Payments glitches like at Greggs could cost more than a few steak bakes
Yesterday, the nation nearly fell to its knees after a catastrophe akin to the financial crash sent shockwaves through our towns and cities.
I am of course referring to the saga at Greggs, where for several hours, Brits were denied access to steak bakes and custard doughnuts after a payments IT glitch forced shop closures.
Mercifully, the crisis was resolved forthwith. Panic buying at bakeries and a run on the banks were narrowly averted.
As it happens, the day before I chaired a panel at the Pay 360 conference at the Excel — the UK’s largest gathering of payments businesses. On it sat the director of global payments at Subway — perhaps Greggs’ biggest high street rival — who laid out his strategy to prevent this kind of failure. Had Greggs taken a leaf from his book, their system might not be so half-baked.
London is blessed with probably the highest concentration of payments fintechs in the world. Hundreds of companies beaver away, lubricating the mechanics of our economy. There are so many tools to choose now, a whole secondary market has evolved known as orchestration, in which firms group together systems from multiple providers on retailers’ behalf.
And we’re streets ahead of everyone else — it’s why, for example, the tube got contactless payments about a decade before the New York Subway (the trains not the sandwiches).
But all this innovation is at risk of stalling. People at Pay360 told me the UK’s financial watchdog, the FCA, has become way more difficult to work with. An FOI by the Standard last year showed that approval rates for e-money licenses sunk to a pathetic 8%. As one CEO put it, it’s less effort to turn someone down than help them thrive.
There are huge risks to this overcautious approach. In the long-run, it will mean we fall behind on technological progress — meaning many more outages like the one at Greggs.
And that’s a real worry. On my way home tonight, I’m buying a sausage roll multi-pack just to be safe.
