This week leaders from the payments industry gathered in Atlanta for the Electronic Transactions Association’s TRANSACT Tech ATL. To start the day, panel discussions explored topics such as using technology and partnerships to expand market reach. If you’re a payments enthusiast and missed the event, here are some key takeaways:

• Payments has traditionally been about scale, reliability and exception management. Now it’s also about wrapping value around the transactions. –David Mangum, President / COO, Global Payments
• Merchant acquiring is no longer just about transaction processing. To get that business, providers must deliver SaaS solutions that include gateway, settlement, and vertical integrations. –Afshin Yazdian, President, Priority Payment Systems
• ISVs are developing SaaS for countless niche markets and PayFacs are offering merchant-aggregating platforms. But to be effective, these platforms must also include frictionless boarding, fast activation and ease of use. –Adam Bloomston, CEO/CFO, Payscape
• Few providers have the scale to bring it all together for the mass market. To do so with the required speed, partners will need to co-create smarter, faster, and easier-to-use SECURE solutions. –Joe Mach, President North Americas, Verifone
• Solutions can also be “service stacks” co-created via partnerships, but those stacks must be seamless. And the partners must share/analyze data across all parts of the customer experience in order to constantly improve the journey. –Drago Dzerve, VP Product Management, Verifone
• ISV’s developing new solutions may want to include predictable fixed-rate payment plans. Payments is now less about the interchange and more about securing a place in the active ecosystem. –David McDonald, SVP, Global Products, Elavon
• Whether you build, buy or partner, don’t be afraid to be disruptive! –Chris Bucolo, ControlScan

Another point of discussion was near-and-dear to my interests. MarTech and CRM systems now collect massive amounts of data about customer touchpoints – from email opens to ad clicks to social media engagement. Clearly payments data includes much more information about transactions. Could we marry those data streams to see the customer journey from consideration to transaction? “It’s a discussion we’ve been having for years,” says Drago Dzerve of Verifone, “The sticking point has always been about a unique customer identifier to connect the data. Now phone numbers are becoming an increasingly viable connector.” Seem worthy of more discussion.

TRANSACT Tech ATL was buzzing with energy. The key message from these FinTech leaders…there’s much more to come. Stay tuned!

Author’s note: This blog is based on my notes and observations. Apologies for any mis-interpretations or attributions. Feel free to respond with amendments. –Lorena Harris