Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2015 - 14

FEATURE INTERVIEW

LEBLANC: Your new Christmas campaign cer-

tainly reinforces the point that great creative
still matters. I'm interested in the consumer insights that led to the development of the campaign. Is it all about debt for the consumer, or
is there more thinking behind it?

"The other thing we are overtly doing is 'productizing'
our merchant partner programs. We have specific
programs that use existing merchant reward and
loyalty programs. We have inducements and
marketing to assist in their promotions."

O'CONNELL: The statistics are unequivocal that we are seeing
erosion to credit. One of the reasons was that many merchants
had already installed contactless credit before Interac Flash came
out so here we were teaching Canadians to put 30 coffees on your
credit card. It was credit that was 'the convenient' option. Interac
had always owned 'the convenient' space because we were the
PIN instead of the Pen. Now that's been equalized. So that was
the impetus. We had to get more aggressive. We launched Interac
Flash and I believe that now it's time for the merchants to be more
proactive in this battle.
Walmart in the U.S. did the most aggressive, pervasive program I've ever seen. They had a database where they knew
what cards you had in your purse. If you had a PIN debit card in
your purse and you brought out a signature debit or credit card,
which is 10 times the cost for them, it would come up on the
point of sale and the cashier would say, 'Would you mind paying
with your other Wells Fargo card?' They had tremendous success in America. 80 per cent of the time customers would say,
'Yeah sure.'
LEBLANC: You've been meeting with merchants across the coun-

try, from small operators to very large internationals. What three
tips would you give to merchants as we start to be more aggressive
and more mindful about tactics like that [Walmart example]?

O'CONNELL: Let me tell you a story. I was in Charlottetown talking to a group of merchants and one was a pizza owner/operator

14 |

CANADIAN RETAILER | HOLIDAY 2015

who got up and said: 'All I did was change my
call centre script at the end of the order to say
"we now offer Interac Debit. Will you be paying
this way?" almost 25 per cent of his payments
shifted to Interac Debit. It was a suggestion. It
is so Canadian. We do have a paternalistic society here. So it was amazing. He said that one
suggestion has his costs down over 20 per cent.
So that's the story I'm telling. It doesn't have to
be 'grab them by the scruff of the neck.' But we
can't be silent anymore either.
The other thing we are overtly doing is 'productizing' our merchant partner programs. We
have specific programs that use existing merchant reward and loyalty programs. We have
inducements and marketing to assist in their
promotions. We have anything they want for
the point of sale counter, decals, etc.
It's about the promise to the merchant. We'll
never be in Aeroplan. We're never going to put
in our economics that type of rewards program.
It doesn't make sense [for us]. No one wants a little Visa here. So we're saying, let's use your own
products or the reward programs that you already have in place so you can build a business
case on the savings from the shift from credit
and put more programs around that effort.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - Holiday 2015