The vast selection of payment methods and the intelligent backend offered by Nordea Connect improves the user experience for customers of the financial company Lowell.
A fundamental part of Lowell’s collection model is based on receiving payments online. This means that partnering with a highly stable PSP (Payment Service Provider) solution is a critical part of supporting their business. Towards the end of 2019, Lowell implemented Nordea Connect as their new online payments platform, with all of the customers of Lowell Sweden now making payments via Nordea Connect.
Jens Lindeblad, Head of Digital and Innovation at Lowell Sweden, says: “When we started to review our online payments set up and investigate which supplier has the latest products and can meet our demands, we were very happy to hear more about Nordea Connect. From the beginning it was clear that Nordea Connect was an advanced solution, and yet very uncomplicated in terms of implementation and the overall interface. As with almost all businesses, people are extremely cautious when it comes to selecting the tools for enabling payment streams but even though this was a pretty new platform, the fact that it was backed by Nordea made us very confident that it would work.”
Lowell customers receiving a payment request are sent to a self-service portal on the Lowell website and with one click they are now forwarded to a payment page supported by Nordea Connect. The addition of Swish as one of the options offered by Nordea Connect led to an immediate uptick in customers making instant payments.
Jens says: “In Sweden we really see people moving from card payments to instant mobile payments. That’s actually a big positive for us because people really trust Swish in Sweden, so this makes the customer experience much better. We saw right from the beginning of integrating Nordea Connect that almost half of all of the payment volumes we were receiving were directly made via Swish.”
Nordea Connect enables one simple integration for multiple payment methods. For Lowell, having the flexibility of adding payment methods such as Swish and removing others that become less popular, is an important part of providing a quick and easy payment service for their customers.
Jens continues: “We have actually removed a payment option sometimes used in Sweden, which is making a payment directly from your bank account, as this was not widely used. Nordea Connect is a very user friendly solution for integrating several payment methods. Very early in the process, we were clear about the payment methods we needed and were happy to see that the Connect solution already offered these methods. Nordea Connect makes it possible for us to add payment options later as they become popular” Jens adds.
Instant payments are also very interesting for us because receiving the payment a little bit faster is very important for the merchants we are supporting on the other side of the transaction.
Jens Lindeblad, Head of Digital and Innovation at Lowell Sweden
For Lowell, providing up to date reports on the number and volume of incoming payments is an important aspect of daily operations. Nordea Connect’s intelligent backend, known as the ‘merchant portal’ provides access to payment data reports which can be quickly exported for further slicing and dicing.
Jens continues: “Nordea Connect has the added bonus of an easy to navigate merchant portal where I can pull out a real time report a soon as I need it. If I need to make a report on the number of instant payments we have received over a certain period or how many have been rejected, it is very easy to extract that information. Previously that would have taken a couple of days with a few email requests back and forth, so this is an interesting benefit that will help us in our operational decision making.”
The adaptable design of Nordea Connect’s front end also meant it was possible to create a payment page with the same look and feel as the rest of Lowell’s website. Harmonising the design of the page ensures Lowell customers enjoy a seamless experience on their web journey.
Jens says: “It was important for us to make sure that the payment page had the same look and feel as our homepage and the rest of the website. A sudden change in colours and design might make the customer wonder which page they have clicked through to so we have made sure to add our colours and brand to the actual payment page. We needed to make sure our customers feel safe and secure when they reach the payment page.”
The implementation period for integrating Nordea Connect was completed in just a few weeks and also enabled Lowell to link up with other Nordea solutions.
Jens concludes: “Nordea Connect has enabled us to leverage other Nordea services and integrate all of our payment data into one large file that we import directly into our production system. This is really great and means we can get the data perfectly and in time. Of course, the most important thing is that a payment platform has to be super stable. We need a modern solution and we need things to be instant. Having the whole package that feels modern and easy to implement for us was very important.”
Lowell is the second largest provider of Credit Management Services in Europe with over 800 employees in the Nordic region. With offerings in credit management and debt collection for both large and small companies, Lowell’s goal is to “Make credit work better for all”.