inai is a payments operating system that provides three pillars of products that cater to merchant needs. These products can be used together or separately and include payments orchestration platform, payments optimisation/analytics and reconciliation. inai solves all ecommerce needs by providing merchants with simple integration, access to over 300 payment methods, rules-based routing, easy workflow setup and intelligent routing that allows merchants to achieve increased revenue.

In today’s online business world, using a dependable payment operating system like inai stands as a crucial step in facilitating seamless online transactions. Regardless of your position in the ecommerce spectrum, a good payment operating system offers many benefits, providing you with the peace of mind necessary for optimal business operations.

Liz Beggs, COO at Payments Consulting Network, sits down with CEO and Co-Founder, Anta Pattabiraman to discuss inai’s products and its value proposition to its clients.

LB: Please provide a brief high-level overview of your business.

AP: inai is a payment orchestration platform that helps merchants optimize and automate their payment stack. inai provides a single integration that connects with 50+ payment providers, 300+ payment methods including Alternate Payment Methods (APMs) and 3rd party fraud providers.

Its no-code dashboard enables Project Managers to add or remove payment methods, configure routing and other business logic, gain insights on success and failure rates all without relying on expensive engineering resources.

inai was born out of the pain points the founders experienced themselves when they were scaling their previous business in terms of localising the payment experience and optimising for conversion. The company was launched in 2021 and is about 45 members strong and we now support merchants globally with their payment challenges.

LB: What payments services do you offer merchants and third-parties in terms of online, in-store, transaction banking, etc.?

AP: We offer merchants an online payments orchestration platform that allows them to connect to numerous PSPs, APMs and 3rd party fraud providers.
This orchestration layer allows merchants to optimise their payments and provide robust reconciliation tools.

LB: Are there any industry sectors or client types that you focus on for merchant services?

AP: We can support a variety of use cases being a horizontal payments platform. However, some of the key focus verticals include:

• Ecommerce
• Travel
• Marketplaces and software platforms (for payins and payouts)
• Gaming (payins, payouts and need for support due to higher risk)

LB: What do you see as your key differentiators with respect to merchant services?

AP: inai’s key differentiators with respect to merchant services include:

• Coverage of non-card / alternate payment methods. We support local payment methods in Europe, Asia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
• Our speed of integration and go-live timeframes (within 1-2 weeks)
• The ability to support complex use cases (payouts, marketplaces/platforms, recurring billing) and;
• 24/7 transaction monitoring and support for enterprise clients

LB: What were your key achievements over the last 12 months in merchant services?

AP: We have had several key achievements over the last 12 months, but the ones that we are most proud are the product features and functionality that we have delivered to our clients. These include having 50+ gateways and 300+ payment methods globally, support of marketplaces and platforms, alerting and analytics, tokenisation as a standalone service, reconciliation (settlement reconciliation) across multiple vendors to provide a universal ledger solution and fee analytics and insights.

We have also been successful in securing Zoomcar, Upmesh and upGrad as clients.

LB: What merchant services innovations do you have on your product/service roadmap for the next 12 months?

AP: We have several innovations on our product/service roadmap over the next 12 months. They include:

• Account updater service
• Standalone 3DS2 connections that is gateway agnostic
• Connections to 3rd party fraud providers such as Riskified

LB: What do you see as your key strengths with respect to merchant services?

AP: The inai payments operating system has many features and functionality that provides benefits to our merchants. The biggest key strength is a single integration that provides coverage of cards and local payment methods across all 6 continents. It also provides a localised checkout experience in all geographic areas without the need to write any code.

As a part of its offering, inai provides a PCI compliant vault that stores sensitive payment information and provides a one click/fast checkout services, a great benefit to the customer. This tokenised service can be available as a standalone service if required.

We also provide a simple to use ‘drag and drop’ user interface that allows merchants to add payment methods, run A/B tests, configure routing or other business logic easily.

Inai prides itself on the ability to support complex use cases including payouts, marketplaces/platforms and recurring billing. This wide offering allows us to support many merchants in the ecommerce space.

Other key strengths of inai’s payments operating system are the ability to reconcile transactions easily and provide advanced analytics. We offer a single dashboard system to manage all transactions, refund and chargebacks in one central location. Furthermore, the advanced analytics allows the merchants to gain insights on transaction success rates by payment methods, vendor and country by providing insights on failures by vendor, payment method and more importantly, the source of failure and alerts payment/product teams on outliers in terms of failures.

Finally, settlement reconciliation and payment fee insights, which is currently a work in progress, allows the merchant a single dashboard to enable reconciliation of funds between transactions and payment gateway receipts along with insights on the transaction fees paid.

LB: What key criteria or features should a business consider when evaluating a payments orchestration layer?

AP: The following criteria or features that a business should consider when evaluating a payments orchestration layer include:

• Coverage of payment methods
• Functionality
• Uptime
• Ability to support your use case (payins, payouts, marketplace models etc)
• Speed to market (many orchestrators take months to implement delaying ROI for merchants)
• Support
• Pricing

LB: What key criteria or features should a business consider when evaluating payments service providers?

AP: The following criteria or features that a business should consider when evaluating a payments service provider include:

• Payment coverage
• Transaction success rates
• Reliability
• Scalability
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• Support
• Pricing
• Software features

LB: What industry changes or trends to do you see occurring over the next 2-3 years that will have a major impact on your business and/or your clients?

AP: Firstly, we see payment method fragmentation that has been occurring over the last few years will continue in the next 2-3 years. We have already seen this impact and believe that our clients will continue to see this trend in the market. inai’s payment operating system solves for this issue.

We also believe that open banking and cheaper payment rails will continue to see adoption from both merchants and customers, as long as there is a focus on continuing to prioritise positive user experiences.

Another trend that we believe that will occur over the next few years will be that businesses will want to sell globally earlier in their life cycle. This is because payment orchestration companies will allow merchants to easily enter new markets without having difficult technology implementations and will also allow them to tap into a larger customer base which in turn will increase revenues.

CONCLUSION

Payment operating systems like inai serve as the linchpin of modern digital commerce, offering benefits that extend far beyond the realm of online transactions. They fortify business operations by ensuring both security and efficiency in financial dealings. Moreover, they elevate the overall customer experience, instilling trust, and confidence in every transaction. With the added advantage of facilitating seamless global reach, payment operating systems stand as indispensable tools in today’s dynamic business landscape, empowering enterprises to thrive in an increasingly interconnected world.

Author: Liz Beggs, Chief Operating Officer, Melbourne, Payments Consulting Network

Liz Beggs is a versatile and results-focused leader with over 25 years of multi-industry experience in consulting and management. She delivers value add, innovative solutions to internal and external clients with subject matter expertise in commercial cards and payments technology systems, drawing on her broad commercial GM level experience in corporate services and product management.

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inai is a member of our Payments Orchestration Panel.

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