Project Overview
Payments in the US are antiquated with cash and cheques still predominantly used. Online banking is virtually non-existent due to a fragmented banking system. Pushpay’s Co-founder, Eliot Crowther, was sitting in a café considering whether to buy another coffee when he thought, “Why can’t making a payment be as simple as buying a song on iTunes?” Pushpay was born. Pushpay have selected a large under-serviced vertical representing a huge opportunity, the US faith sector. Since inception in 2011, Pushpay have assembled a highly experienced team of distribution, marketing and software development professionals to build an intuitive, secure and scalable platform.
Organisation
Team
Pushpay's Development Team
Project Brief
From the outset it was clear that Pushpay’s largest target market was the US. It is not only the largest consumer market in the world, it is also one of the most highly religious with over 150 million people regularly attending church. The USA market consists of over 314,000 churches with an average size of over 500 attendees according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012 by the US Census Bureau.
Last Christmas, Amazon saw 70% of its payments come through mobile, whereas the US faith sector saw a mere 13% of donations made online AND mobile. That’s a huge disparity, the 150 million people going to church on a Sunday aren’t different to Amazon’s customers, yet the payment behaviour is vastly different. That’s where Pushpay come in. We thought, if we could make giving to a church intuitive, fast and secure we could firstly allow givers to give more freely, when they want and how they want and also increase the resourcing for thousands of churches (and non-profits) who are doing amazing things in the community and changing lives.
Today, Pushpay offers an intuitive and simple interface and user payment experience that has been designed for mobile – merchants (churches and non-profits) can deploy it with minimal training and, once registered, users can make payments in just 10 seconds from their preferred payment method using a 4 digit Passcode or Touch ID on smart phones with Touch ID capability.
Project Need
Since Pushpay's founding in 2011, we have made huge inroads. We are continually building out new features based on customer feedback, and to maintain efficiency, before we build out a feature we always consider if a feature will generate either retention of our merchants, added revenue or reduce the cost of acquisition of a merchant.
Today, Pushpay services over 3,000 churches and non-profit organisations across the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We have over NZD$500 million in annualised payments being processed through our platform and by 31 March 2016 we will have Annualised Committed Monthly Revenue of over NZD$28 million.
So have we achieved what we set out to do? Absolutely. When properly implemented, we guarantee our merchants a 5% increase in their budget.
We don’t just offer an App with 10 second payments, we offer a full payments solution (and more) to a merchant. On top of our App, we also offer web-hosted payments, txt giving, kiosk giving, white label custom made Apps, payment processing, CRM integration, API integration, events registration, full customer support and more.
Our view toward innovation is completely open-minded and active. Our team ships out their work almost daily, for a developer, being able to see your work actually being used is immensely satisfying. We know what features we are working on today and tomorrow, but we don’t know what features we will be building next, and to us that is extremely exciting.
User Experience
In terms of our App specifically, we have numerous benefits/features that are the reason our users love their experience. On top of 10 second payments from our App using either a four digit code or your fingerprint, it’s the small things that “wow” our users, like 3D touch functionality on the iPhone 6s or debit/credit card scanning to minimise the sign up time. It’s the option of being able to use ACH payments (Direct Debits in New Zealand) or any debit or credit card to make payments, including Amex, all from the App. It’s the convenience of being able to set up a recurring payment within the App. Or maybe, it’s the thoughtfulness of having your donation receipts compiled and sent to you at the end of the tax year.
The Pushpay app is designed with the user in mind. Our goal is to offer an intuitive, fast and simple user experience.
We have a unique way of doing things at Pushpay and one of the key roles that contributes to improving the user experience isn’t our designers or developers, it’s our testers. Our testers use a suite of testing devices to attempt to “break” our new features/functions. Testers think in a unique way that allows them to find easier, more intuitive ways of doing things and also to find errors and potential bugs. Offering our users a smooth and intuitive experience in many ways is due to the ideas and expertise of our testers.
Project Marketing
There are several components to our marketing strategy and a distinction in our marketing between our merchants and our users.
We work with our merchants to ensure a high level of adoption in their cohort. We've made this easy for our merchants and called the implementation phase "The 5 pillars of success". Firstly, the head of the organisation needs to download and start using Pushpay. Secondly, the leadership/executive team need to download and start using Pushpay. Thirdly, we need to activate web giving on the merchant's website. Fourth, if the merchant has an app, it needs to have a link to Pushpay. Lastly, all recurring givers need to be transferred over on to Pushpay.
We also offer our merchants a wide range of resources to assist them in introducing Pushpay to their cohort including videos of how Pushpay works, email templates, newsletter templates, introduction scripts and more. An example of one of the highly effective campaigns that we have leveraged is our "Give like God Gives" campaign, www.givelikegodgives.com. We have regularly put out high quality video content around the theme of generosity and supplied these to our merchants with the option to add their logo at the end of the videos.
Our marketing has been extremely successful, not only do we guarantee a 5% increase in donations received when properly implemented, but we also see around 1% of a merchants cohort give for the very first time once Pushpay is properly implemented.
Project Privacy
At Pushpay we see privacy and security as major priorities. Our users' data is kept safe and private from unwanted access. Unlike many other mobile payment methods, Pushpay provides a financial and legal safeguard.
Pushpay is not only bank grade (PCI DSS) compliant, but also independently tested and reviewed to ensure the highest security standards at all times. Our platform undergoes regular penetration testing, we have extremely strict rules on our staff around privacy and security. We also have strict security and privacy controls that have been applied to the way customer data is managed and the way their information is used.
Pushpay invests heavily in this area and has an absolute commitment to providing security and privacy for our users and merchants.
FinTech
Fintech is radically changing how we live as society and how we do business professionally. We're looking for great apps that are disrupting sectors such as mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, financial management.
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