Why Every Business Needs a Payment Strategy | Viktoria Soltesz

Viktoria Soltesz: the cash flow is like the bloodline of your business, right? You need to understand where is it coming from, how much, how often, who are your customers who are paying you, what is the currencies being used, who is the entry point there are a lot of clashing KPIs because if I'm a finance department, my job is one thing to optimize the fees. no one actually trained to do this job, which is very dangerous because we are dealing with money, right? No one has a clue. Everybody is a trial error or an past experience or a gut feeling or I know because someone told me but is it good or not? So I decided that it cannot be. How can it be that people are making decisions over hundreds of millions on a daily basis on a gut feeling? Imagine all the inefficiencies, imagine all the risks
Roger Abouantoun: Every company has a sales strategy and a marketing strategy and a technology strategy. But surprisingly, many businesses still don't have a payment strategy and they treat payment as a back office function, when in reality, payment influences customer experience, cash flow, compliance, growth and risk
Viktoria Soltesz: I'm going to
Roger Abouantoun: across the entire organization. My today's guest has spent
Viktoria Soltesz: you
Roger Abouantoun: more than 20 years helping businesses understand how money really moves. and why payments deserve a seat at the executive table. Let's talk person to person with Victoria Scholtz. Victoria, welcome to the podcast.
Viktoria Soltesz: Well, thank you very much, Roger, for the invitation. I love to nerd out on the topic. So I'm always happy to talk about the statements, issues, and the strategies. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you for inviting me.
Roger Abouantoun: My pleasure. you know, like, it's not a secret that I have heard you speaking a lot of podcasts before and in events, and I'm really looking forward to have this discussion together. When
Viktoria Soltesz: Thank you.
Roger Abouantoun: I first started, you know, to see how can I introduce Victoria, I mean, as I said at the beginning, you have more than 20 years of experience in banking and payments. You are a founder of an independent payment and banking consultancy, PSP Angels. You have established a payment institute, educational institute as well. You wrote two books on payments. And I can keep going, right? But we're going to talk about all this stuff. But just tell me, how did it all start for you? I know you're from Hungary. You studied there. And then you start traveling. But just take me a little bit more about how this whole, like, fascinated fascinating journey started for you.
Viktoria Soltesz: All right, so it all goes back to the time when Cyprus joined the EU. So everybody was excited, small islands, good taxation. So I was going there as a fresh accountant that was coming from England. And the whole island was buzzing about incorporating new companies. There was a big need for accountants, tax advisors. So that's how I ended up. being a tax advisor myself as well as helping international companies, setting up the international tax structures, move the funds, incorporate the companies, accounting, audit and massive international tax advice. And 20 years ago, there was no compliance. Remember when you incorporated a company, there was an opportunity to take the money in a sports bag in form of a cash, or you could open a bank account with a photocopy passport. So compliance was not as strong as it is today. So I was happily working as an accountant and my clients came to me and they said that, okay, Victoria, I understand that the tax can be optimized if you open a company here and maybe offshore structures. But you know what? There is a problem with the banks and the payment providers. It looks like that they don't really want to work with us and they block our funds and they are asking a lot of questions. And, you know, obviously who did they ask? Their accountant. And I was just as clueless as they are because we were never taught on the subject, right? We didn't know what is the bank's requirement to open a bank account, what is KYC, what is compliance. Obviously nowadays it's much different. So I started to look into the case, like how is a payment provider working? Why they block the funds? What is a rolling river? How the whole thing works? know, bank accounts, how you send money abroad? What is... know, FX rates. And it is very easy to just spiral down on the topic, you know, better than I am. Once you start
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: asking questions, it's just like new things pop up. And when you're curious, just dig deeper and deeper in the topic. And then I realized that, wait a minute, there is a whole world which is now dealt with finance people. Maybe the treasurer knows a bit about it as a CFO, have to make decisions on this. But it is a whole different world, as you said, payments and banking, fact customer service, customer experience, data security, technology, compliance, legal product, like every part of the organization. And somehow we are still not really making it a thing. No one is really talking about that. Yes, payment is a thing. that's led. That's what led me actually starting my own consultancy, helping companies. Originally, all my clients who I had from the tax advisory post, then I started to advise them that, put this payment strategy, which payment provider to pick, whatnot. And that led me to open my institute two years ago when I realized that we do need to have education on the topic because FinTech is everywhere, regulation is everywhere, people know a bit, but no one really has the full picture. And at the end of the day, we are making decisions over. money. So it has to have some kind of structured education on the topic. So that's how consultancy and education goes hand in hand. And that's how I ended up in this field, actually.
Roger Abouantoun: Okay, and by origin you're an accountant, right? You studied accounting? Okay,
Viktoria Soltesz: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Roger Abouantoun: and you know, what took you to Cyprus? know, I mean, why moving from Hungary to Cyprus or to England? Is it like for work or you're just like exploring? Because 20 years, there was no like free movement within across the whole current EU countries, not every whole countries were EU. Was it hard for you to say, look, I wanna leave Hungary to just go? discover somewhere else or was it always like job-related moving you were doing?
Viktoria Soltesz: I obviously, Cypress, when you're 20 something, Cypress looks very appealing. The sun, the sea, and they need accountants,
Roger Abouantoun: Mediterranean.
Viktoria Soltesz: and I could earn a good money, and I'm coming from England, which is a bit rainy. So
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: was like, that's great. It was a perfect combination. Because in England, I was working for one of the biggest software companies who taught me everything about how to do the accounting in real life. So I could really use my... education as an accountant put into real action of like really how to do a VAT submission, like how to do an English pay at all, what to do with a small and medium sized businesses, accounting software, how to do debit credit and journal entries and whatnot. So when I actually ended up in Cyprus, which is very, very similar, it used to be, know, you know, English
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, colonia.
Viktoria Soltesz: colony. So it was really, really. good knowledge that I could put into using media. Okay, it's the same system, it's the same debit credit, it's the same financial statements, same profit and loss balance sheet. So it was really convenient for me. So I think I was in the right place at the right time. I was chasing the sun, but I stayed because
Roger Abouantoun: And it found you.
Viktoria Soltesz: of the good opportunity in this field.
Roger Abouantoun: And you know you mentioned something earlier that you know the Company starting come to you and then you start asking questions and usually I hear a lot of same similar stories You know different background different reasons, but like payments. It's like a it's like a rabbit hole either you get into it and you get stuck because the more question you ask the more The murder you still have need to understand what's happening and ask even more and more I've been doing it till now. Currently I'm working on some topic, which is the first time I've worked on. And I've been in 20 years dealing with card scheme, regulation, requirement. And I still find new stuff, surprisingly, it makes me happy. It should make me upset. Surprisingly, I still have holes or gaps, which I don't know. So yeah, I find payments, it's interesting environment.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah. And everything is changing all the time. mean, the whole fintech landscape is not as it was five years ago. They were different solutions, different
Roger Abouantoun: Thank
Viktoria Soltesz: tools, different authorization, different fraud, different everything. what I see is obviously everything is changing, but today everything is changing so fast
Roger Abouantoun: so quickly.
Viktoria Soltesz: and companies need to see their operation from a holistic perspective. So we used to have the marketing department, the HR department, the finance department, and everybody did their own work. And now with the introduction of Agile, I can see that companies started to see things in a larger picture. how the marketing decisions are affecting the HR decisions are affecting the technology decisions, the product, the customer experience. So everything is related and I think payments and banking, the cash flow, how the money flows through the organization or if you have a large group, like how the money is going from one company to another, how is it being held? How is it being sent? What are the areas that it affects? And payment and banking flows could be a very good basic where you follow the money, you see how to optimize certain processes in your business, how to make it easier, how to make it safer. And based on that, you can make much better decisions even on subjects which are not affected by payments and banking per se, but it can have a lot of effects. For example, how you're utilizing the payment data, how you're turning it to important marketing KPIs or how you're making decision on expansion. I'm going to this country with a payment provider and the safety of
Roger Abouantoun: in the class.
Viktoria Soltesz: the funds and the fees are different if I'm going to that country. So there are a lot of moving elements and where coming from, advocate that you do need to see it a bit more from a rational perspective because that's one thing that how is it supposed to be, right? Everybody's supposed to have access to payments and banking, to payment providers. You're supposed to open a bank account in a day, but things are different and you do need to calculate this when you're building a larger strategy for your organization.
Roger Abouantoun: And that's very interesting. How would you define in simple terms a payment strategy and how companies can implement them properly? Because many will tell you, yeah, I don't need it. Payment is working fine. I mean, probably they say, says because they don't know what's missing. So
Viktoria Soltesz: Exactly.
Roger Abouantoun: in a simple way, what will a payment strategy will give as like an advantage for a company? how a company which is running without a payment strategy today, after it implements this payment strategy, what kind of advantage it will see and how they can do it without disrupting their current business.
Viktoria Soltesz: I usually say that the cash flow is like the bloodline of your business, right? You need to understand where is it coming from, how much, how often, who are your customers who are paying you, what is the currencies being used, who is the entry point like which provider, how are they regulated, how are they keeping your funds, is it safe, is it not, do you have immediate liquidity or the settlement times, I don't know, two, three days. What is the opportunity cost that you have? So the first part is always looking at the entry point where the money enters your organization or your group. Then how does it flow through? Because ideally you get the money and then you spend it, you pay it on payroll, you pay to your providers, your manufacturers, and obviously you keep some and then you pay it out to the shareholders. So how the money is actually flowing through the organization? What are the different triggers? Is it a tax point? And this is good to get the tax advisors involved as well. Is it going to trigger some kind of technological challenge that yes, but we can't record it because is it going to have some kind of issue around, I don't know, compliance? Yes, we are legal here, but if you do that in a different country, it's not. So you need to follow how the money is actually being moved through the organization. What are the parts that it stays? Every time money moves, it's gonna cost you and there is a risk, right? That goes without saying. So the more points it's going through and the more points it stays, then you increase the risk and the cost. How to make sure that the money is moving from A to B in a fastest, cheapest and the safest way, right? And then how the money is leaving you. Are you collecting money in euro and then you do the exchange internally and then you are paying your providers in dollars, right? What is the risk? What is the fee? How often do you need to pay your providers? Talk a bit in the financial department, talk a bit on the timelines as well. how this money is being kept? Is it a format of digital asset? How is it affecting different organizations that the money is not liquid at that moment? Talk to your treasurer about that. How is it actually affecting technology and product? Talk to your product team. So you see how the money is actually exiting the company as well. So in a way, And those are the main parts. And of course, every payment professional has their own way. I have my payment framework, which I mean the short this payment framework is very easy to apply. Company agnostic, the eight step payment framework, which is checking that, you need to see the key personnel, the taxation, the hedging, the FX rates, know, everything. But there is no bad reply on that because the more questions you ask around this topic and the more professional C-levels, department heads you have in the same boardroom talking about that problem, you will be very surprised at how many inefficiencies you can reveal and how much of a cost you're paying that you didn't even know. Just to give you an example, you open the bank account, I don't know, eight years ago when you started your business. Those fees are staying with you today. Why? You changed, the provider changed, the whole technology changed. You
Roger Abouantoun: It's a lot of change.
Viktoria Soltesz: never questioned your prices. It's the same thing that you're paying the same amount of money to your manufacturers over year and year, and you never ask for a discount. But somehow people don't really think that there could be an opportunity to see, okay, hey, bank, what alternatives do you have? Do you have bank? tools, you have better, I don't know, did you innovate something in the last eight years, something that I can get cheaper, you know me, I'm posing less risk of you, maybe that's worth something to you. So just with this simple question, that was the last time that you actually had a good chat with your payment provider or bank, what are the latest, can I have a discount? That alone can save you a lot of money. And this is just, you know, obviously just the tip of the iceberg.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, this is very true because businesses or even individuals, they don't know the unknown, right? And they cannot guess. And unless someone like yourself who's been in that journey and knows the ins and outs, many people don't know it, you and they go with the same bang, you know, as you're saying. And I find also from what you have explained is the issues most often is because those functions that you described, is the constituted payment strategy, today in many businesses, they fall under different verticals. Like finance do a lot of this stuff, for example, but also under the product department, they manage all the stuff or technology or compliance. And usually not all these verticals within the same company, they have same strategy. They have different budgeted. different maybe marketing, different goals. So I see why we need this centralized payment, which they can take decisions about the payments, payment functions and leave product for product development, leave technology to decide which technical provider you want to do or what architecture. But don't decide on your architectures because you don't have budget. Because that's something we can save in payment, give you a budget you need and same with every other department I would say.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah. And I think that there are a lot of clashing KPIs because if I'm a finance department, my job is one thing to optimize the fees. Do I care that the technology team needs half a year to integrate
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: a new provider just because I managed to negotiate half a percent cheaper? Does it to even worth it? Or do I ever talk to the customer experience team and tell them that, Hey, right now I'm changing the payment provider. Everything is going to be green. But our corporate color is blue. I don't care. This is cheaper. So what I see now is that a lot of decisions are either trial and error. OK, we tried. We didn't know. We're not going to do it again, which obviously costs a lot after the company. Or it's coming from the pause that, we always did that. We always use this payment provider and then gets inherited down the line. But no one is actually questioning this. or the third one, which is actually the worst, you're going around and asking around, hey, which bank do you open? How can you expect that the same provider
Roger Abouantoun: This is the North coming.
Viktoria Soltesz: is working for a shipping company which is working for an airline company which is working for an e-commerce business? It's just different needs, different tools, different fraud stuff things. The whole thing is different. So I see that the finance person is now making a lot of decisions which is outside of their scope and there is no person which is overseeing the whole process and have the KPI to deal with all the interdependencies and optimize everything on an organizational level, not on a department level. And I think payments and banking is... perfect base to start this conversation because obviously we're talking about strategy and as you said at the beginning, the sales strategy, the marketing strategy, but payment is just so easy because there is an entry point, there was an exit point and everything in between. So if you start, at least you have a really good skeleton to depend on and then you can actually monitor how the money is flowing through and that automatically triggers those questions that you need to ask.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned how businesses choose their banks and payment providers, you know, and I separate between the two because in my world, the payment provider is more a digital payment provider like,
Viktoria Soltesz: Mm-hmm.
Roger Abouantoun: I don't know, Stripe, for example, you know, where they process transactions while bank is more, in my understanding, is more like banking, you know, like how the money moves, which are slightly different. But for a business, you know, how can a business assess or Trust a bank, know, why why why a certain business? We should go with bank a and not bank B what tools they have today in the market to say look Even even as a new business or existing business with certain bank What would in your opinion should should let them say this bank is better than the other bank I mean, there any tools they can do it or or they have to go to a third party or independent people to do it for them?
Viktoria Soltesz: It's the same question when you have an illness and you go to the doctor and the doctor gives you different medicines. What to do, right? So if you're not a doctor, there is a gut feeling. I'm asking my aunt, okay, would medicine work for you? But obviously your aunt is different than you, right? So many times in reality it happens on a gut feeling or, I know someone who is working for that company, that person said it's good, so let's go with them. Is it good enough decision to make a decision over hundreds of thousands moving in a daily? Not really. So ideally, what you should have, first of all, a professional who is understanding this world. It could be your finance person, but have someone who understands what is happening with your money. Because the provider that you are contracting with is just the front end. are they contracted with to send your money through correspondent banks, through intermediaries? Where are they licensed, right? Which regulator is enforcing anything in case something goes wrong, right? What is the technology they have? Are they going to break down in two days? Or are they a solider to support your business? Because they might be the cheapest and the safest, but if it doesn't work, it's not going to get you far, right? Or how are they dealing with the customer service issues, right? You call them, you try to talk to someone, no one replies. For example, know, large payment provider, usually that's the problem. I'm emailing everyone and no one gets back to me and my money is being held, right? So there are a lot of elements here which you need to consider, but there is no one size fits all in the same way as you can't say that this medicine is better than that. It depends on your personal circumstances. If you're sick, it depends on the organizational setup. If you're a business, but you do need to have a professional who is guiding this process. And trust me, it doesn't cost a lot. but it can cost a lot not to have it. And then
Roger Abouantoun: Okay. Have to do it.
Viktoria Soltesz: three months down the line, it turns out that all the tech team didn't know that this API is not working well and now the product is released and now they change the fees because we didn't know that they can change the fees, whatever, and we can't get out. So you do need to ask those questions at the beginning, have a professional involved, get that professional lead the way. not AI, not these AI chatbots. I have seen
Roger Abouantoun: It works.
Viktoria Soltesz: a lot of people are using that as well. And the other problem I see a lot that a lot of decisions are still made on trust. I know you for the last five years, you're working for this company, that's going to be good. Not really, you are not the company who is making this. Even though that you're working for that company, you can't make a decision on or just because you know someone I'm going to go there kind of thing. Keep in mind that payment businesses or even banks, they are just moving the funds from you at one step, but the whole operation, what is happening at the background? How are they holding your funds? What are they doing internally? It's usually not public information. And that's exactly why you need an expert to guide you. Because even though at the front end everything looks great, if they are sending your money through channels, which could be risky, at the end of the day, it's your money. So it should be your responsibility to understand these consequences.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, and that was kind of what I was trying to find out because I also find it very hard to figure out everything. mean, how can you tell that this payment provider, which channel is he using or which maybe regulations are respecting or not? Are there any laws where you can like, the business can use to to send, for example, like GDPR on personal level? Which is very common within banking and payments. Is there anything like a business can reach out to their payment provider and tell them look I would like to know XYZ and you are obliged to tell me this according to those laws or there is no such thing for now I mean you need someone to go and dig to find it out
Viktoria Soltesz: You need to know what are the questions and when to ask and how to test and what are the tricks to trigger in order to find out. do a mystery shopping, do a chargeback, see how the process
Roger Abouantoun: Okay.
Viktoria Soltesz: is working at the test phase before you spend hundreds of thousands on the integration, right? So try to test that, try to speak not just to the salesperson, because obviously every salesperson wants to sell, right? So you need
Roger Abouantoun: Thank you.
Viktoria Soltesz: to talk to someone else than the salesperson to get the information that, by the way, if that happens, what's happening? Who are your correspondent accounts? And even then, as you said, that there is no regulation which forces companies to tell you exactly who are they working with. Plus, it's also changing because you know it better than that. If you're a payment gateway, you've got 100 partners and they are changing all the time and you're switching in between. Depends on where the traffic is coming from, where you got the best fees. And obviously, you're not sharing this with a client. But there are ways that you can ask questions around them. I'm not saying that you're going to have the hundred percent of the picture, but at least you
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: have a better understanding on the risks. And every information is valuable information when it comes down to your money. So you do need to have those questions. Just to give you an example, we had a client and they were dealing a lot with Kazakhstan. And when the Russian sanctions came through, they said, okay, it's Russia. We have nothing to do with it. Yes, but their payment provider, who is regulated in Kazakhstan, had the intermediary banks in Russia, right? So the funds get blocked, the funds got delayed, obviously, defied their company, then they needed to open a new account, but it's coming from that Kazakhstan bank, which has relation to Russia, which is sanctioned. increased due diligence. So it was a nightmare. And this wouldn't take long to ask that, by the way, which direction the money is actually coming from? What are the main correspondent banks that you are using at the point when they open the account? Because once you know, you can actually get ready to, okay, Russia is going on the sanctions, then just in case I will pay more attention on this bank account in that region. Or for example, what happened in the Middle East, right? It's not just the sanctions, but actual physical damage. There were many times when they bombed the infrastructure and the data center didn't work for a couple of days. So you do need to understand that how the money is. is actually being capped on the what banks, what routes they are taking. Because this can really affect your company, even though that you as a business, you're not doing anything wrong.
Roger Abouantoun: Absolutely. And you took me now to the years when I still in the Middle East because I worked for eight years there. And we used to deal with a of RFPs, for example. And one of the questions used to be, where are your data centers? Where are your backups? Because the backups needed to be with certain requirements. There was a certain distance from each other. So if something happened, let's say in the east of the country, okay, you got the center, both of them, even if you have high availability, but they are not next to each other, like you have across the country and like, yeah, but not every business do it, many, many businesses don't care about it, don't know about it. I don't wanna assume anything, but like they don't ask about it. They assume that what we hear in the news, like, yeah, they have this high availability and... And that was it. we had one case where one of our providers had a high-available system, but in the same physical data center. And the fire happened in the data center. both instances of that system, software system, went down because they did not consider that something physical can happen, like an earthquake or a fire. They always looked at the software level, high availability
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: on a software level. But as a customer, as a business, probably they didn't know about it. Their system went down. And I don't know even if after it went up, they mentioned it to them because if they did, they would lose them. But there is no transparency. They will not tell what's happening. Even nowadays in Europe, you have a data breach. No one tells you what caused the data breach. No one tells you. And you're dealing with people's money, bank accounts, car data. They tell you, it's due to a software from our third provider. And that's it.
Viktoria Soltesz: I think that's it. Is it really true or not? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, no one knows.
Viktoria Soltesz: And I think the other point here is that a lot of businesses have a local mentality, but they go viral, go fast, scale up, and they don't really understand the local systems and the local threats. So that could be also a very important point that you do need to have. a person who is advising you on a global financial system, the global banks, the global requirement, the global compliance, because I have seen a lot of times that an American business is booming. It's great. Local markets are maxed out and then they go to Europe and then they realize that, okay, it's not just the, yeah, it's not just a different
Roger Abouantoun: Everything changed. world.
Viktoria Soltesz: currency everywhere, but different payment habits. Like people don't always want to pay with their debit or credit card. For example, in Europe, not that many people have. credit cards, the majority is debit cards, it's different. And then
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, we did it. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: they go to Asia and it turns out that, okay, the whole market changes,
Roger Abouantoun: to our code payments.
Viktoria Soltesz: the fees are changing, the compliance is changing, you can't just go to Europe because at least it's EU, but in Asia, you've got India, which is different than it's China is different than Japan is different than, know, there are multiple Russia is different. So there are multiple countries and... And then you need to adjust, obviously, not just the marketing strategy and the localization, but the payment strategy as well, which is good for that very market and then how you're getting the money back to the headquarter. those are all the questions that when you are going international, it's very easy to make a mistake. So ask questions because that doesn't cost
Roger Abouantoun: Absolutely.
Viktoria Soltesz: a lot to ask questions, but it can cost a lot not to.
Roger Abouantoun: absolutely. And this will take me to my next topic, which is the payment institute. You know, I think this is like it's connected, you know, all this like questions. And one of the reasons I believe businesses and in general people working in payment don't know about it is that universities don't teach payments and banking. They teach finance, they teach economics, you know, different part. But I haven't seen like a bachelor or master's in digital payments or in how banking works. And you know, when I knew about your payment institute, when you told me about it and I saw the courses and like we worked on one course for DCC, I was so happy to see that there are people who's looking into education, you know, and also, you you have now your MBA in payments. I let you talk about that one, but like... Before that, what was the drive of, I mean, how did you sort like, or did you think that I have to found
Viktoria Soltesz: you
Roger Abouantoun: some like educational payment institute? mean, was it, I mean, did you see the gap of knowledge in the market? How did you spot it?
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, exactly. My favorite question every time I'm talking to a payment professional is that, what are you originally? And I get the most random replies. I'm a psychologist. I'm a biologist. I'm
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: a accountant. I'm a lawyer. So no one actually trained to do this job, which is very dangerous because we are dealing with money, right? No one has a clue. Everybody is a trial error or an past experience or a gut feeling or I know because someone told me but is it good or not? So I decided that it cannot be. How can it be that people are making decisions over hundreds of millions on a daily basis on a gut feeling? Imagine all the inefficiencies, imagine all the risks and things do go wrong. And you can see even in the news that a lot of things do go wrong, which could be easily avoided. if at least a person has an understanding that how things work on a basic level. Just to give you an example, if I tell you gateway, what is a gateway? You will give me a different explanation that I understand. And if you ask a third person from the industry, it's going to
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, absolutely correct.
Viktoria Soltesz: be a different. So how comes that you don't even have a common understanding on the basic expressions? Like, why don't we We as a profession, you and me and everybody who is working in this industry, why don't we demand, first of all, to have a scope? What is our job? What are the responsibilities? What are we doing? Once we have the scope, then we can add the standards. Okay, so because we do this, this, this, we need to do it this, this, this way. What works for you? What works for you? And what I feel is that everything is about the regulators and the FinTech companies and you've got the FinTech meetups and the providers and the providers are talking about things, but no one is really representing the users who are actually paying for the whole thing, right? There is no safe space where you and me can discuss what is working for you, how much does it cost you without having an influence of a payment provider who wants to sell us something, which is obviously nothing
Roger Abouantoun: sales or marketing.
Viktoria Soltesz: wrong with that sale because that's the business, right? But we need to have some independent standards, independent certificates, independent education, where the industry, us, you and me and everybody who's working here, is putting together all that huge amount of knowledge and have a platform to discuss what works, what doesn't, all the mistakes, what you did and I did is not going to be repeated by a person who is just trying to figure it out today. So my goal here is yes, education is important, but this is again just an end of a larger picture of we need a scope, we need standard, we need a code of ethics, we need best practices, we need to talk about this, we need to have an opportunity to discuss these challenges, the opportunities between us. And as I said, nothing wrong with the FinTech companies, but obviously if you're going to whatever pay academy is going to be the result that whatever pay is the best, right? So of course they are motivated to sell you something. And
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, absolutely.
Viktoria Soltesz: that's what I noticed, that there is no independent organization which is taking care of that in a way that benefits the industry and has EU certification or any other certification on that. it didn't exist, so I started it. And I'm very proud because the Institute now is hosting the first and only EU MBA in payments and banking specialization. Obviously, there are a lot of new plans that we have, but just to start the conversation, just to give an opportunity to anyone who wants to study about that, who wants to have an understanding about it, we have a lot of free content for this reason as well, the webinars and the articles. The goal is to give back to the industry. create an ethical and transparent industry when I say gateway, you understand the same thing what I mean. So that's the larger picture. That's the goal.
Roger Abouantoun: And what you said is absolutely accurate because I know it from my daily work. Different people like I mostly work with acquirers and payment providers. Merchants have different terminologies. Issuers have different ones. And if you talk about the basic, as you were saying, what is a payment service provider? If you ask five different people, each one will tell you. This one does payment, this one does service, this one does the legal, know. What is the merchant of record? As you say, what's the gateway? These are like basics. Like we are not talking about how to do like, you know, like transaction processing or clearing and settlement. Like if you go to that part, this is like you will see different words, you know, but like, yeah. And that's what amazes me. I mean, there is no education at universities, which I find super weird. But at the same time, understand that payment moved very, very quickly, quicker than educations. And for universities to create like a program, they would need experts, would need specialists in the domain. you know, like if you look at payments, I know that payment existed in 70s, 80s, 90s, but it's only the last 20 years which has been booming and it's changing very quickly, you know, like every couple of days you have a new technology like... Six months ago, there was no agentic payments or agentic commerce. Now, how can you teach it? We are still discovering it. But at least I'm happy that you have founded this institute because at least the basic transaction, is the refund? If you ask anyone, what is the refund, they will tell you different answers. They mix it with reversal, with void, with chargebacks. everybody sees it from a different angle, which is super interesting. So to go back to the EU MBA, Victoria, tell me more about the EU MBA. Like if someone wants to subscribe, if someone wants to register, how much time it takes, how they can do it through online or face-to-face, just tell me more about it, please.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, so we joined forces with with this Maltese university here, Malta, and they are offering this fully online MBA. So it's up to you how quickly you are finalizing the modules. And there is one module at the end, which is which is provided by us to get the payment and the and the banking specialization at the end of the MBA. But you can join anytime that you want. you're finalizing the modules, everything is online, so you don't have to travel anywhere. And you have an opportunity to check in with your tutor anytime when you have any questions to discuss that module. And once you finish all the modules, then basically you're awarded by two qualifications. One is the MBA itself, which is a base MBA, and the specialization, which is the payments and the banking, which is given by the by the Schwarz Institute. But it was really really important for me that everything is online. So you know nowadays people are really really busy and there is no enrollment set date. So you can start at any time that you want. And it it is quite okay on the price as well. So so anyone can actually enroll. That was one of the main points that I wanted to to to force that it has to be available for everyone because I think the payments and the banking industry really needs this kind of training. And I chose the to to work with the Small Peace University because they are covering all the basics elements of the MBA which you will need in your payments and banking education as well. So you learn a bit about you know, the management, the administration, how to start the company, the legal parts, a bit of accounting. So the so the whole whole information that you will need to use as a payment and a banking expert in a in a company.
Roger Abouantoun: Okay, and for those who are interested in registering, they do it through your institute or through the Maltese University or both? mean, where do they go to do it?
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, so all the interest is going through obviously us and then we are sending you to the customer service representative of the university who is explaining everything to you, collecting the payments. So we are not even collecting the payments, you're actually paying for the university for that. and and once all the modules are done, that's when you're coming back to us and we are finalizing the whole qualification for you to be a payment and the banking expert. at the end. So it's
Roger Abouantoun: That's perfect.
Viktoria Soltesz: a super easy registration and it's it's a super easy way to to get your MBA, an EU MBA and a payment and a banking specialization, which is super unique.
Roger Abouantoun: That's perfect. And this is on top of all the other courses that you provide in your institute, which I was grateful to have one course with you so far on dynamic currency
Viktoria Soltesz: Okay.
Roger Abouantoun: conversion. But when I checked your website, you have plenty of courses with professional specialists, which I also find very, interesting because I know how much hard I worked on that course. And like myself, I would imagine every other person did the same energy, you know, and as you said, it's just to give something back to the community because myself, like, you know, most of the people in payment, we learned it's a hard way, you know, we learned pay that there was like, if I tell you like in my early career, like my manager used to give me the documentation, 2000 page go read the specs and because this was the way I mean, there were great managers, but like, This was the only way, like if you want specs, go read Visa specs or MasterCard specs. That's how you learn authorization, clearing, settlement. There was no one telling you how to do it. So I'm really happy on the work that you're doing in that space as well.
Viktoria Soltesz: And still today, a lot of payment professionals are learning on the job, right? They are shadowing someone who is doing it in some way. Maybe there is not that much of a thought process. We always did it, so we continue doing it this way. So the whole goal here is really to create a platform where everybody can share their knowledge. So, for example, your course is so unique. There is no course DCC on the market at all.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: It doesn't exist, right? So so so my argument is that yeah, of course we are doing it and and and we are giving back to the to the industry, but I would really like to see more of the education, more of the initiatives, more of the consultancies, more of the education around this topic, because I still feel like that the the the industry, the profession is still not being recognized. And that's why we have an accountant who is working on payments as well, by the way. Figure it out. And I think this is wrong. And we need to define the role first. That's why, for example, I wrote, you know, the chief payment officer as well, defining the roles, the responsibilities. And based on that, we can actually add the education. And just to go back a little what you said earlier, there was a there was a big problem. I remember when when I was in the university, that a lot of people learned coding, right? And back in the day,
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: you know, coding with everything with with hand. And everybody complained that it was a four year university. And by the time you finish, at the end of the fourth year, whatever you learned in the first year is out of the window. So and
Roger Abouantoun: So that's
Viktoria Soltesz: this is what I see here with the payment as well, that every single yeah, you did that, right?
Roger Abouantoun: I did that. I did that. My first course in coding. In fact, I'm a telecommunication engineer. I went into payment by pure accent. Someday I'll tell you about it. But like I remember in my first year, we took a language called coding. So we used to do coding on paper and go and examine. There was no computers or anything. We used to like they taught us the
Viktoria Soltesz: And write a code.
Roger Abouantoun: logic of not the language itself. But just in a plain text, like if this condition, what do you do it? And then we learned another program called Turbo Pascal, which is,
Viktoria Soltesz: Yes.
Roger Abouantoun: don't know if, I don't think it's ever being used, currently being used. mean, at the time it was very popular.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: And then we moved to C, C++, and Java. like, yeah, as you said, when we got to the fifth year, like Turbo Pascal was already outdated. So at the time we were laughing, like what did we learn here? You know, same in payment, you know, like as you
Viktoria Soltesz: Exactly.
Roger Abouantoun: were saying.
Viktoria Soltesz: And that's why it's very hard to pinpoint that what are the basic knowledge that you really need to understand, which can then scale up to reach the decision. And it's not really about what you learn, it's about what are the thought processes you learn, like how banks think, how payment providers work, what is the underlying
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah. This will not change.
Viktoria Soltesz: logic. As you s as as you said, that you're learning the logic of the coding is not going to work, you know, change. It doesn't matter what language you're using or now your vibe coding, you still have the cap capacity, the understanding to go back and understand the code just by reading it. We are trying to do the same for payments and banking, right? So what is a bank? What is a payment provider? What is money? Right? What is the responsibility for the banks? Why are they not allowing you to pay money cash under the table? So if you understand the larger picture, how the whole financial system works, you you grasp the main decisions of compliance, anti money laundering policies, the technology, underlying APIs, how everything is connected. Once you get that logic. then it's going to be much easier to apply it and then you can make much better decision on your operation as well to fit this.
Roger Abouantoun: And Victoria, we talked a lot about businesses, what businesses should do, but what advice do you give to consumers? Which banks should they go Should they go to a high street bank or to one of the NAIO banks? What type of cards should they go with? Credit or debit? What kind of advice in general do you give to consumers who just are shopping, interested in payment, not working in payments?
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, it is it is harder because obviously it's good that the whole system is sad that it doesn't cost a lot to us because the who is paying is really the businesses, right? The businesses are paying the fees that we are using our credit cards or we choose to use our wallets or we choose to use our crypto. Usually us as consumers, we don't really bear the fees. It's it's it's it's on the business. but it really depends on your lifestyle, right? If you are traveling a lot, maybe you need some. kind of provider, which is which is helping you to have accessible banking in multiple places. You need to see that how your money is being held, because banks are giving you a different service. The banks are the ones who are giving you the mortgage and the and the credit cards and the loan and they can give you interest on your money. If you're opening a wallet, what's the what's the risk? How are they holding your funds, right? They are not giving you most probably interest because they don't have the banking license per se. They have e-money license, a payment institutional license. But maybe they give you a better I don't know, front-end experience, exactly a better application. You just tap and
Roger Abouantoun: Exactly.
Viktoria Soltesz: you know, just QR code and whatnot. So it it largely depends on on who you are, how you're using your money. But one thing is certain, one bank. is not a bank. Anything can happen, right? So as a business, you need to diversify because if you're keeping a lot of money in one basket and something
Roger Abouantoun: with the high risk.
Viktoria Soltesz: happens, then then it doesn't matter if you're a person or a or a or a business.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, by the way, I hear lot of stories, you know, in the media and on LinkedIn, on diverse posts, you know, and I'm not going to mention any payment provider because it's not fair and I haven't checked this personally. But like many stories, merchants, businesses, they say, you know, yeah, we're not happy with this one because they freeze my account from one day to another due to suspicious activities. You know, everything was working fine, especially, especially I'm talking about the ones who works as pay facts. You like you're on board very quickly, but then they hold your money, they pay you, know, and then something happens and they say, yeah, we are out of business. And there are big names in the market. That's why I don't want to mention them because I don't like, it's not my intention to put anyone under bad reputation. What usually happens when a merchant or a business say suddenly that provider froze my account while I haven't changed anything. I don't believe it personally. I believe, for example, not that I don't believe it, but like when I see this, I put more fault on the merchant. You're not maybe monitoring every report that provider is maybe sending you. Maybe you have high rate of chargebacks and you are not aware of it because why would the payment provider freeze your money out of no reason? But maybe it can happen.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So a lot of people don't know about it and we are not talking about it enough. A payment provider is just the front end which is giving you a service, but they are connected to multiple accounts. Those are the accounts that we are calling intercomp the correspondent accounts and intermediary accounts. So a payment provider, even though that they are licensed, they have the right to get the money from you and your connection to the whole financial system ends there. Your money doesn't end there. And if they have a problem with their correspondent accounts, then you, as the user, will have a problem. Let
Roger Abouantoun: Get it back to you.
Viktoria Soltesz: me give you an example, right? Let's say that you live in a small village and you want to visit your friend in another village. You get to the village road. From the village road, you go to the main road. From the main road, you get to the highway. From the highway, you get to the small road, and then the village road, then you visit your friend. Now imagine in an international setting, this is exactly what happens with your money. So if any of the account account, any of the road is closed, your money gets blocked. And it doesn't mean that you are doing something wrong. And this is a huge risk for not just for businesses, but for people as well. If the payment provider is holding funds of a lot of suspicious activity clients, it doesn't matter that you are doing everything right and everything good. If they have the investigation because one of their customers did something wrong, or they have a feud with their banking providers and one of the roads is closed, your money can get stuck in it. So you
Roger Abouantoun: really?
Viktoria Soltesz: as a yeah, you as a merchant or a or or even a person, you don't do anything wrong. But if your new bank is closed because someone used their services for some illegal activities and they got an investigation and they lose their correspondent relationships, your money is stuck with it. So this is also a risk that you need to you need to consider when you're paying picking a payment provider.
Roger Abouantoun: Interesting, yeah. I can tell you many don't do it because many merchants, they're excited about their ideas, their business, and they want to start accepting money. And
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: usually they go with, as you were saying, either a gut feeling or what they heard in the news or what my friend told me. I ask my friend. And people ask me as well. Many start startups or sole traders, we call them here in Ireland. Or like maybe like limited companies one or two people like you're starting consultancy You know, were they know I work in payment and they tell me like what you advise us and like I'm not gonna give you name out of the blue just go with X bank or that bank. I mean you have to do your research I can definitely advise you on a friendly basis, but like don't take it and put all your money there and because anything can happen
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah. And here we need to also mention that a lot of accountants, lawyers, advisors are giving advice to you. Go to this bank because I know someone there. Let me
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: do an introduction. It is a business on its own. I think it's coming with our industry because introducers, resellers, payment experts are everywhere. But
Roger Abouantoun: I three. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: my argument here is that. They are like follow the money, and then you realize what's their motivation. No one is giving you free advice. If someone is helping you to open a bank account, who's going to pay for it? You, right? Yeah, right.
Roger Abouantoun: That's Yeah, exactly.
Viktoria Soltesz: So obviously, there's going to be a commission which you don't know about, but you are paying higher fees to the bank so the bank or the payment provider can pay that person for the introduction, and it's everywhere. And I don't like that. First of all, we are not talking about it. Second of all, it's not transparent because the industry standard is around half a percent, one percent sometimes to make an introduction on your gross volume, not on your profit, your gross, your your volume plus VAT, GST, whatever you, whatever you collect as a business, your full gross revenue. A percentage on that. It's very expensive. And I'm not saying don't use these introducers. I'm saying that we need to make this introductory activity, first of all, regulated, more transparent, ethical. So you are not being misled that, hey, don't go there because they don't not pay me commission, not because it's bad for you. Actually, it would be much better for you. But go here because it's more risky, but they need clients, therefore they are paying me a higher amount of commission. It's a very, very contradictory situation when an introducer is motivated through a higher commission to send you to a payment provider who is hungry for business. Now why the payment provider might be hungry for business? Is it because they have worse technology? Maybe they're a bit more risky. I don't know. But there is always a reason that exactly, and
Roger Abouantoun: There's always a reason, yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: you can't screen the whole market independently. You have five partners to recommend. Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, absolutely. And I get approached a lot, you know, and funny enough, they don't call it commission because in some countries, commission can take a negative aspect. They call it referral. It's like, is like, I know,
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah. Same thing. Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: I know the same thing, but like, which I don't mind if I know the business, you know, like I'm always up to getting known your companies, looking at them, but I never refer a business which I personally wouldn't use. So I don't care about the commission referrer. I do it only if I was in that place. I know that I'm doing it. But I don't do any commission or referrer for my own business, regardless of the result. But many people do it. I know it. So we all know it.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, exactly.
Roger Abouantoun: I'm getting to my final part. This was amazing. Time passed so quickly. Last part is a bit of fun, like quick question, fire question. So
Viktoria Soltesz: Peace.
Roger Abouantoun: what advice would you give to your younger self? If you can meet with a younger version of yourself, start working. Do you change anything? What advice would you give her?
Viktoria Soltesz: No one has a clue. Everybody's winging it. Every the whole world is running on a trial and error. So if you have some kind
Roger Abouantoun: Thank
Viktoria Soltesz: of thought process behind, you're already far ahead of your competition of anyone else. So yeah, that's that's the thing that I would I would tell myself that don't be afraid. No one really has the full picture. Everybody's trying to figure it out. So Whatever you do is more than zero and just just be confident. That that's what I would say.
Roger Abouantoun: Perfect. Great advice. Card payment or account account payment?
Viktoria Soltesz: Depends. Customer
Roger Abouantoun: on.
Viktoria Soltesz: experience versus fee versus chargeback versus integration versus customer preference. Both are good, both are bad, benefits and and downfalls on both ends.
Roger Abouantoun: But somehow account to account payment and pay by bank hasn't been very popular in Europe as card payment. Why do you think, what it needs to become like competing with card payment?
Viktoria Soltesz: It depends because for example when you're going to Spain, a lot of people are using Bizum, right? Bizum is the is the is open banking
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: or or when you go to Poland is the black or when you go to you know ideal. So so so so these these these are op open banking kind of yeah account
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, market. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: to account payments. What I would advise to the users that be careful because you're losing your opportunity for chargeback. So this is a risk for the user. But for the merchant,
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: it's it's it's paradise. It's cheaper. No one is questioning anything. No one can put you on a match list. You
Roger Abouantoun: No fees, let's feed. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: know, as a merchant is the benefit. But again, you as a business, you need to satisfy your clients. So know what your clients want, but then you can still motivate them to, you know, if you're paying with with direct account, account payments, maybe you get a five percent discount for your next shopping, something. I don't know. But but it can be integrated to the to even a marketing
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: process.
Roger Abouantoun: Interesting. Reading a book or watching a podcast if you want to get some something specific. What's your preference?
Viktoria Soltesz: I'm a woman, so I can definitely multitask. So I can do, you know, something cleaning, doing the dishes
Roger Abouantoun: you
Viktoria Soltesz: while listening to the podcast. So in terms of being more efficient, I would say yes, the video format, the podcast format is is is actually good, but nothing compares to reading a book, the the the the classic. part of like you're closing down everything, you've got your full attention, it's just you and your imagination. So again, both both have really good good benefits.
Roger Abouantoun: And do you go with audiobooks or not a big fan of audiobooks?
Viktoria Soltesz: I do it. I think audiobooks are perfect for for people like me who is running and listening to something or you know, doing some kind of household chores and then you know listening to something. So for that is perfect. But the book still, you know, you still need to want to feel it and
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, that's what I do. I tried audiobooks a few times, I fell asleep. Because usually
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: I do it either on a bus, not while running or walking, or an airplane, and usually you're tired. Yeah, difference. And because
Viktoria Soltesz: Okay.
Roger Abouantoun: you have a book, you have to keep moving your hands. You cannot fall asleep. Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, you need to pay attention, right?
Roger Abouantoun: Do you still use cash or more like card payment? Are you still a cash person?
Viktoria Soltesz: Yes and no. Now again, cash is being used always for a reason, right? Someone doesn't want to pay taxes or someone wants to, you
Roger Abouantoun: Thank you.
Viktoria Soltesz: know, though something doesn't work. So it's usually I'm not saying always, but major of the time when cash is being used, and there's a problem. There there's something going wrong, right? So I in an ideal world, everything should be digital. So I would encourage everyone to obviously use digital. You've got Opportunity to dispute the transaction, to follow up who are you paying for? It's coming from clean sources, you're not supporting the black economy. But yeah, sometimes you can't just avoid not using cash just because you're in the middle of Greece in a small island and you know they don't take cash. You want your coffee
Roger Abouantoun: You don't think.
Viktoria Soltesz: or you don't, so you have to pay cash. So, for example, we just had a really big power cut a couple of a couple of months ago, everything stopped.
Roger Abouantoun: yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah, if if I didn't have money, I wouldn't be able to go and and and get some water. So yes, both have obviously benefits, but but ideally electronic payments should be advertised on a on a blue.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah, same with me. I always keep 10, 20 euros in my pocket for
Viktoria Soltesz: Yeah.
Roger Abouantoun: emergency in case something happens. Maybe I should keep more, but so far I did not need it.
Viktoria Soltesz: Exactly.
Roger Abouantoun: And last question from my side, Victoria, if there is a buzzword in payments or banking that you wish you can retire and no one uses anymore, what would that be like? Word or expression or... Something you hear that you say, I wish people stop using this word or this expression.
Viktoria Soltesz: I don't worry. I'm gonna introduce you to someone who can open a bank account or a merchant account for you. Don't you worry, I got you. It's it's fine. I know them. I know I don't I trust them. Don't you worry, just send all your money there because I'm telling you to do so because I'm getting paid. Like if that could be eliminated, I think the world would be a completely different place.
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah. Victoria, this was great. I really enjoyed it. It was a pleasure. I'm sure we can have much more session because we have many things to talk about. I we didn't talk about your books enough. I mean, I would like to have a session because, you know, I wrote a book as well on payments. You have two books. So maybe I wanted to give it more time to see, like, how did you write those books? Because many people still ask me, like, you know, How did you do it about the process? How to put ideas? So maybe after some time, can have a session about both our books. We can exchange ideas about those three books in the market.
Viktoria Soltesz: I would love that. I would love that. Maybe we can start a book club because I know a lot of people, not a lot, unfortunately, we need more, but I know a few people who wrote books in the subject. And for very interesting reasons, they are all getting it from a different angle. You know, when you're like trying to explain what is an elephant and one person is touching the trunk and one person
Roger Abouantoun: Yeah.
Viktoria Soltesz: is touching the, you know, the the feet. This is what I see with payments and banking. So the more books read. Right, all together. The more we talk about it, then we can
Roger Abouantoun: Absolutely.
Viktoria Soltesz: put together an elephant because you get this end, I get that end. Other people who are writing books are getting it from a different end. So it's very interesting to go through all these payment books and and then talk to the authors like how do you see things? Yeah, that would be fun.
Roger Abouantoun: Absolutely. It's a great idea. Let's work on it together. absolutely. Victoria, this was a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining.
Viktoria Soltesz: Thank you.
Roger Abouantoun: And I'll leave the last word for you. Anything you would like to add you didn't cover, I'll leave it to you to close this.
Viktoria Soltesz: Well, I think it's up to us professionals, you, me, and everybody who is who is listening this to create this industry to whatever we want it to be. It's it is our responsibility to educate the new generation, educate each other, define the scope, set the standards, be ethical, and all together just just help the industry to be as it's supposed to be. So Don't be a stranger. If you have any comments, recommendations, questions, stories, anything that you want to share, I'm very, very happy to talk about this subject all the time. So please feel free to reach out to me and then I'm very happy to to partnership, work together, just just make this industry a better, safer and easier for everyone.
Roger Abouantoun: Absolutely. What a great way to finish this one episode, Victoria. Thanks so much and speak soon.
Viktoria Soltesz: Thank you so much, Rodri. Thank you.
Roger Abouantoun: Thanks, bye bye.