What Creates Success in the Fintech Customer Journey?

Customer journeys have evolved. With the introduction of efficient technology for workload processes, customer interaction and cross-border payments, customers have come to expect an immediate response from businesses. 

With this expectation weighing at the forefront of customer journeys, how are businesses taking steps to ensure workflow practices can keep up with increasing demand? 

In this discussion, Alex Codina, General Manager, Merchant Payments Acquiring at Revolut Business, explains alongside Guy Douek, General Manager EMEA at Nuvei and Yolande Piazze, SVP and GM of Americas at PayPal, how three fintech giants are adapting with AI, talent retention and expansion hurdles. 

How important is it to invest in UK businesses to ensure that customers can get access to financial services?

Alex: UK businesses are a key focus for us and we recognise they need financial tools that can keep pace with their ambitions. At Revolut Business, our role is to accelerate that speed of ambition by providing a single, integrated platform that removes friction from payments, spend management and global operations, while bringing acquiring and business banking into one ecosystem.

This gives businesses the confidence to move faster and dream bigger. A startup can scale internationally without being held back by fragmented systems, while more established companies can modernise and streamline how they manage money.

Ultimately, investing in UK businesses is about creating an environment where financial services go beyond simply helping a business get started. It is about supporting growth at every stage, enabling expansion and helping businesses evolve over time. Our focus is not just to serve businesses at a point in time, but to grow with them and support their ambition as it accelerates.

Guy: Access to financial services isn’t primarily a question of investment, it’s a question of how deeply providers are embedded in the markets they serve.

The UK is one of the most developed fintech ecosystems globally, but even in mature markets, access is shaped by how payments infrastructure is built and operated locally. Businesses don’t struggle because products don’t exist, they struggle when those products aren’t aligned to how transactions actually behave in that market.

The distinction is between serving a market and building inside it. 

When infrastructure sits at a distance, performance suffers and access becomes inconsistent. When it’s embedded locally, access improves as a byproduct of better execution at the transaction level.

Can you explain the importance of analysing geography before choosing to expand into that market?

Guy: Many platforms are designed to scale globally, but performance still breaks locally. Payment method preferences vary significantly by market, from cards to account-to-account and cash-based alternatives and those preferences directly influence how and whether customers complete transactions.

That sits alongside differences in authorisation behaviour, regulation and fraud patterns. Taken together, they define the reality of operating in a market.

Expanding without accounting for that doesn’t just create complexity, it degrades performance. Transactions fail more often, costs increase and the experience becomes inconsistent.

The question isn’t whether you understand a market, it’s whether your infrastructure is built to operate within its payment ecosystem.

Yolande: Geography isn’t just a checkpoint in expansion, it’s the strategy. The reality is that no two markets behave the same, especially in payments. Consumer expectations, regulatory environments, local payment methods and even trust dynamics can vary.

Payments are inherently local, shaped by how people spend, what they trust and the systems they rely on every day.

What we’re seeing globally is a shift toward what we call value, confidence and control. Consumers are more deliberate in how they spend, governments are investing in local payment rails and markets are becoming more regionally defined. 

That means a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work. In Brazil, success means integrating PayPal with PIX. In India, it’s about UPI. In Europe, it’s enabling seamless cross-border commerce while navigating complex regulation. 

At PayPal, our role is to bridge that complexity. With PayPal World, we’re building an interoperable platform that connects local wallets and payment systems globally so businesses can access new markets without rebuilding for each one. At the same time, our orchestration capabilities and partnerships allow us to integrate deeply into local ecosystems while maintaining a consistent global experience.

Put simply, we combine unmatched global reach with local relevance. In today’s world, the winners won’t just expand globally, they’ll connect local economies at global scale.

Do you have any pillars of success that you live by? 

Alex : Our pillars of success are closely tied to our ambition to help businesses move faster and scale with confidence.
The first is a relentless focus on progress. We are constantly improving how businesses interact with their finances, not just through small iterations, but by driving meaningful gains in speed and efficiency. This comes from continuous investment in our technology and a commitment to innovation.

The second is a unified approach.

We bring together acquiring, business banking and, increasingly, broader operational tools into one platform. With launches like Global Hire in the UK, we are extending this into areas like HR, giving businesses a more complete ecosystem to run and grow. By building in this way, we remove the root causes of friction, whether that is cross-border payments, expense management or visibility over cash flow.

Finally, underpinning everything is our role as a reliable and transparent partner. As more businesses depend on us to power their operations, trust becomes essential. Clear pricing, real-time insights and dependable infrastructure allow us to support our customers not just today, but as they scale and their ambitions grow.

Guy: Performance is always local. Global reach only matters if transactions succeed at the point of payment.

Complexity doesn’t go away as you scale, it increases. The role of a platform is to absorb that complexity so businesses don’t have to manage it themselves. And small improvements at the transaction level have outsized impact. A marginal increase in approval rates or a reduction in latency translates directly into revenue and customer retention.

Those aren’t strategic choices so much as operating realities, but they’re what consistently define success.

Yolande: At PayPal, our pillars of success come down to global reach, deep trust and the ability to keep evolving as commerce changes.

Our network spans more than 200 markets, which means every country looks like a new revenue profile for our customers. Our role is to close that gap so merchants can treat regulation as a route‑to‑market rather than a barrier, using it to decide which products launch first, which segments we can serve and which partnerships we can unlock.

The businesses that win in cross‑border aren’t just the ones that move fastest, but the ones that turn regulatory learning into repeatable launch playbooks they can use repeatedly. We operate at a truly global scale, but what matters is how effectively we activate that network to connect hundreds of millions of consumers and merchants so businesses can reach high‑intent customers and grow more efficiently.

Yolande: A big part of that is how we show up for the consumer. We focus on making every interaction simpler, faster and more relevant – from discovery, to payment, to how people stay engaged over time – because when the experience improves, it directly translates into better conversion and stronger loyalty for merchants.

Innovation is another core pillar. We’re applying AI to personalise experiences, remove friction and improve conversion, while also building the infrastructure for what’s next – like agentic commerce – so we can help shape how people discover and buy, not just respond to where the market goes.

We also play a distinctive role across the full commerce journey. By bringing payments, financial services and data together in one connected platform, we help businesses solve for acquisition, conversion and retention in a more integrated way.

The foundation of our business is built on trust. For more than 25 years, we’ve built a reputation for security, reliability and performance at scale. That foundation is what allows us to innovate confidently and lead as commerce continues to evolve.

What could businesses be investing more in to ensure a smoother customer experience?

Guy: A lot of investment still goes into improving what the customer sees, rather than what determines whether a transaction succeeds.

The biggest gains tend to come from improving authorisation rates, reducing false declines and optimising how transactions are routed across different issuers and payment methods.

These are not always visible changes, but they directly shape the outcome of the customer journey. Even a marginal improvement in approval rates can translate into significant recovered revenue at scale.

Smoother experiences in payments are usually the result of better decisioning and orchestration, rather than better design.

Alex: A smoother customer experience increasingly comes down to simplicity, speed and integration. Businesses should be investing in platforms that bring financial operations into one place, rather than relying on multiple disconnected systems. 

There is a growing need for truly global infrastructure. As more companies expand internationally, the ability to manage multiple currencies, make fast payments and operate across markets without added complexity becomes essential. The businesses that deliver the best customer experience will be those that remove friction at every stage and build systems that support their customers’ pace of growth.

Have you seen a positive or negative reaction to introducing AI to your business model? 

Yolande: The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive but also very pragmatic.

For us, at PayPal, AI isn’t about experimentation for its own sake, it’s about delivering measurable value across the entire ecosystem. We’re already seeing that in very concrete ways. 

On the consumer side, AI is helping create more intuitive, personalised experiences, from smarter recommendations to faster issue resolution. On the merchant side, the response has been equally strong because AI is directly tied to growth. 

We’re using it to surface high-intent customers, improve conversion and reduce friction across the checkout experience. And in risk and fraud, AI and machine learning are analysing transactions in milliseconds to protect both consumers and businesses while keeping the experience seamless. 

On the sales side, we’re using AI intelligently as a business driver and not just as a report or dashboard generator. We’re leveraging AI to learn more about our customers so we can identify opportunities to help them drive better conversion metrics. 

Where it gets really interesting is what’s next. We’re seeing strong momentum around agentic commerce where AI doesn’t just recommend, but can help complete transactions in a trusted manner. That’s a major shift and PayPal is playing a leading and central role as the trusted layer that enables those interactions.

Guy: The reaction to AI has been broadly positive, but its impact in payments is very specific.

Where it matters most is in real-time decisioning – improving fraud detection, reducing false declines and adapting to transaction behavior as it happens. That’s where it directly influences whether a payment is approved or rejected.

Used well, it allows platforms to make more accurate decisions in milliseconds, without introducing additional friction. Used poorly, it adds complexity without improving outcomes.

The difference is whether AI is embedded into the infrastructure that processes transactions, rather than applied as a separate layer on top.

What would your top piece of advice be to other financial advisors as focus shifts from growth to customer experience?

Alex: The shift towards customer experience is really about becoming a long-term partner rather than a transactional provider. As expectations rise, businesses are looking for support that helps them navigate complexity and make better decisions, not just access products. This means focusing on clarity, consistency and trust. 

Being transparent, responsive and proactive builds stronger relationships and creates a better overall experience. It also requires embracing technology to remove administrative work and improve efficiency. By automating routine processes, advisors can spend more time on meaningful conversations that add value. 

Ultimately, the most successful approach is to align with the customer’s ambition. When you focus on helping businesses move faster, operate more effectively and scale with confidence, growth becomes a natural outcome of delivering a strong experience.

Yolande: The shift from growth to customer experience isn’t about doing less, it’s about being more intentional with where you create value.

My advice would be to stop thinking of experience as a layer you add on and start thinking of it as the product itself. In financial services, every interaction whether it’s onboarding, payments, support – is the experience. If any part feels slow, complex or uncertain, that’s where you lose trust.

The second is to rethink how you measure success. It’s no longer just about acquisition or even conversion, it’s about confidence. Are customers coming back? Are they choosing you by default? Are you removing effort from their lives?

And finally, design for how customers actually behave, not how systems are built. That means fewer steps, smarter use of data and increasingly, using AI to anticipate needs before the customer takes an action.