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5 Reasons to be Employed in the Payments Industry
It can be said that the electronic payments industry officially kicked off in 1871 when Western Union started utilizing its telegraph wire lines in order to “wire” money across the U.S. This transaction method was primarily in the hands of companies and financial institutions that utilized telegraph wires to predominantly transfer money rather than just payment transactions. It was not until 1950 that the consumer really became involved with the transaction process; it was the launch of the Diners Club credit card, and the payments industry as it’s known today was born.
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The payments industry can be considered in its infancy opposed to older industries like banking (which began with the Templars ca. 1100AD), transportation (that started ca. 3500BC in Sumer) and the defense industry (sadly began before recorded history). Even though the payments industry operates in the background of commerce, it is indeed all around us, and most consumers interact with the industry almost daily. Practically all money transacted today pass through some component of the payments industry, may it be Federal Reserve, the Automated Clearing House or American Express; and we’re talking trillions of dollars per year. Many people I speak with really never understood that there’s a huge industry surrounding them when they swipe a card through a “credit card machine.” There certainly is! Thus we’ll examine five good reasons why to be employed in this sector.
- The Payments Sector is an Esoteric Industry. It is easy to see that the payments industry touches the lives of virtually every American on a daily basis. You use your check card to buy lunch, pay your phone bill via the Internet, sell an item on eBay and pull cash from an ATM all using components of the payments industry. However, the industry itself, the number of companies and people in it, is relatively small compared to other industries and tiny compared to the amount lives we touch. When on vacation, we often meet doctors, lawyers, waiters or car salesmen; but how often do you meet someone that’s in the payments business? The small size of the business is compounded by the fact that many jobs in the payments field are highly specialized and do require a fair amount of training and familiarity with the many intricacies of transaction settlement, risk management, underwriting, transaction networks, compliance, operating regulations and much more. Unlike other industries, you don’t go to school or university to learn about these subjects as they pertain to the payments industry – you this "hidden knowledge" by being in the business. Payments companies constantly look for talent from within the industry; however, since the payments industry is rather esoteric, trained payments talent is a high valued commodity. It would be fair to say that it may not be the easiest field to enter, but once you’re in, you’re in! It’s very likely that you’ll have a career for life and are able to find work easier than employees in another field. In my 12-year tenure in the industry, I have rarely seen someone take up employment outside of the payments business once they have spent part of their career in it.
- Many Non-Industry Businesses require Payments Talent. So you live in a small town, and it happens to be void of any large players in the industry, what should you do? A very large amount of companies outside of the industry need payments specialists as these companies closely rely on electronic payments to collect revenue. Many modern companies move away from mailing paper statements, besides that it’s an environmental faux pas; checks take a long time to settle. You have probably noticed that savvy businesses are switching over to electronic statements and accepting bankcards for payment remittance. When these companies switch to the electronic billing method, they soon find themselves forced to deal with the world of electronic transactions, chargebacks, risk management, fraud scrubbing and more. This is where you, the payments professional, enter the picture. There’s an entire world out there of companies that rely on electronic payments as their main transaction method; we’re talking about retail chains, medical foundations, Internet businesses, utilities, governments and more. Even non-payments companies have entered into our industry, as it appears that there’s plenty of income to be made, Google is an example. These corporations look for talent within our industry. So you see that payments talent is required way beyond the borders of our own industry and into many branches of other fields as well.
- Big Name Employers. Some of the largest and most advanced companies in the world are in the payments sector; Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, First Data and Bank of America to name a few. While a large part of the payments industry is made up of small to medium-sized companies, employees that seek out employment in world players have homes as well. The beauty of these large corporations is that they positively affect many other surrounding smaller companies in the payments industry and hence create jobs outside of their own perimeters. So if you’re a type that loves the challenge of working for a start-up, or you’re a nine to fiver in a mid-sized company, or perhaps you prefer a corporate office in a downtown skyscraper; the fact that the payments industry has some big name players, including Dow components and Fortune 100 companies, benefits the industry as a whole and provides you, the employee, with an industry rich in all types of job facets and countless of opportunities.
- The Payments Industry has a Large Footprint. Even though the industry is small compared to other industries (measured in the amount of people it employs), it has a very big footprint. When I cruise the tradeshow floors, like the annual ETA show in Las Vegas, it always dawns on me that the entities present in the medium-sized exhibit hall touch roughly 80% of the money that is transacted around the U.S. It’s sometimes mind-boggling how connected this business is. I previously described that the payments industry touches almost every American consumer in their daily lives, but it also acts as a pillar of modern commerce and economics. The payments industry spills over into a multitude of other industries, such as technology, government, hospitality, retail, energy, medical and more. Not many industries have this much overlap into other industry sectors. And there is a lot more to the payments industry than just issuing cards and pushing transactions. The industry is replete with companies that manufacture payments hardware, develop software systems, regulate and implement security measures, and companies that provide goods and services to other payments companies. Due to its footprint, there is always room for more talent, and payments employees have a wealthy choice of which segment they want to enter, from credit to debit to gift cards, electronic checks, POS terminals, cash advances and more; there is a place out there that’s your perfect fit.
- It has a Bright Future. Ever since the bartering system thousands of years ago, the nature of “how to compensate someone for goods or services” has been an ever-evolving process, and that process is far from over. I think that many of us can envision our future generations asking us what “cash” is. We are fortunate that our industry lies on the same path as commercial evolution – new ways to transact in commerce are constantly introduced by our industry; like pointing your cell phone at a vending machine for instance. For the foreseeable future, our industry will remain on the spear tip of innovation, specifically now that human technology is exploding with no end in sight. One day you may see people pay one another with an eye blink or handshake – I know, it sounds awfully Orwellian, but if we do go there, it will be our industry that will make it a reality (perhaps with some assistance from DARPA). Many business segments are going the way of the Dodo; for instance, travel agents are being replaced by Internet travel sites, and journalism has been taken over by syndication and newsblogs. Even the acting industry isn’t safe. Since computers will soon be able to animate high quality human graphics, actors will be replaced by digital human renderings. But the payments industry looks like a winner; we have technology on our side, and electronic payment frontiers like China and India are fueling our expansion. Fortunately, where the technology wave has overtaken many other fields, the payments industry has been riding that wave into the future.
There is much to be said about the payments industry, but I think we all can agree that once you’ve gone down this industry path, most of us have never looked back.
Source: Cardgigs