Wealth & Finance International - Business Awards 2015

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 5 Best for Customised Payment Solutions Company: Allied Wallet Name: Andy Khawaja Web Address: www.alliedwallet.com Address: Los Angeles, California, U.S. As a service available in 196 countries across the globe, Allied Wallet boasts a vast and diverse customer base. Nevertheless, the payment processing solutions they provide are highly customised, ensuring that every client, however big or small, is catered for. We spoke to Andy Khawaja, CEO and Founder of Allied Wallet, about how they achieve such stellar levels of service for so many customers. When comparing his online service to traditional financial institutions, Khawaja makes an interesting analogy: “When you work with banks, you pay a first class price ticket to get on a propeller plane; with Allied Wallet, you pay an economy class ticket to fly on a jetliner.” The reason behind Allied Wallet’s ‘jetliner’- like service is due to the level of customisation which the firm provides for its customers, something that Khawaja has instilled in the company since its inception over a decade ago. “The reason why we are where we are today is because of the loyalty we show to our customers and the customised ser- vices that we provide,” says Khawaja. “A lot of payment service providers and financial institutions build a product designed to accommodate certain people, however if you don’t fit into that category, you will not be accommodated. That’s why, when they find something better, they leave. “With Allied Wallet, we have built a product that is tailored to fit every single service and every single website. From the smallest online merchant to the largest, we accommodate them in such a way that we can easily tweak our service to improve it and allow them to conduct transactions in any currency and any region in the world. Years ago, we discovered that consumers and business owners are getting tired of generic services. These generic services can often be quite basic, whereas Allied Wallet is the blue label. The real stuff.” When asked why he considers the services provided by banks to be mere ‘propeller planes’, Khawaja explains that the services Allied Wallet provides cannot be delivered by banks simply because they do not understand the world of online payments. “With banks, you’ll find that a lot of decisions come from a compliance department who don’t understand the business at all,” says Khawaja. “And instead of making the effort to learn and understand it, they would rather tell the customer that they can’t do it.” Another problem with many banks, according to Khawaja, is their focus on getting as much profit as possible, at the expense of seeing the bigger picture with regards to building up long-term relationships with customers. “With many banks, the only thing they look at is how they can add more fees, such as statement fees, billing fees, late statement fees, late billing fees and any cross-border transaction fees. The list really does go on and on and on! “We’re not saying we don’t want to make money - because we do make money - but we don’t want to make money at the expense of everything else. We’re not going to get rich by charging just one or two merchants, but through serving a large quantity of people. We make a penny here, a penny there, and it all adds up. We simply don’t want to be making thousands out of one merchant because we want them to be in business. If they stay in business, they will never leave because nobody else out there can compete with the prices and service that we offer.”