Imagine you're evaluating your next tech provider and you're only allowed to make a selection based on three very specific factors. What would they be? Understandably, you’d want to prioritize product capability. Then perhaps you’d look at price, as any technology needs to deliver a return on investment.
But it starts to get a bit tricky when deciding factor three. Because by now you’re probably considering things like service level agreements, performance, quality, and so on.
What about partnership though?
At Marqeta we think this should be in the top three of any tech vendor evaluation, especially in this uncertain economic climate.
A partner who genuinely partners will amplify your ability to innovate severalfold. And that’s why Marqeta will always focus primarily on client success. It’s an approach that’s enabled us to work with groundbreaking startups and some of the biggest global brands.
Naturally, we never shy away from shouting about our modern card issuing platform’s open APIs, dynamic controls, webhooks and tokenization functionality, all of which allow developers to quickly build, test and launch and iterate products. As we said, product capabilities matter.
Yet these are merely features in the same way that interest rates, deposit minimums, debit card rewards, early paycheck access, and overdraft protection are features of certain checking accounts. Sure, they may vary across different providers. But what really matters is the people delivering support and guidance.
Take your time and choose a partner carefully
Clients succeed with Marqeta because of our deep bench of payments resources and our open-minded approach to supporting new ideas. The key question to ask when carefully evaluating a tech partner is whether they will be a true partner in your journey, offering advice and expertise every step of the way.
According to a recent Marqeta survey of 400 current and prospective banking-as-a-service buyers in the U.S., this is especially relevant in the current economic environment. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of buyers surveyed say they rely on their partners for guidance during economic downturns.
The real number is likely even higher. When those who told us that they didn’t rely on partners were asked a follow-up question of what services they would be interested in receiving from their tech vendor, most chose at least one service. Only 8% of respondents said nothing was of interest to them.
Clearly, being able to rely on your partners for guidance is an important aspect of a buyer-vendor relationship. While the ranking of which services would be helpful to them differs between respondents, how to improve customer experience and overall satisfaction is at the top of the list of priorities. That being the case, it is essential to know that your chosen partner will support you past the initial sales cycle and empower you to help your customers.
The essential traits of a good payments innovation partner
In our opinion if a payments tech vendor is to deliver genuine partnership value, they need to demonstrate capabilities in the following areas:
Product & technical
This might be offered via a formal professional services division or just general access to product and technology teams. What’s important is that these teams are able to provide the following:
- Insights into portfolio performance, peer benchmarking, rules analysis, and collaboration on how to optimize product deployment and usage
- Implementation assistance and best practices data and insights
- Access and input into their roadmap
Markets
If your partner isn’t regularly examining the market landscape, they are just a bystander. You want a team that wades into your market challenges to provide insights on trends and possible implications for you and your customers. This could take the form of:
- Deep dives with industry thought leaders
- Marketing best practices and how to acquire and keep your customers
- Proprietary or commissioned research
- Webinars, blogs, and more
Compliance
Payments is a complicated industry to navigate and is subject to scrutiny by regulators to ensure all participants are in compliance. Any partner should be working with you, bank partners, and the relevant networks to vet solutions you are bringing to market, the differentiated value proposition and potential use cases.
Customer feedback
Beyond access to experienced payments advisors, the commitment to ensuring dynamic shared feedback that can be used to continuously inform and influence your decisions is a good sign the vendor is collaborative with their customers. Questions to ask:
- What teams will we have access to?
- Will there be a dedicated relationship manager or will there be multiple points of contact?
- Can I see evidence of customer satisfaction surveys?
- Will you share examples of how you approach customer roadmap discussions?
- Can we review examples of how you share market insights?
At Marqeta, our mission is to relentlessly drive innovation in a way that makes it possible for anyone with a payments vision to turn it into a reality. We understand the technology works best and delivers optimal value when deployed by a team of experts who are passionate about diving into client challenges and fully understanding market limitations and potential.
This is what we do alongside true business partners like DoorDash, Block and Klarna. For these and many other firms, by helping to take concepts and make them work for millions of consumers, we become the engine of their innovation.
It’s all enabled by what we call the three Ps of payments innovation: product, price, and partnership. And it’s a good approach to making sure you nail the most important factors when evaluating a prospective tech vendor. With that in mind, perhaps it’s time for you to give Ps a chance? Talk to Marqeta today.
