Case Studies

Delivering innovation: multi-currency payment solutions

CellPoint Digital began working with Continuum in 2021, when Continuum’s multi-currency and FX services were integrated into CellPoint’s market-leading Payment Orchestration platform, allowing customers to pay in their preferred currency and with their preferred payment method. As the increase in online shopping and eCommerce – and resulting growth in cross-border transactions – showed no signs of slowing, the scope of the partnership was expanded.

Airlines are arguably the pioneers of cross border eCommerce. Continuum – a pure-play technology solution providing a best fit foreign exchange (FX) solution – saw a need to assist the industry regarding multi-currency pricing and FX. By integrating Continuum’s global, scalable, multi-currency solutions into CellPoint Digital’s market-leading Payment Orchestration platform, an innovative payment solution has been developed, one that enables merchants to offer consumers the opportunity to pay using both their preferred currency and preferred payment method – and optimize across multiple acquirers, resulting in dramatic revenue improvements.

Challenge

There’s no question that there are huge growth opportunities in eCommerce.

However, a shift in the landscape is taking place, driven by globalization and the improvement of technology in non-Western countries. Merchants know they must adopt a global approach if they wish to grow; borders are becoming less relevant to consumers. Solutions are required that are simultaneously comprehensive, efficient, and undeniably secure.

They must also address the issue merchants have traditionally come up against, which is high foreign exchange fees. The mark-up fee for foreign currency transactions is usually split into multiple parts, with a portion going to the processor (i.e. Mastercard or Visa), and another to the issuing bank (i.e. Bank of America). Credit card charges for foreign currency transactions vary depending on your provider, but on average, the fee is around 3%.

Solution

An alignment in the ambition to provide best-in-class solutions paved the way for a successful partnership between CellPoint Digital and Continuum.

Within the payments space, the saying ‘where there’s mystery, there’s margin’ holds gravitas. However, Continuum, through its partnership with CellPoint Digital, hopes to remove this mystery and provide world-leading multi-currency solutions to increase conversion, revenue and spend.

CellPoint’s Payment Orchestration solves many of the challenges specific to the airline sector for which Continuum has traditionally used the platform; it also has much broader applications, especially in light of the boom in cross-border transactions.

In 2021, CellPoint Digital partnered with Continuum to provide a full-service payment solution with multi-currency capabilities that sits alongside an existing set of application programming interfaces (APIs) and integrations. Continuum is now the global preferred multi-currency pricing (MCP) and dynamic currency conversion (DCC) supplier for CellPoint Digital.

A great analogy for the partnership is a Formula 1 team. For example, Red Bull designs the car – they do what they do best – however, they partner for the rest: Red Bull use Honda for their engine and Pirelli for their tires. For a large airline or large merchant, CellPoint Digital would be used as the engine, i.e., the payment orchestration layer, then for the multi-currency solutions, Continuum would be used similar to how F1 teams use Pirelli for their tires.

The customer is afforded the ability to pay not just in their preferred currency, but also to use their preferred payment method

Results

A holistic package of payment services for the end customer has been produced. The customer is afforded the ability to pay not just in their preferred currency, but also to use their preferred payment method.

Through CellPoint Digital’s intelligent routing engine, merchants can automatically route transactions to the most affordable acquirer given the parameters at the time of transaction, driving significant cost savings.

Throughout the development and implementation of this payment solution, premium support and analytics have been offered by CellPoint Digital, which has enabled to Continuum to face head-on and successfully overcome the challenges that were previously present. Indeed, Continuum has been supported to branch out at a speed that may not have been possible without collaboration with CellPoint Digital. Services are not isolated to the airline industry; there have been successes in a range of verticals, such as retail, education, car hire, and digital.

The coming together of these two partners – one with expertise in payment orchestration and the other in currency conversion – opens up an exciting space through which to optimise growth opportunities with existing clients and engage new businesses.

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