Take, for example, students travelling to Australia from China, who often prefer to pay with Alipay.

Tarun Sharma, general manager customer operations at TPG Telecom, Vodafone’s parent company, says, “We really want our customers to have the best experience with Vodafone as possible, so allowing them to pay in a user-friendly, frictionless manner is important to us.”

Finding the right platform and meeting customer needs

To drive this level of payment experience, Vodafone sought a provider they could trust to deliver payments on time and could simplify and streamline payment options across channels.

They also wanted a provider who had the breadth and flexibility to ensure they could tap into current digital trends and emerging customer preferences.

Vodafone’s payment solution had to reflect the almost ubiquitous use of smartphones by their customers to make payments.

They also wanted to cater to the growing popularity of modern payment options including digital wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay as well as offer a BNPL option.

Eighteen months ago, Vodafone made its choice, and welcomed its new payment partner, PayPal, leveraging PayPal’s enterprise payment gateway solution Braintree.

“We want the payments experience for our customers to be seamless, secure, real time and offer the flexibility for them to pay for their services, when they want to and however they want to,” says Sharma.

“Payments are critical to our business because it is often the first touchpoint customers have with us. You might be making an upfront payment to start your order, or doing an upgrade but need to pay your previous bill before you can do the upgrade. It is vital this experience is seamless, or we could risk losing a customer altogether.

“And it’s not just the start of a transaction. Consumers often pay with us every single month. By offering choice of payments, and a frictionless experience at every touchpoint, customers can stay connected without disruption. Partnering with a vendor of PayPal’s clout and quality is helping us to really deliver on every one of these fronts.”

The numbers suggest customers are responding well.

In the space of 12 months, Vodafone has seen an enormous growth from 0 to 38 per cent of customers using digital wallets to make payments online. Currently, there are more than 1.5 million transactions a month for Vodafone customers using Braintree.

Real-time payments and bolstered security

Introducing real time payments was key to creating frictionless experiences for customers.

Todd Atkins, PayPal’s director of large enterprise, whose team led the TPG Telecom project, says it is common for telecommunication organisations to carry out more legacy batch payments, which can lead to negative customer experiences due to potential delays in customers accessing the new service they have acquired.

“With batch payments on legacy systems, it can take a few days to get a response back and can cause friction between the customer and the provider as their money might have left their account, but they do not have immediate access to the service.”

Both PayPal and Vodafone were aligned in wanting to provide customers with real time payment capability across all channels.

Leveraging the PayPal Braintree platform to offer digital payments and enabling real time updates in the billing and CRM systems has led to better customer experiences.

This includes allowing customers to see their payments reflected in real time on their Vodafone accounts or in the Vodafone mobile app.

It has also led to a reduction in instances of customer accounts being suspended because their service wasn’t paid by a certain date due to processing delays.

Fraud prevention has also been bolstered.

Since introducing Braintree’s Fraud Tools combined with 3D Secure (3DS), there has been a significant reduction in fraud.

Vodafone now has reduced its chargeback rate by 60 per cent and, according to Sharma, there have been no friction or complaints from customers as a result of introducing the fraud prevention tools.

Furthermore, bolstering fraud prevention has also increased Vodafone’s online sales capabilities.

“Introducing Braintree’s Fraud Tools combined with 3DS has helped to increase security on our channels,” says Sharma.

The road ahead: cashless connectivity

So what does the future hold for telecommunications in Australia?

“Connectivity requirements for consumers and businesses are crucial and ever evolving. The number of connected devices being used in households is growing rapidly,” says Sharma.

“The role of telecommunications is to allow customers to stay connected and use services whichever way they want to. Making this as seamless as possible, with payments being something that happens digitally and seamlessly in the background, is critical.”

Sharma says digital payments will be an integral part of the future.

“We are already entering an era of a cashless society and we want to make sure we’re staying current and keeping up with trends as they continue to evolve, to ensure we can keep offering our customers the best experience and flexibility of choice.

“It’s also important we have all the right payment methods available to our customer base and our customer segments depending on who they are, and what their preferences are too.”

To learn more, visit www.paypal.com/au/enterprise.