Aviva Zacks of Safety Detectives recently interviewed Nancy Carleton, CMO at Straal. She asked her about cybersecurity in an E-bank.
Safety Detectives: Can you tell me about your company?
Nancy Carleton: Straal is a European payments company that seeks to enable trade everywhere. We want to make that convenient for everyone by bringing people and technology together in a responsible way. We are very proud that we are assisting businesses across Europe with their payment needs.
SD: Can you tell me a little more about your company’s services?
NC: We are a payment provider. We have the opportunity for businesses to secure payment methods and security options across e-commerce and retail payments needs. We focus on the unique needs of our customers across multifaceted industries.
SD: Who is your customer base?
NC: We currently work across several popular verticals, including new businesses, entertainment, health, and fitness. And the latter is where we’re seeing the most growth now. We are in the United Kingdom and Poland and serve the greater EU. But we’re growing our market share right now.
SD: Where do you see yourself expanding?
NC: Our focus is on helping businesses first grow and thrive within those regions as a priority. We’ve been having many healthy conversations with new business leaders eager to make an immediate and lasting impact in their respective markets.
SD: What makes your company unique?
NC: I appreciate the question. One exciting thing that I think is that there are many options for payment providers right now, especially if you want an eCommerce solution for payments. But one thing that has been trending over previous years with established providers has less of a local footprint. So, as a result, not only are we local and available to our customers and not a call-on-hold away, but our advanced technology is competitive, and we have lower fees to help our customers save while earning more. Small businesses that discover us feel like they have unearthed the secret to achieving more profits. So, as a customer, you do not have to call someone in a different time zone. Instead, you will have someone in your market troubleshooting your needs and ensuring your business grows and expands. It is a pretty fantastic thing.
SD: How does your company keep its customers’ data and other information secure?
NC: That’s an essential question in the case of our company because, again, in banking, you work across a lot of different vendor and partnership relationships. In our case, of course, we respect European data protection laws. So we make sure that we craft every solution for an industry sector based on customer security and strong customer authentication while simultaneously recognizing the needs of the merchants and businesses that want to save costs, keeping fees at a minimum. But, of course, their security is also essential, so we have a custom security suite solution based on the customer’s needs. But we’re aware that proper protection is crucial in adopting that relationship with customers.
SD: How do you feel that pandemic is affecting your industry?
NC: We are all consumers of different sectors and their payment solutions. Whether you’re using an online checkout system from a large or small E-commerce site, we all have value in how the company treats us, our data, and our independent and private information.
And so, I would say that the pandemic especially has kind of driven the point home that traditional methods of payments are not going to be the same as they were even a few years ago. So, I think that as consumers, we have to ensure we’re providing the correct feedback for our payment providers, protecting our information, and storing it in such a way that it’s simple, user-friendly and safe.
On the merchant side, I think that merchants have very quickly found that they have to have a solution that works with technology in a modern world. And so, we’ve seen a lot of changes there. And I expect we’ll continue to see that.