From Justin Pike, Founder and CEO of Burbank
The payments world is full of noise. Every week, there’s a new product, a new pitch, another promise that claims to fix the problems merchants and customers face at online checkouts. Faster authorisations, smarter fraud detection, better conversion. Most never make it past the pilot.
The fact of the matter is that no single company can solve the challenges that plague online payments alone. Unless you are Visa or Mastercard, you simply don’t have the reach, infrastructure, or global consistency to change how people pay online.
Progress doesn’t come from single players. It comes from partnerships.
Partnerships as the drivers of change
Partnerships are a real driver in delivering change and developing actual solutions. Not headline-grabbing alliances, but genuine collaborations where each partner brings their strengths to the table.
Fraud, chargebacks, checkout abandonment, failed transitions – none of these can be solved in isolation. The system is too interconnected. To make any breakthrough matter, you need scale, trust, and distribution.
Take Razorpay’s work with CRED (https://cred.club/) and Visa (https://www.visa.co.uk/). CardSync was born from that simple but powerful collaboration. A card saved in the CRED app can be used across any Razorpay powered site with a single tap. No typing, no re-entry, no friction. For customers, it feels natural. For merchants, it means higher conversion and fewer abandoned carts. It’s a small fix with a big outcome. Research suggests that 10-12% of card declines happen because a card has expired and a further 8-10% are due to user errors. CardSync eliminates both by keeping the card details current for checkout – a result only made possible by three companies and their combined capabilities.
Another example comes from Nasdaq Verafin (verafin.com/uk/), and BioCatch (www.biocatch.com/). Verafin is focused on financial crime detection, and BioCatch is known for behavioural biometrics. On their own, each company is strong, but big problems are solved when the right companies join forces.
Customers do not care which logos sit behind the payment – they care that it works, that it feels safe, and that their details aren’t compromised. Merchants care about trust, authorisation rates, and reduced friction. Partnerships make both sides win.
Collaboration as a competitive advantage
Payments remain dominated by an oligopoly. A handful of players set the rules. For everyone else, collaboration isn’t optional, it’s the only way to compete.
When a smaller company with breakthrough technology connects with a partner with wider reach or credibility, innovation becomes visible. Without that partnership, it might never leave the lab and reach the market where it can make a real difference.
When those partnerships succeed, the impact is tangible: smoother checkouts, smarter fraud prevention, and greater consumer confidence. The technology doesn’t just work better, it works everywhere.
The psychology of trust
Checkout abandonment isn’t just about high shipping costs or poor website design. It’s about trust.
A customer who feels unsure will leave. Fraud filters that wrongly block genuine buyers chip away at confidence. The most effective partnerships solve this tension head-on, combining the rigour of advanced fraud detection with the ease of a frictionless checkout. They protect customers without punishing them and help merchants capture revenue that would otherwise be lost.
In my experience, partnerships are rarely simple. Different companies bring different goals, timelines, and roadmaps. But when they click, the upside is enormous: clunky checkouts disappear, fraud becomes manageable, and niche innovations become mainstream.
The next phase of progress
The shift we are seeing is from competition at all costs to collaboration that creates value. Banks partnering with fintechs, fintechs partnering with infrastructure providers and technology firms with networks. Each brings a piece of the puzzle that makes the overall experience better.
The future won’t be defined by one breakthrough product or one dominant company. It will be shaped by the partnerships that bring speed, trust, and assurance together.
Customers won’t notice all the moving parts behind the scenes. They’ll just notice that checkout works, quickly, safely, and without drama.
And that’s the real measure of progress.
