Q&A: David Payet, Grocery Retail and QSR offer manager, Worldline
Can you tell us a bit about your role?
After 14 years of experience mostly in the grocery retail sector with several roles related to digital and omnichannel customer experience, I joined Wordline as Grocery retail and Restaurants marketing manager in 2020. My role is to bring vertical expertise to help grocery retailers and restaurants deliver best-in-class shopping and dining experience making their customers’ lives easier. To achieve that, I design and bring to market vertical offerings based on specific needs and challenges encountered in the grocery retail and the foodservice area.
What does your company do?
Worldline is the new world-class leader in payments and transactional services. Amongst several key activities, we help merchants around the world by offering a unique combination of payment, digital and transactional expertise, enabling them to increase their sales and enhance their customers’ experience, in a secure and trusted environment.
Are there other companies you partner with?
We are obviously deeply rooted in the payment ecosystem with many global and local partners such as banks, acquirers, payment networks, alternative payment methods, …
On top of that, we build strong partnerships with third parties in specific verticals. For instance, ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), POS suppliers or marketing enablement companies working in the retail sector.
Finally, we also value powerful partnerships with merchants and fintechs to foster innovation. On that note, we are hosting our annual E-payments challenge with the 4th edition taking place in November 2021.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2021?
As we all know, in 2020 we went through difficult times which caused more damage to some retail activities than others. The outlook for the rest of this year will then vary depending on the retail sector.
Talking more specifically about grocery retail, the never-ending pursuit of the most efficient omnichannel model will most certainly be a key challenge. With online grocery now taking a significant share of global sales, it has become the new focus in the market share battle.
An early 2021 study from NielsenIQ says British shoppers spent 1.5 billion pounds on online groceries in the four weeks to Feb. 27, a jump of 132% year-on-year.
On the front of innovation and opportunities for new retail concepts, we have seen recently the launch of Amazon Go in the UK which will probably shed some more light on unmanned store and seamless checkout concepts. I expect many UK grocery retailers to look at it more closely this year. About those cashless and unmanned stores experimentations, is it realistic to think it can be rolled out at a larger scale in the UK?
What we know is that there are small scale experimentations everywhere in Europe, to name a few of them: Amazon now in the UK, Carrefour and Monoprix in France, Ahold Delhaize with Albert Hejn in the Netherlands, Migros in Switzerland and most recently Coop in Sweden… We also know that in Asia, data from iResearch shows that the market has doubled every year for the past 5 years and is expected to reach about 250 million users by 2022.
In the US, Amazon is quickly expanding both the number and size of its cashless grocery stores.In my opinion, it is more a question of when it will happen at a larger scale in the UK and in Europe, rather than if. When it comes to instore experience, it is very likely to be the next big structural change for grocery retailers in the same way self-checkout kioks did almost 20 years ago.
What is your favourite part of your job?
I get to do what I am passionate about which is working as a team and finding solutions that will make everyday life easier for merchants and consumers. Having that customer obsession is what makes it really
A little more on David:
David joined Worldline as Grocery Retail and QSR offer manager in 2020, with over 14 years’ experience mainly in the retail industry. In his role, David brings vertical expertise to help grocery retailers and quick-service restaurants (QSRs) deliver best-in-class checkout experience making their customers’ lives much easier.
Prior to this role, David spent nine years working for Carrefour Group and held a variety of roles related to digital and omnichannel customer experience. Most recently, he was part of the executive committee of Market Pay (Carrefour’s payment institution operating internationally) where he was in charge of marketing and products.
