Globally operating media conglomerate

After acquiring more than five prized assets in the B2C e-commerce space, this internationally renowned media conglomerate struggled to optimize the payment processes and realize desired gains from increased transaction volumes.

After two failed RFPs, Fürst Advisory Services was awarded the mandate to redesign and consolidate all payment processes for these B2C assets, eventually resulting in more than 2m EUR annual savings that went straight to the bottom line of this client, while at the same time increasing the choice of payment methods for customers of the B2C assets and increasing checkout speed.

The client is a globally operating media conglomerate head-quartered in Germany. Process redesign was surgically implemented on the level of the market-leading B2C e-commerce assets that had been acquired in the years prior to the mandate.

Key challenges in the mandate were

• limited payment expertise on the corporate and company level resulting in the need to educate relevant stakeholders regarding interchange++ pricing for credit card acquiring as well as regulatory and legal constraints.
• the breadth of expertise required for a successful implementation, covering financial, regulatory, legal, tax domains.
• aligning stakeholder interests with the ultimate goals of the mandate, especially between corporate and company levels.

All challenges were adressed in a surgical fashion bringing to bear truly advanced expertise and in-depth experience in the relevant domains:

• Based on historic transaction data of all operating companies affected, a fully functional model showing the probable savings between current pricing and interchange++ pricing was built, assumptions were sensitivity tested, giving all stakeholders a good and fact-based feel for what can be achieved and how.
• For the relevant modules of the mandate, Fürst Advisory Services brought in domain experts for the legal and tax parts that worked seamlessly with the surgical team to bring legal opinions and advance tax rulings to the table.
• Fürst Advisory Service orchestrated regular exchanges between corporate and company level and updates relevant for each of these stakeholders to minimize friction during the fast pace of this mandate.

Key results of this mandate were:

• > 2 million EUR of cost savings per annum
• Acquiring contracts that reflected that current state of the art
• Redundancy in payment processing
• An increased number of payment methods for end-customers