“Orchestrator ” – This is probably one of the most overused words in payments and in fact in the wider financial industry.
According to Google, an orchestrator refers to ” a plan or the act of coordinating the elements of (a situation) to produce a desired effect, especially surreptitiously”.
Now, when one sees this in conjunction with the payments industry, a few observations stand out –
* Need and an urge of unbundling legacy services and capabilities.
In a process, by definition, multiple entities are required to be orchestrated, but most of the things we had built in the last decade or so were associated with a grand vision, resulting in huge systems.
The need of the hour is to “unbundle” these services and be exposed to players outside of the organization. A good side effect of this is that it eliminates the risk of building in isolation.
#baas #embeddedfinance and anything else that claims to “enable” fintechs and customers with API’s is essentially based on this concept.
* The desired effect/product/solution is constantly changing.
The needs are changing, due to various reasons of course, but it usually starts an innovation that picks up and changes the customer behaviour/expectations and then regulators show up 🙂 further pushing changes.
* A “combinational” approach to strategy is now an obvious way to grow !
Combining products and services from different industries (business units) to develop new directions. This was not very obvious until a few years ago, there were always collaborations, but business models which re-invent entire industries are the new normal.
Apple reinvented the music consumption industry and very recently challenged the credit industry with BNPL product launches, Google changed the way the world consumes ads, Amazon, well amazon is amazon.
I believe the saying goes something like…”If you want to go the distance, go together…”, orchestrators are and will keep playing a critical role in creating the right music, that makes a big impact.