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<v 0>Hello everyone and welcome.</v>

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I'm Raymond Lee and I lead our key accounts here at Stripe.

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And today I'm joined by Corinne Holland, who leads our network cost strategy.

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Today we're going to be talking about the payments balancing act,

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focusing on three critical pillars of payments, authorization rates, fraud,

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and network costs. Now, before we begin,

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I want to get to know you a little bit better.

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Please raise your hand just a quick poll, super easy.

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Raise your hand if the primary metric that you're optimizing for is

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authorization rates. Anybody? Small handful of you,

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a couple people in the front. Anybody on fraud? Yeah,

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a couple more of you on fraud. How about cost and margin?

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Something we're all talking about. Wow.

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And is anybody here stuck trying to balance out all three of these?

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A bunch of you. That's awesome.

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And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Because on paper,

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these metrics seem really separate, but in reality, they're tightly connected.

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<v 1>Picture this. It's Q4 and you go all in on auth rates,</v>

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doing everything you can to improve them. And it's successful.

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Going from 87 to 91% in just one quarter.

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But when finance closes the books, the business had actually lost money.

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Retrying more declines caused fees to increase significantly.

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And approving suspicious transactions that used to be blocked caused disputes to

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spike and issuers took notice.

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So they started approving fewer transactions,

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which caused the exact opposite outcome that was being optimized for.

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Why?

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The business focused too much on one high level metric in

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isolation.

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<v 0>And I hear versions of this story all the time.</v>

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The payments leaders that I talk to almost always start with the same question.

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How do I know if my payments are optimized? They always want a number,

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a benchmark, some sort of metric to know if they're winning.

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But they usually ask for something like auth rates,

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but like in Corinne's example, if you focus too much on off rates,

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you risk over optimizing one area at the expense of others.

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You might accept too much fraud,

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or you might rack up retry fees that really start impacting your margin.

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And managing these trade-offs is genuinely hard.

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By the time you spot a metric that might be going in the wrong direction,

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a lot of the times the damage is already done.

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And fixing it means you're coordinating across separate teams who might all be

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optimizing for a different number.
And it's really,

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really hard to drive the right outcome by just focusing on a single metric.

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Today, we're going to show you what to optimize instead.

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And then we'll hear from Microsoft and Wayfair on how they make these trade-offs

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in practice.

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<v 1>So over the next 10 minutes,</v>

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we'll discuss framework for evaluating the trade-offs between auth, fraud,

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and network fees. For auth rates,

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instead of tracking that one high-level number, the key is to ask,

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"Is my payment strategy increasing the lifetime value of my best

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customers?" Valuable customers are the ones who come back repeatedly,

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and we want them to have the most frictionless experience.

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If those repeat customers are converting at a lower rate than first-time

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buyers, you have yourself a very big retention problem.

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A failed payment risks losing them to a competitor.

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So when you focus on auth rate overall without drilling in at the customer

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level, you might be optimizing for the wrong thing.

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So we recommend protecting that lifetime value of your best customers.

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And here's how. First,

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focus on building strong foundations for all customers.

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Use tools like network tokens and card account updater to

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minimize lost sales from things like reissued cards.

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Then segment customers and tailor your approach for

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each type. Third,

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reduce friction for the best customers.

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Review fraud rules so they distinguish between a loyal subscriber and an unknown

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buyer.

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And review your checkout flows to make sure you have things like the local

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payment methods that your customers prefer.

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Combining all of these principles will improve auth where it matters

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most, and that's the strategy working.

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<v 0>And every decision that you make on auth impacts our second pillar, fraud.</v>

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This might sound a little bit odd,

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but your goal isn't actually to have zero fraud,

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even though that's probably the dream scenario for all of your trust and safety

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teams.

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The goal is actually to have the right fraud tolerance that balances between

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blocks and acceptance. If you have no fraud,

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it likely means you're probably being too restrictive with your fraud rules and

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you're probably blocking some legitimate customers.

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And if you're too permissive, you're absorbing unnecessary dispute costs,

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and trust me, issuers are going to notice.

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Our recommendation is to calibrate your fraud tolerance based on your margin.

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If you're a high-margin business like SaaS or digital goods,

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costs are a little bit lower. And that means fraud is still going to hurt,

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but maybe not as much as blocking a legitimate buyer.
And if you're a business

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with lower margins like physical goods where you have cost of goods sold and

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shipping and fulfillment costs,

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you might want to tighten controls even if you lose a few buyers that you're not

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quite sure about.

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And your fraud tolerance also shouldn't be a fixed number that you just set and

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forget. You need to adjust it for your current goals.

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Think about high growth periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday or Way Day

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for Wayfair.

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You might want to loosen your rules to focus on customer acquisition.

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And then in quieter periods, focus on profitability.

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Your business is always changing, and so should your fraud tolerance.

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<v 1>The third pillar is network fees,</v>

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and this can be the most challenging and complex of the three to optimize.

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Because there are so many different types of fees and different variables that

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drive them. You have interchange, you have scheme fees.

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We've simplified this to one line,

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but there can be multiple scheme fees per transaction. Fees for authorization,

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behavioral fees, and expensive cross-border fees.

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And all of these really add up fast,

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so the savings here can be really significant.

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Because there's so much complexity in this pillar,

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it can feel really overwhelming to optimize,

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but it's critical to develop framework that focuses on your key

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spots for optimization.

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Let's say you decide to disable retries to reduce network fees.

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This can lead to lost revenue because your auth rates go down.

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You want to avoid a situation like this where you lose more revenue than you're

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saving from the network fee reduction.
So review your volume and margins and

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choose the best optimizations to match.

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Two levers that are likely worth considering that can make a really big

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difference: first, local acquiring.

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If you have business operations in multiple geographies,

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but only process through one US entity, for example,

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consider processing UK-domiciled transactions through a UK account

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and Canadian-issued transactions through a Canadian account.

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This can reduce those high cross-border fees I was mentioning.

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The second lever to consider is least cost routing.

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Automatically send transactions to the network with the lowest cost.

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Both of these levers can make a big dent in network costs,

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but they require serious engineering effort to build and maintain.

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Whether it's worth it depends on your business.

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For retailers processing billions on thin margins, every basis point matters.

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But a SaaS business with high margins and high recurring payments,

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that's just different math. Instead of investing eng time for cost optimization,

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focus on reducing that involuntary churn.

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<v 0>So that's the framework. There's three pillars: auth rates, fraud,</v>

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and network costs, each with their own trade-offs.

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And the takeaway here isn't to optimize all three equally.

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It's to know how to balance them together.

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Set your strategy intentionally and revisit it as it changes.

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There's no single number that's going to tell you that you're winning.

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The right answer actually depends on your margins, your customers,

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and your business goals. Now,

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let's make this concrete with a real world example.

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You just heard Corinne talk about lease cost routing,

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and PINless debit is a popular example here in the United States,

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and it is a perfect case study in the trade-offs that we were talking about.

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At first, it can be compelling.

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You get lower costs on some debit transactions.

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And there's pretty broad support-a lot of issuers do accept these transactions.

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And so that means the savings can apply across a pretty meaningful portion of

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your payment volume.
But there are some real trade-offs here.

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First off, it can lower your auth rates,

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and we've seen this to be especially true on those really high-value

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transactions.

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You can also lose advanced network features like real-time card account updater

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or multicapture, sometimes features that are critical for your business,

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and you'll almost certainly see increased ops and engineering costs.

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You now have to manage routing across multiple networks,

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deal with different chargeback processes,

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and you have to monitor performance often at a BIN level across multiple

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networks. So is it worth it?

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You probably have guessed the answer by now that it depends.

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It'll depend on your cost sensitivity, your comfort with lower auth rates,

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your engineering and ops capacity, and your business model.

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So at the end of the day, there's no universal right answer,

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only the right answer for your business,

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and that's true well beyond PINless debit.

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<v 1>So picture two retailers of similar size that operate in a comparable</v>

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market. They're peers with the same goal to maximize profits,

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but they take two very different approaches. First,

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we have Raymond's Refined Rugs that has low margins on high-end carpets.

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So when a $2,000 rug is shipped to a fraudster, it really hurts.

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So his business prioritizes reducing cost and fraud and is willing to

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accept lower auth rates.

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<v 0>But Corinne's Comfy Chairs? She has a very different philosophy.</v>

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She sells chairs at a high volume with decent margins,

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so a fraudulent order on $50 stings,

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but probably not as much as turning away a legitimate buyer who was never going

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to come back.

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She prioritizes maximizing auth rates while accepting slightly higher disputes

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and fees.

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<v 1>Raymond is protecting margin and I'm chasing every sale.</v>

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I feel like there's a joke here about how our hypothetical businesses might

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reflect our real personalities,

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so I think we're going to do some deep dives into that over lunch later.

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But which is right? We both are.

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Raymond does have lower auth rates and less fraud.

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Even though I have more fraud, my higher auth rates make up for the difference.

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Both are profitable and performing well. Why?

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Because our strategies align to our business models.

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<v 0>And if I tried to match Corinne's auth rates while they sound great,</v>

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I'd actually increase my fraud and undermine my entire strategy.

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<v 1>And the inverse is true too.</v>

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The key takeaway here is that you aren't trying to be another business.

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You want to be the best version of your own business.

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Even if your peers' numbers look better,

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their strategy might be wrong for your business.

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And I feel like this is the same life lesson I tell my middle schooler at home.

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When it comes to payment optimization, just like life, worry about yourself,

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not your peers. My poor children.

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<v 0>And if you're thinking like, this feels like it's a lot of manual work,</v>

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you're right, and it is. Balancing these trade-offs is legitimately hard,

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and this is where having the right tools can help.

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Across all three of these pillars,

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Stripe provides AI-powered tools to help you get optimized.

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We have Authorization Boost,

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which intelligently adjusts transaction messages in real time to approve your

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authorization rates while simultaneously lowering your costs.

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And something new in Auth Boost is you can now A/B test it against your current

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stack so you can see the performance before you commit.

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We also have Radar, our fraud solution,

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which allows you to set personalized risk preferences.

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You can now specifically decide how you want to balance out fraud versus

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revenue. What's great about Radar is it also learns with your business.

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It'll automatically adapt as your business grows and changes.

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And the point here ultimately is not to hand over your optimization plan to

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someone else.
It's to reduce the manual balancing your team has to do so you can

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focus on strategy and not tuning. Now,

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let's hear from two businesses that apply this framework at scale today.

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Please join me in welcoming Ana Leite,

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director of global payments from Microsoft and Curtis Crawford,

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director and GM of fintech and loyalty at Wayfair. Welcome.

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<v 2>Thank you.</v>

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<v 3>Thank you.</v>

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<v 0>Well, I know you a little bit,</v>

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but hopefully we can get the crowd to know you a little bit more first and maybe

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Ana will start with you.

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Would love to hear how you got into payments and what your payments world looks

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like today.

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<v 3>Yeah. Ana Leite, nice to meet you. Thank you for coming.</v>

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I know lunch is going on. I work in payments since college.

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So my internship in college was already developing credit cards,

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apparently it was my mission on earth.

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And I have worked for banks and issuer side, loyalty programs,

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and also for merchants for American Express.

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So I've done a lot in the industry, but that's mainly what I have done.

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And today I work... For the past eight years,

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I work for Microsoft in the payments group.

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And it's interesting to tell you the complexity of what we do there.

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So we manage one payments platform that supports all lines of businesses that

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we have, almost all, but it's going to be B2B, B2C,

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different industries like advertising, software, physical goods,

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gaming, cloud, and so on.

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We have different business models. So onetime sales,

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recurring sales, prepaid, postpaid. It's a little complex.

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And for all of us who like payments, it's kind of a fun thing,

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a fun job to have.

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<v 0>Yeah, a little bit of everything.</v>

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<v 3>Yeah. And that with about 40 providers in one platform.</v>

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And we are in every market where an American company can make business,

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can do business. So that's it. That's me.

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<v 0>Wow. Excited to learn from you today. Curtis, how about you?</v>

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How did you get into payments and what does payments look like for you today?

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<v 2>So my first job in payments was 25 years ago,</v>

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and it was a marketing and financing company that worked on the back of credit

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cards.

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We would give airline miles to customers who went into certain restaurants.

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There was actually like a paper book. It's been a minute. Okay.

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So what does my payment world look like now? Between now and then, let's see,

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I worked for a credit card processor for a few years. I am at Wayfair now.

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Before that, I was at Amazon for six years.

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I spent two in Seattle working on their co-branded credit card,

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went over to Europe,

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which was really awesome to be in payments in Europe for a few years,

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and then came to Wayfair to look after their payments org,

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which is payment processing, payment fraud,

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and then our stack of payment products, things like gift cards, financing,

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and our co-branded credit card.

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<v 0>Awesome. That's a great huge breadth of experience across both of you. And so,</v>

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we just talked about three critical pillars of payments: auth rates, fraud,

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and costs,

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and I'm sure this shows up in your world in a lot of different places.

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Maybe again, we'll start with Ana.

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How do you think about balancing those together and the trade-offs?

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<v 3>Well, that's the beauty of it, right?</v>

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I always joke that if you don't want to have fraud, close your business.

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Zero risk, bureau fraud, no problem at all. Easy. Right? Easy.

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But once you start selling the first sale, you are already at risk.

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So we need to always make sure that we are fortunate to be in an industry where

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we do not have to worry about cost as much as in other industries.

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Although it is an important, for sure, pillar for us,

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we can rely more on focusing on customer experience and authorization rate,

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but sometimes the same customer is consuming very different

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products from us like Cloud, Office, and Gaming.

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And as we treat fraud, for example,

285
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one thing is if you block him from buying something for his game. The other,

286
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if you block his cloud service or his office,

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now this person doesn't work and it's kind of complicated, right?

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It's beyond frustration.

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So that's where using all the tools and everything that you guys were talking

290
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about becomes fun because you need to balance them also

291
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across the different business lines that we have.

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<v 0>Yeah.</v>

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And so would you say that one of those metrics between auth cost and fraud is

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more important than the others?

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<v 3>Yeah. Auth for sure because as I said,</v>

296
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customer experience in some of our products are vital for customers to work

297
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and you cannot really make a mistake there, but at the same time,

298
00:17:46.670 --> 00:17:49.650
you don't want to open your business for fraud that much.

299
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So we do have our own risk platform that comes

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before our providers and that we use all the data that we know,

301
00:17:59.470 --> 00:18:03.330
all the information that is in our ecosystem to make decisions.

302
00:18:03.670 --> 00:18:06.250
But once the transactions are out of my ecosystem,

303
00:18:06.330 --> 00:18:10.630
then I leverage what the providers see because they see more than Microsoft,

304
00:18:10.730 --> 00:18:13.850
right? They know other sides of that one customer.

305
00:18:14.210 --> 00:18:18.890
So also balancing these two things is part of the game. Yeah.

306
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<v 0>Yeah. Sounds a little complex sometimes.</v>

307
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<v 3>It's fun.</v>

308
00:18:22.230 --> 00:18:26.670
<v 0>Yeah. Curtis, how about at Wayfair? How do you balance out between auth rates,</v>

309
00:18:26.730 --> 00:18:27.563
fraud, and costs?

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<v 2>Sure. So we actually zoom out. Our uber KPI is called total cost of payments,</v>

311
00:18:32.270 --> 00:18:34.510
and it's a full P&amp;L. So you hear a lot,

312
00:18:34.690 --> 00:18:39.390
manage your payment stack to grow business value. And so yes,

313
00:18:39.630 --> 00:18:42.310
our total cost of payments, there's line items for the cost.

314
00:18:42.370 --> 00:18:45.210
You're going to see what are your vendor fees, all of that,

315
00:18:45.350 --> 00:18:48.330
but there's a lot of revenue lines. So for example,

316
00:18:48.390 --> 00:18:50.890
can you drive new customer acquisitions? At Wayfair,

317
00:18:50.950 --> 00:18:54.790
we have a relatively high AOV, so we do a lot of financing on the platforms.

318
00:18:54.850 --> 00:18:59.090
We work with our financing partners to one market on our site.

319
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So we are doing marketing campaigns through our payment methods.

320
00:19:03.770 --> 00:19:06.770
Those drive us new customers. We take credit for that as a payments org.

321
00:19:07.890 --> 00:19:12.030
We manage the... When you think about customer lifetime, loyalty,

322
00:19:12.750 --> 00:19:17.070
Wayfair, we're always doing a lot of paid marketing. We find that folks,

323
00:19:17.130 --> 00:19:18.890
when we build a relationship with them,

324
00:19:19.010 --> 00:19:22.130
they come to us first so we can skip the paid marketing.
So that's another

325
00:19:22.170 --> 00:19:26.130
benefit. So we, again, it's total cost of payments,

326
00:19:26.190 --> 00:19:29.810
but it's a full P&amp;L. And then over time, that P&amp;L should get better.

327
00:19:30.530 --> 00:19:33.630
And we really try to be active about managing our payment method mix,

328
00:19:34.170 --> 00:19:35.003
not in a way that's...

329
00:19:35.430 --> 00:19:37.470
We don't want to steer folks away from something they love,

330
00:19:37.530 --> 00:19:38.590
but we do want to be helpful.

331
00:19:39.190 --> 00:19:41.810
We do want to let folks know if we're running special promotions,

332
00:19:41.870 --> 00:19:45.390
things like that. And then in terms of the trade off,

333
00:19:46.610 --> 00:19:48.610
fraud is one of those bits. Ideally,

334
00:19:48.710 --> 00:19:50.610
authorization rates just get better over time,

335
00:19:50.670 --> 00:19:51.970
and maybe there's some blips here and there.

336
00:19:52.390 --> 00:19:56.130
I think fraud is probably the exception where the range of outcomes is wider,

337
00:19:57.410 --> 00:20:00.210
but you have to have tolerance for that. If there's an attack,

338
00:20:00.270 --> 00:20:03.310
then you need to clamp down and kind of make the fraudsters go away for a while.

339
00:20:03.650 --> 00:20:06.510
And maybe that changes the overall picture for a little bit,

340
00:20:06.570 --> 00:20:09.410
but that's the right move to make. And so again,

341
00:20:09.470 --> 00:20:11.710
if you're just managing quarter by quarter over time,

342
00:20:13.030 --> 00:20:15.710
ideally things get better over the long horizon.

343
00:20:16.250 --> 00:20:19.110
<v 0>Yeah. And I love the similarities and differences between your answers there,</v>

344
00:20:19.210 --> 00:20:19.890
right? Ana,

345
00:20:19.890 --> 00:20:24.350
it sounds like you guys are hyper-focused on customer experiences and Curtis at

346
00:20:24.390 --> 00:20:28.010
Wayfair, you are trying to come up with a metric that balances out all three.

347
00:20:28.410 --> 00:20:29.570
But as you both mentioned,

348
00:20:29.770 --> 00:20:31.570
things happen like fraud attacks and we have to adjust.

349
00:20:31.630 --> 00:20:33.670
So it's really interesting to see your different,

350
00:20:33.730 --> 00:20:34.930
but like similar approaches there.

351
00:20:35.370 --> 00:20:39.050
<v 3>Yeah. People ask this like, "Oh, what's the number?" You want to have what,</v>

352
00:20:39.140 --> 00:20:43.230
95 approval rate? Well, if I'm being attacked, fraud attack, no,

353
00:20:43.570 --> 00:20:46.450
I want to have a very low approval rate because means they are not being

354
00:20:46.470 --> 00:20:49.130
successful. So that's exactly what you're mentioning.

355
00:20:49.190 --> 00:20:50.630
So there is no magic number.

356
00:20:50.910 --> 00:20:52.470
<v 2>Right. Better is good.</v>

357
00:20:53.050 --> 00:20:57.790
<v 0>Better is good. Harder to find better. Ana, question for you.</v>

358
00:20:58.610 --> 00:21:02.170
Is there a time you can think about at Microsoft or otherwise where you're

359
00:21:02.190 --> 00:21:03.330
trying to improve one metric,

360
00:21:03.430 --> 00:21:05.310
but it's actually causing pressure in another area?

361
00:21:06.230 --> 00:21:06.890
<v 3>Yeah.</v>

362
00:21:06.890 --> 00:21:11.810
Especially when new technologies come like tokens or tokens not so

363
00:21:11.890 --> 00:21:12.130
much,

364
00:21:12.130 --> 00:21:16.670
but 3DS authentication and customers are going to now learn that they have to go

365
00:21:16.830 --> 00:21:17.850
through authentication.

366
00:21:18.530 --> 00:21:22.770
When PSD2 came in Europe and many merchants here probably faced the same,

367
00:21:23.110 --> 00:21:27.730
banks were still adjusting and then declining more transactions

368
00:21:27.790 --> 00:21:32.150
because of liability shift when we were sending authenticated transactions.

369
00:21:32.610 --> 00:21:35.450
So there are moments where you have to balance that.

370
00:21:35.510 --> 00:21:36.930
And also we are doing that right now,

371
00:21:36.990 --> 00:21:41.130
expanding 3DS in Latin America and you need to be able to

372
00:21:41.950 --> 00:21:46.870
tweak how much you send and work with the banks to make sure that their

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00:21:46.990 --> 00:21:48.050
portion of the business,

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00:21:48.110 --> 00:21:52.850
their side is being addressed properly so they don't impact my customer and then

375
00:21:52.950 --> 00:21:54.070
my authorization rate.

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00:21:54.570 --> 00:21:59.190
And I may be spending more because I'm retrying without the

377
00:21:59.250 --> 00:22:04.110
authentication or to another provider or whatever my strategy

378
00:22:04.250 --> 00:22:08.120
is. So definitely cost then suffers a little,

379
00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:10.760
authorization suffers a little, but then

380
00:22:13.080 --> 00:22:15.730
the goal is reaching stability again as fast as we can.

381
00:22:16.180 --> 00:22:19.020
<v 0>Yeah. And you touched on something really interesting there where you kind of</v>

382
00:22:19.060 --> 00:22:21.300
mentioned 3DS in different regions.

383
00:22:21.420 --> 00:22:23.480
And part of this is like the ecosystem changing too,

384
00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:26.620
where like your result today is probably going to look different than results

385
00:22:26.680 --> 00:22:29.440
later if customers are getting used to the flows or if we're going to use to

386
00:22:29.460 --> 00:22:31.620
them. So how do you deal with all those changes?

387
00:22:32.060 --> 00:22:36.060
<v 3>Yeah. I was like years ago when I was working for an issuer,</v>

388
00:22:36.120 --> 00:22:38.940
we were implementing in Brazil chips on the cards.

389
00:22:39.320 --> 00:22:42.490
It was the first market to do it in the world.

390
00:22:43.080 --> 00:22:46.760
And now you need to sit all the banks together and decide what the customer

391
00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:51.040
experience will be because if it's not consistent, then the fraudsters,

392
00:22:51.460 --> 00:22:54.660
it becomes amazing because whatever is in front of the customer,

393
00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:57.730
the customer will buy it, right? We will think it's right.

394
00:22:58.200 --> 00:22:59.660
So we have to do that.

395
00:23:00.040 --> 00:23:04.160
And it's same with 3DS that we are doing and other changes.

396
00:23:04.220 --> 00:23:07.120
If we are to make other changes on customer experience,

397
00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:09.160
there is this learning curve and there is this

398
00:23:09.600 --> 00:23:12.800
teaching-the-customer-what-to-expect portion of it.

399
00:23:13.840 --> 00:23:14.360
<v 0>Yeah. Yeah.</v>

400
00:23:14.360 --> 00:23:17.800
There's definitely a piece of training your customers for free close as well and

401
00:23:17.820 --> 00:23:18.653
start to-.

402
00:23:18.680 --> 00:23:21.990
<v 3>And aligning with the other. So for example, agentic commerce now,</v>

403
00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:25.600
we are all talking about agentic commerce. We are always super excited.

404
00:23:25.730 --> 00:23:28.700
<v 2>We made it 20 minutes, I think. We did good.</v>

405
00:23:28.920 --> 00:23:30.220
<v 3>Yeah. But you know what I mean?</v>

406
00:23:31.800 --> 00:23:36.460
If we don't have an experience that it's clear for our customers what to expect

407
00:23:36.500 --> 00:23:41.500
when these agents working for the fraudsters, it's like heaven,

408
00:23:41.600 --> 00:23:41.880
right?

409
00:23:41.880 --> 00:23:46.720
Whatever they put out there is going to work and then how our risk systems are

410
00:23:46.740 --> 00:23:48.900
going to adapt. So all that is part of ... Yeah,

411
00:23:49.240 --> 00:23:50.770
I think I answered your question.

412
00:23:50.780 --> 00:23:54.200
<v 0>Yes. And Curtis,</v>

413
00:23:54.940 --> 00:23:58.520
I know unfortunately our key metrics don't always go up into the right like the

414
00:23:58.540 --> 00:24:02.060
way we want it to. And when it maybe waivers in the wrong direction,

415
00:24:02.200 --> 00:24:05.180
we all wish we could have that magical dashboard that just tells you, "Hey,

416
00:24:05.240 --> 00:24:06.320
this is exactly what's going on.

417
00:24:06.400 --> 00:24:08.720
Here's a core driver," but that's not always what happens.

418
00:24:08.820 --> 00:24:12.200
What are some of the second and third and four things that you look at when

419
00:24:12.220 --> 00:24:15.480
you're really trying to dive deep into what's going on with a certain metric?

420
00:24:15.820 --> 00:24:19.640
<v 2>Sure. So Wayfair operates in four countries.</v>

421
00:24:20.500 --> 00:24:24.460
We have five different brands. We have Parigold, Joss &amp; Main, AllModern,

422
00:24:24.540 --> 00:24:27.600
Birch Lane, B2B, we have B2C.

423
00:24:28.840 --> 00:24:33.140
We have physical retail, we have a growing physical retail footprint. So yes,

424
00:24:33.200 --> 00:24:34.600
we look at the high-level metrics,

425
00:24:34.680 --> 00:24:37.100
but there can be a lot going on underneath those.

426
00:24:37.460 --> 00:24:40.760
So we really never take our eye off what's going on underneath.

427
00:24:41.220 --> 00:24:44.740
That's where the alerting is, that's where our analysts are focused,

428
00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:46.420
that's where we're pointing AI to say,

429
00:24:47.160 --> 00:24:50.060
"Is there anything going on here that might not even be bubbling up to kind of

430
00:24:50.080 --> 00:24:52.540
those headline numbers?" And then even from there,

431
00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:55.380
you can start looking at things like device type.

432
00:24:56.420 --> 00:24:57.880
Which PSP did you route it through?

433
00:24:58.340 --> 00:25:01.140
Do you have any systems where you can go actually see what happened on your

434
00:25:01.180 --> 00:25:02.540
website if there was error, right?

435
00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:05.800
Can I play back what that customer experience was?

436
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:10.620
So we are always operating at a very granular level to watch for issues,

437
00:25:11.560 --> 00:25:15.320
watch for changes and trend, and that's kind of where the analysis starts.

438
00:25:16.800 --> 00:25:16.940
<v 0>Yeah,</v>

439
00:25:16.940 --> 00:25:21.060
that makes a lot of sense where you have to start somewhere and then really,

440
00:25:21.120 --> 00:25:22.680
really, if I'm pulling out a theme here,

441
00:25:22.740 --> 00:25:26.060
it's like really segmentation where you're looking at your customers and there's

442
00:25:26.100 --> 00:25:27.480
like almost infinite ways to segment.

443
00:25:27.540 --> 00:25:31.360
So it becomes a challenge to prioritize some time.

444
00:25:32.440 --> 00:25:34.360
Ana, you mentioned agentic.

445
00:25:34.840 --> 00:25:38.080
I want to talk a little bit about agentic because it's something that a lot of

446
00:25:38.140 --> 00:25:39.140
merchants are thinking about.

447
00:25:39.500 --> 00:25:43.080
And it's not just a brand new channel for a particular merchant like Microsoft

448
00:25:43.100 --> 00:25:44.960
Wafer, but it's kind of brand new for everybody.

449
00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:48.720
So it is really hard to tell what's good for off rates,

450
00:25:48.780 --> 00:25:50.720
fraud and cost or total cost of payments.

451
00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:54.060
How do you think about with a brand new channel like this,

452
00:25:54.300 --> 00:25:55.440
what's good and what's not,

453
00:25:55.500 --> 00:25:58.540
and could it be better or are we actually lucky and doing really well?

454
00:25:58.600 --> 00:25:59.460
How do you think about that?

455
00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:04.940
<v 3>Yeah, I think it's ... I'm super excited, honestly. And being at Microsoft,</v>

456
00:26:05.040 --> 00:26:07.200
I see this with two different hats,

457
00:26:07.440 --> 00:26:11.560
one hat of being a merchant that is going to receive requests,

458
00:26:11.840 --> 00:26:14.380
purchases coming from an agent.

459
00:26:15.300 --> 00:26:18.840
And there is also the side of Microsoft where we are the browser,

460
00:26:18.920 --> 00:26:20.100
we are Copilot,

461
00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:24.120
we are also generating those sales for other merchants.

462
00:26:24.560 --> 00:26:27.900
And my team is involved in both to some level.

463
00:26:29.040 --> 00:26:33.820
And we've been also collaborating with Stripe and other players to

464
00:26:33.900 --> 00:26:35.120
understand, okay,

465
00:26:35.180 --> 00:26:39.100
we may use still metrics like authorization and fraud,

466
00:26:39.480 --> 00:26:42.540
but what else should we be measuring here?

467
00:26:43.040 --> 00:26:48.000
And how can we send like a signal like the issuing banks

468
00:26:48.120 --> 00:26:53.080
want to know if this transaction is coming originated from a human in a

469
00:26:53.600 --> 00:26:58.000
traditional mode or using an agent or maybe in the future

470
00:26:58.020 --> 00:27:01.780
initiated by an agent when the owner of that agent is sleeping.

471
00:27:02.420 --> 00:27:06.700
So how is this going to work? And then comes the conversations with the schemes.

472
00:27:06.760 --> 00:27:08.160
What about liability shift?

473
00:27:08.220 --> 00:27:11.220
If something goes wrong with a transaction done with an agent,

474
00:27:11.660 --> 00:27:14.120
who should we blame? Right?

475
00:27:14.180 --> 00:27:15.560
<v 0>Yeah, that's a question I get all the time.</v>

476
00:27:15.680 --> 00:27:19.420
<v 3>All the time. And I wish I had all the answers. I would be a millionaire by now,</v>

477
00:27:20.100 --> 00:27:24.640
but none of us has all the answers because all this thing is being born and we

478
00:27:24.760 --> 00:27:29.000
are in one of those moments where we are all here lucky to be living through,

479
00:27:29.100 --> 00:27:33.260
in my view, to be living through this moment because this is big,

480
00:27:33.340 --> 00:27:34.740
big change ahead of us.

481
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:37.560
<v 0>Yeah. Definitely an exciting time for payments. Curtis,</v>

482
00:27:37.740 --> 00:27:40.380
how's Wayfair thinking about agenttic and what's good and what's not on the

483
00:27:40.600 --> 00:27:41.560
payments balancing act?

484
00:27:41.940 --> 00:27:42.280
<v 2>Sure.</v>

485
00:27:42.280 --> 00:27:46.980
So from the moment something or someone hits the purchase now button,

486
00:27:47.580 --> 00:27:51.200
your KPIs and your measurement might look similar. What was my auth rate?

487
00:27:51.460 --> 00:27:53.360
What's the return rate? All the bits.

488
00:27:53.840 --> 00:27:57.240
The upper funnel gets really interesting and it hasn't quite come into focus

489
00:27:57.280 --> 00:28:00.240
yet, right? So if you're thinking about end-to-end conversion,

490
00:28:00.320 --> 00:28:02.980
someone like Wayfair might think, how many impressions did I have?

491
00:28:03.340 --> 00:28:05.620
How many folks went to a product page, then the cart,

492
00:28:05.680 --> 00:28:07.440
how many folks started the checkout journey?

493
00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:09.680
All of that's going to look a lot different.

494
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.420
And then in terms of just traffic on your site, is more good? Is it bad?

495
00:28:14.500 --> 00:28:17.520
Is it pointless? That really hasn't come into focus yet.

496
00:28:18.560 --> 00:28:21.060
That's where I think really helpful partners come into play.

497
00:28:21.540 --> 00:28:24.260
That's where events like this come into play where you build your network and

498
00:28:24.340 --> 00:28:25.240
say, "What are you seeing?

499
00:28:25.300 --> 00:28:29.220
How are you thinking about it?" Some of our partners have great dashboards

500
00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:32.920
beyond what we're capable of doing to just see how much traffic's out there to

501
00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:35.300
let us know how many conversions are going, right?

502
00:28:35.380 --> 00:28:39.240
If somebody else is just doing more sales from you than you at this point,

503
00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:42.820
is there some experience that you don't have? Is there a discoverability issue?

504
00:28:42.880 --> 00:28:47.280
So we're still solving that upper funnel bit and kind of that beginning of the

505
00:28:47.320 --> 00:28:50.480
journey, but towards the end, it gets a bit more familiar.

506
00:28:51.560 --> 00:28:52.460
<v 0>Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.</v>

507
00:28:52.520 --> 00:28:54.920
And I think we're all on this journey together and hopefully this is an area

508
00:28:55.540 --> 00:28:58.960
where Stripe can help both of you and show you what we're seeing as well.

509
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.940
But I think that's unfortunately all the time we have today.

510
00:29:03.280 --> 00:29:05.600
If anyone wants to learn more about the payments balancing act,

511
00:29:05.800 --> 00:29:08.420
you can come visit us at our payments booth. Next we haul,

512
00:29:08.500 --> 00:29:12.980
we'll have experts there from our product teams or sales teams all day to talk

513
00:29:13.000 --> 00:29:16.840
to you about how you can think about balancing out your auth rates, fraud,

514
00:29:16.860 --> 00:29:18.620
and costs. Thank you.

515
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:19.300
<v 3>Thank you.</v>

516
00:29:19.300 --> 00:29:19.540
<v 2>Thank you.</v>

