If you’re still new to the concept of ‘cloud-nativeness’, be sure to read my previous article on how it’s transforming the payment space here. We take a cloud-native approach at PagoNxt because, for PagoNxt to participate in the open world, we require an open platform. Cloud-native solutions have allowed us to successfully participate in the global payments ecosystem. While some of our peers have been unable to participate on a global scale, we’re seeing tremendous success at PagoNxt. Moreover, our cloud-native infrastructure allows us to put our customer journey at the forefront of everything we do as a company.

So, while it came as no surprise, I was delighted that when Microsoft and Santander Group Technology & Operations teams carried out its assessment on cloud-nativeness at PagoNxt, we were rated as outstanding. Our flagship Merchant and Trade services have thrived as a result of our cloud infrastructure, and our customers experience the benefits of such technology first-hand, as we continue to innovate to better serve them. What more could you want? There is no doubt that PagoNxt’s cloud-nativeness is allowing our payment services to prosper, and this can be attributed to a global reach and increased automation.

Global reach and automation

Noted in the report was our speed-to-market and use of automation, which is testament to how cutting-edge technology is in PagoNxt’s DNA. Automation and scaling up are key to our global strategy. You cannot be a global payments company and deliver services in different parts of the world, without being automated. It’s logistically impossible. When a problem arises anywhere in the world, it necessitates an imminent response, right? And when I refer to payment problems, I’m not only referring to minor payment problems amongst individual customers, but macro-challenges that underbanked communities face around the world too. Cloud-nativeness allows us as a company to holistically improve the customer experience and meet the needs of the underbanked by considering how we can improve their ‘user story’.

PagoNxt operates on a global scale, offering products and services to merchants across Latin America, where 81% of the population in 2020 didn’t have a credit card and 45% didn’t have a bank account. Needless to say, this impacted upon the financial services that were available to merchants, too. However, through automation by virtue of our cloud-native systems, at PagoNxt, we are able to tap into the underserved communities with our global reach and automated processes. Cloud-native solutions are thus allowing us to work towards our goal of improving the global payment space through automation and scaling.

The value of API Integration

Without Application Programming Interface (API) integration, there wouldn’t be Global Merchant or Trade services, as Trade is integrated with the rest of the PagoNxt group. Moreover, API integration is also necessary for integration with third parties.

Our use of API has been vital to developing and building upon our internal capabilities at pagoNxt to ensure that our products and services can be scaled and developed where necessary. Without the capability to scale our services, how would we improve the payment space? Once we knew that our products and services worked, we were able to connect PagoNxt’s capabilities with banks via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model to banks. Now that this has been achieved, we are offering more APIs around the world, and we already have big customers that have connected to PagoNxt via this method. This means we can advance our payments offering using internal and external capabilities, while knowing our SaaS model will instantly provide our partners with innovative new products. Moreover, at PagoNxt we can take advantage of micro-services to improve the customer journey and offer our customers exactly what they are looking for by assembling the perfect platform. API integration really is key to our global mission, and at PagoNxt we’re not content with making marginal improvements in the payments space, ‘go big or go home’ is what we believe in, and cloud-nativeness is allowing us to make great improvements.

Leading the crowd away from legacy systems

When Microsoft assessed PagoNxt, we were humbled to see our success exceed that of companies we greatly respect. We may be a baby in comparison to these established companies, but the findings of Microsoft’s study demonstrate that we are the one to watch in the payments space.

For example, Superdigital Global platform and Payments Hub are 100% cloud native, which means that we can easily facilitate payments orchestration with global merchants to reach more customers. This orchestration further allows us to innovate to meet merchant demands and requirements, and to provide nuanced services, based on key factors such as location, socio-demographic and market characteristics. As such, orchestration that cloud-native solutions enable, is another way that we have witnessed cloud-nativeness allowing our payment services to prosper at PagoNxt.

Additionally, cloud-native solutions have allowed PagoNxt to improve the customer journey, regardless of which stage of the business lifecycle our partners find themselves in. For example, if we had a merchant that processed around 150,000 transactions each month when they first partnered with us, of course we could support them during the early stages of their business growth and development. But imagine that this business saw a surge in demand, which meant that they were now processing 4 million transactions each month — would we still be able to support this business? The answer is yes. Cloud-nativeness has allowed PagoNxt to support global businesses with their upscaling and expansion, which would not be possible if we were using legacy technology.

As I’ve emphasised, if you wish to be open to the world, you must embrace an open platform. Cloud-nativeness is essential in allowing payment companies to prosper on a global scale. The results of the Microsoft study are testament to the time and careful consideration that we have taken at PagoNxt to invest in an infrastructure that will allow us to remain at the forefront of innovation in the payment space.

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