Payments orchestration is all the rage. But what is it, and amidst all the hype is it all it’s cracked up to be? Good questions and who better to ask than serial entrepreneur Kristian who founded Cellpoint Digital back in 2007 to do precisely what became known today as payments orchestration and indeed their website says they are the global leader in it. Thus Cellpoint have the claim to not only be the first to do orchestration but to do it before it existed and to chart the convergence and confluence of multiple factors which have made it the complex beast it is today.

The origins of the whole payments value-adding by third parties came about as having a global business means having to handle global payments. And this involves multiple banks in many countries, many regulatory regimes, many currencies and people travelling around as well as buying online,

Not only this but there is a whole back office set of processes behind all this ensuring that the money that you expect when someone “paid” actually ends up going kerching in your bank account in the right amount at a later date. Not only is there this saving money on managing and processing payments for merchants but what was to become orchestration evolved into more pro-active ways of actually increasing merchants cashflow – we are well beyond the world of the late 90s when smart money realised a red button would get more clicks than a green one. As we hear Big Merchants do payments orchestration as they can get an over 10% increase in $$$ inflowing. Wow… :-O

Kristian leads us through these thickets in the clear and methodical way that you might expect form someone who has spent 14 years watching this scene slowly develop.

Topics discussed include:

• Denmark and orientation/identification versus the content and Scandinavia


• Danish colonialism from England back in the day to Norway and Iceland until mid-20thC


• Vikings and post-Vikings


• a Scandinavian joke :-O


• a Dane on Denmark


• 5.8m population (Norway ~5m and Sweden ~10/11m)


• the mutual understandings of the Scandinavians re the different languages


• tech and Denmark


• Kristian’s career journey


• Kristian’s first startup in mobile commerce, founded 200, sold in 2005


• “commercial orchestration” was the original term for what is now known as payment orchestration


• the real basics of the ethos of payments orchestration


• for merchants – say Ikea – their business is furniture – payments is totally not the core business


• yet payments and online payments have got more and more complex


• the total financial supply chain as A  Big Thing which needs managing as much as the furniture supply-chain needs managing


• what payments orchestration does for the user in simple terms


• is it a service or product or both?


• how does this depend on the size of the merchant


• cf SAP


• entry-level payments orchestration schema


• high-end payments orchestration – for eg global airlines, hotels (imagine the number of payments!) – schema


• turning form the “removing a pile of hassle and saving us money” to the “hey, this can make us money” side of the coin


• “these merchants do it because there is a massive return on investment we are delivering what equates to 11% on flow”


• ie for a $1bn of income merchant a year payments orchestration delivers $110m …


• there are three main approaches which lead to the ability to generate such phenomenal returns, or rather increases on returns…


• increased conversion and the fractal complexity within eg checkout conversion, optimising acceptance (and a dive thereinto)


• cost reduction – reducing the cost of the payment and commercial leverage with one’s suppliers


• time to market


• the future of payments orchestration – all sorts of fascinating flowers building


• case study of Kristian’s wife becoming a merchant online


• payments orchestration in the event that globalism is derailed and we end up in the multipolar world which is already well beyond nascent


• payments orchestration essential aspect as “removing pain, making profit” and hence liekly to benefit either way…


• Cellpoint have offices from Singapore to Dallas


• clients around the world


• 185 staff ~$78m funding


• “We claim we invented the phrase payments orchestration (although I am sure other people will say the same), but we have been talking about payments orchestration for 15yrs now  and that’s before any of the current competitors were alive”


• Cellpoint’s first specific use of payments orchestration qua phrase was 3 years ago


• one of the biggest – if not the biggest – of breed for enterprise payments orchestration


• shoutouts for what Cellpoint is looking for to be even bigger and better

And much much more

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