Worldpay interview Q&A

James Frost, chief marketing and commercial officer of WorldPay.

Developed My Business Hub. Electronic point of sales operated through a wi-fi enabled tablet.

What is My Business Hub?

The UK’s leading payment processor. We help businesses both large and small accept card payments through a variety of different means; in store, through card terminals, online, through payment gateways.

We’re not the only company to smart-point a sales system but… it’s incredibly affordable. A lot of these systems cost thousands of pounds. My Business Hub, you can get it for as little as £50 a month – which is a price point that is definitely within reach when you consider that a card payment terminal on its own might cost you £20 a month. For £50 a month you get this whole till with the smart software.

The till app encaptures all transactions – whether it be card transactions or cash transactions. At the end of the day, it’s a good way of being able to simply reconcile your total sales. You don’t have to add up the money in the till and the money on the card reader – you just press one button and it tells you what your end of day sales are.

It also reduces some of the administrative burdens, and because it’s designed with features like a product catalogue – the great thing about it being detachable. If [the owner] wants to add new products to the catalogue, they can do that at home when they’re not trying to sell stuff in the store, and they can bring it back in in the morning and they’re ready to go.

It provides insight – it tells you what your busiest day is and you can compare this month’s sales to last month’s sales.

We did quite a lot of research about the role of modern technology and how it influences shopper behaviour. Three quarters of customers said modern technology improved their perception of a store. It enhances their view about what kind of quality to expect from that store.

How did you identify a need for My Business Hub?

It’s an integrated point of sale unit that combines a detachable tablet that runs the point of sales software. It integrates with a printer, a card reader – it combines everything that a small retailer wants into one package.

How does it differ from regular card payments?

Well, at the moment to take a card payment, a retailer will just have a till and a receipt printer and then have a payment terminal. And they’ll all be separate items that wouldn’t necessarily speak to each other and would all be laid out somewhere on a counter top as different bits of equipment. What My Business Hub does is bring all of those together in one stylish, easy to use piece of hardware – but more than that, it means all the pieces talk to each other.

It has some other really interesting features as well – the tablet can detach from the till and you can use it to serve a customer in another place in the store. So you don’t have to sit behind the till to take a payment you can go to where the customer is.

It’s… assisted selling, you can wander up to the customer, you can help advise them on what it is they’re looking at and you can take the payment there and then.

How will My Business Hub enhance the in-store shopping experience?

There’s some really good data – some of them find huge sales uplifts from this kind of assisted selling, as much as 40% increase in basket spend. Because the retail assistant is able to give the shopper some really good advice, they end up walking out of the store with maybe more items, more valuable items, than they would have otherwise. Which is a real opportunity for a small business owner; particularly one in a sector like jewellery where the ticket value can be pretty big.

How will it change the way the jewellery industry operates?

Particularly this feature about assisted selling and being able to help the customer around the store will be a benefit because jewellery is one of those things where I imagine a lot of people will walk in, have a look at stuff then walk out thinking, “I’m not sure about it” or “it’s a bit expensive”. Then the assistant sat behind the till is wondering if the person’s going to wander over, this kind of facility in this kind of product can be a real benefit to helping the undecided customer to actually convert into a sale.

Is it easy to install?

This is incredibly easy to set up and install but if it’s not, an engineer will come and get it up and running for you.

May older jewellers be put off from using it?

Using it is incredibly intuitive – it’s a touch screen interface on a tablet. It’s very simple, the buttons are very big. I haven’t had anyone say that it’s complicated to use.