Vantiv: Leading the Omni-Channel Experience

“Vantiv, unlike many of its peers in payments processing, has embraced the open ecosystem of allowing partners and customers to choose how they want to integrate and process payments.”

Connected consumers today transact anytime, anywhere. From helping small businesses integrate points-of-sale, to fueling e-commerce faster than the speed of light, to activating omni-channel retailing in the biggest box sense, Vantiv is the gateway to all that is possible in payment processing. That’s why Vantiv is on the list of 30 Companies of the Year 2016.

Vantiv was founded in 1971 as Midwest Payment Systems (MPS) to provide Electronic Fund Transfer (ETF) services to financial institutions. The company launched Jeanie, the nation’s first shared online ATM network in 1977. In 2010 MPS became Fifth Third Processing Solutions, which became Vantiv in 2011. Since 2006, Vantiv has made
several strategic acquisitions to expand the company’s financial and payments services, including National Processing Company, Litle & Co., Element Payment Services and Mercury Payment Systems. In April 2013, Vantiv became the first U.S. acquirer to complete MasterCard’s testing requirements to process EMV transactions for MasterCard, Maestro and Cirrus brands at both ATM and point-of-sale.

This year, the company continues to focus on innovation and technology, enabling consumers to process payments in whatever environment they choose. In March, Vantiv announced DevHub (currently in pilot), a platform designed to help developers add payment functionality to their software solutions. It enables designers to build innovative payment applications via easy to use, modern APIs with an integrated environment for application testing and certifications.

DevHub – The Developer Platform
As merchants demand a faster, more agile approach to application integrations and tools that reduce the time and cost involved in testing and certification, a unified developer platform coupled with best-in-class, white glove support can help address developer needs faster and easier. DevHub aims to make it easier for a seamless omni-channel experience as more and more customers demand payments acceptance across storefronts, as well as in-app payments, wallets, marketplace and sub-merchant support, subscriptions, recurring payments and more.
Through DevHub’s community, developers can find tools to integrate payments into their application to reduce the time and costs in testing and certification. Right now it is for online payments but will expand later this year to provide a full omni-channel experience which will leverage Vantiv’s payment expertise and scale.

Vantiv’s Open Ecosystem Strategy Accelerates Innovation for Developers
Most of Vantiv’s competitors work within a closed ecosystem, only allowing partners and customers to use their proprietary payments solutions. Vantiv is focused on the open ecosystem, working with partners to provide merchants with the best options available for their business so that they can accept payments in any channel and on almost any device.

Vantiv partners with a variety of technology companies to help spur innovation within the industry. With the open ecosystem strategy, Vantiv also works with customers, allowing them to pick the best solutions for their business, without needing to compromise due to the limited options of a closed ecosystem.

In addition, Vantiv focuses on security and compliance, offering the latest technologies, including EMV, mobile payment form factors, and tools to enable better payment experiences.

Territory of Clientele
Vantiv works with businesses of all sizes, from the largest retailers in the U.S. to the local coffee shop down the street, to make the payments process smarter, faster and easier. The company works with ten of the top 25 national retailers, and processes more “everyday spend” than anyone else, which includes a huge presence in the grocery, retail and drug store categories.

Geographies
The company currently focuses on processing payments in North America, where the top issues continue to be security, including EMV compliance, tokenization and point-to-point encryption, omni-commerce integration and mobile payments.

Present and Future Focus Areas
The migration to Chip cards or EMV is one of the biggest transitions the U.S. payments industry has ever faced, so there is a large focus at Vantiv on working with partners and merchants to adopt the technology. Additional areas of focus are the mobile payments landscape, instant commerce, invisible transactions and finding ways to leverage transaction data to make payments and shopping more personalized.

Knowing the Key Executives

Daniela Mielke, Chief Strategy and Product Officer
Daniela joined Vantiv in September 2013 as Chief Strategy and Product Officer, with responsibility for leading the development and oversight of company strategy and products. Daniela has helped Vantiv to partner with innovators of all sizes, including giants like Apple, Samsung and Google, as well as Birchbox, Twitch.tv and DipJar. Prior to joining Vantiv, Daniela served as Vice President of Global Strategy at PayPal. Earlier in her career, she worked as Senior Vice President of Global Strategy at Visa. Daniela brings more than a decade of innovative payments experience to Vantiv.

Matt Ozvat, Head of Developer Integrations
Matt is responsible for developing an evangelist program that promotes Vantiv and the open ecosystem in payments processing. He joined Mercury Payment Systems in 2008 and began his career with Vantiv when Mercury was acquired by Vantiv in 2014. With more than 14 years of enterprise software engineering and development experience, Matt is skilled in driving products and innovation in the payments industry. He also the Co-Founder of Pic2Pay, a mobile payments platform that utilizes QR codes as a medium of presenting payment results and mobile client applications. Matt served as a combat medic in the United States Navy.

“ Vantiv’s technology focus has brought us DevHub, a developer platform which now processes more than two million transactions a month.”