPs and their merchants.

What is the biggest benefit of your service from client perspective? How do you differentiate from other market players?

Our biggest USP is our focus on Local Payment Methods (LPMs) in Fast-growing and Emerging Markets. Nikulipe is not just offering the technical connection to those LPMs but we solve related complexities, including collection of funds, FX, reconciliation, and more with one API and one contract.

We connect existing LPMs where they exist and create new LPMs in markets where there is no suitable  offer yet. This way we open up opportunities for PSPs and their merchants to reach new consumers in attractive, fast-growing markets.

Ecommerce growth

What is your outlook on ecommerce growth? Is it expected that cross-border payments will grow in tandem? How current economic and political situation can impact this trajectory?

While the current global political and economic situation will most definitely have  an impact on commerce (e.g. due to reduction in spending, etc.) we don’t expect a change in the trend that ecommerce is growing over-proportionally compared to total spending. Especially if you look at it from a global perspective. There are still vast regions and numerous countries that have to catch-up with demand as new customer groups gain access to fast internet and mobile connection and are eager to participate in global commerce.

Taking the Pandemic as an example we could see that in difficult times people tend to increase their online shopping. Also, in times of a recession, online-shopping offers the opportunity to compare prices and get the best deals, especially if monthly spending possibilities are tight.

What is your view on upcoming regulatory changes such as Request to Pay, PSD2 review, SEPA API standard – will they have a significant effect on entire industry? Do they impact your business specifically?

Fintechs have proven that new regulatory or technological opportunities lead to innovation and new services. So, any improvement in existing initiatives (like Open Banking) or the start of new initiatives like R2P will provide Fintechs the opportunity to lead improvements for the benefit of customers, merchants and overall economies.

Use of upcoming technologies

What is your view regarding upcoming technologies? Do you believe Internet of Things Payments will get traction? Do you believe transactions based on crypto could also become widespread in standard ecommerce or it is rather a far-fetched idea? Any other crucial developments from your perspective?

In the 20 years I have been working in the Fintech industry I have learned two things:

• The question is not “whether innovation will happen” but “when will it happen”.
• The Fintech industry is full of bright minds that find solutions for problems that others might not even imagine.

So yes, I am sure that IoT Payments will get more traction and we’ve seen proof that blockchain offers huge potential to disrupt the banking and payment solutions we know today. And when I speak about disruption, I don’t mean one will necessarily replace the other.

What are your plans and what can we expect from you in the next months?

Many exciting LPMs and Fast-growing and Emerging Markets will soon be live and available on our platform.

Thanks for the interview. We wish you and Nikulipe all the best for the future.