Solving Customer Refund Problems With A2A Payments | Pay It Forward With Sonae

In the first of our conversations from payabl.‘s Pay It Forward booth at MPE, we spoke to Margarida Rodrigues, Head of Payments at Sonae, to find out more about the payments customer experience. Rodrigues is well positioned to comment on the changes happening to the checkout, both in store and online.

Sonae are a Portuguese multinational group of businesses which includes sectors such as retail, real estate, telecommunications, technology investments, and financial services. Across this spectrum payments naturally play a key role, so it was a pleasure to speak to Rodrigues to get a sense of how they work in this area.

Of course, we also had to ask about the payments ecosystem in Portugal too. They’ve got a good track record for payments and fintech companies and certainly an enterprising mindset to draw from here. Favorable government policies and regulations have led to growth in this area. Like many European countries and indeed others (including their Portuguese speaking brothers and sisters in Brazil) consumers are experimenting with and increasingly adopting alternative payment methods.

At Sonae, Rodrigues says, they’re keen to offer a full complement of payment methods to match the customer experience. This is also informing how they approach their own technology. With Universo, they have a financial product of their own and are even exploring emerging technologies such as embedded finance and loyalty cards.

There is an opportunity here to integrate multiple payment methods and keep them streamlined across checkouts.

She also gives us some predictions and an assessment of the trends currently shaping instant payments. One of the things she believes needs solving are customer refunds. After all, if instant payments are increasingly available they should be for refunds too. There is a role that account to account payments can play, she believes. Digital wallets get a mention too as a possible way of developing loyalty amongst customers.

There are a lot of insights here about the changes happening in Portugal as well as some insights of what technology changes could mean for all consumers.

Be sure to keep an eye out for more interesting conversations with leading brands coming soon, from the Pay It Forward podcast by Payabl.