Meet Lynda Strutton, Chief Operating Officer at Tribe Payments

Tell us about Tribe Payments

Tribe Payments was created to help solve customers’ problems. Prior to Tribe, our founder owned a business that required payments technology, and he found getting the technology he needed at the speed he needed a frustrating experience – it was very much a one-size-fits-all approach, one that simply does not cut it anymore.

These pain points started to be resolved internally and Tribe was developed from there: We started to develop our issuer platform, quickly followed by the acquirer solutions. This has evolved to a unique payments ecosystem that solves problems for our customers throughout the transaction flow, helping them to build their businesses. 

Consumers are demanding more flexibility and speed from the payments experience, and the sheer volume of transactions to be processed is surging as more payments are being made digitally.

Issuers and acquirers need to unshackle themselves from legacy systems to improve their processing capabilities. And this is why Tribe exists. Our payments processing technology and APIs enable clients to accelerate product and service development, so they can offer future-ready payment technology solutions built around their customers’ needs.

What do you think makes Tribe unique?

Tribe is curious, it is one of our core values. As we built Tribe, we did it by following the transaction and solving the pain points. We are one of the few providers who can help fintechs take on the role of both the issuer and the acquirer, so that they can capture a larger share of the payments ecosystem. Our customers can choose from over 250 APIs and customise them in full compliance with industry and regulatory requirements, enabling them to reduce onboarding and service implementation times by weeks. 

We also clearly set ourselves apart from the competition: Tribe became the first issuer and acquirer processor to handle transactions for Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, American Express, and Discover. Being globally certified with multiple card schemes, Tribe was one of the first European processors to offer solutions across the Atlantic – providing the capabilities of single messaging, dual network, dual scheme, and data localisation. 

Offering global connectivity not only opens up new opportunities and markets to Tribe’s customers, but it also streamlines all their necessary interactions into one entity – Tribe – rather than having to juggle multiple relationships.

How has Tribe evolved over the last couple of years?

In following the transaction and continuing to be curious and customer obsessed we have added numerous value-added services to our platform that help to really streamline our customers’ experience such as our own 3DS solution, Open Banking compliance API, POS application and Gateway.  

Since the start of 2022, our portfolio has doubled by more than 50%, and over the past two years our transactions have grown exponentially: We witnessed a 1,719% rise from 2020 to 2021, and further growth of 377% in 2022. 

Our API developers have also significantly shortened implementation timeframes – as evidenced by Tribe’s rate of contract renewal and lower customer attrition compared to our competitors, and we know that these successes are making tangible impacts, with the number of products that our customers are taking doubling.

What can we hope to see from Tribe in the future?

Our aim for the future is to continue to inspire issuers and acquirers to innovate faster by unleashing the power of modular technology that’s flexibly priced according to business needs. Our continued focus on customer obsession drives us to continually innovate to add value to our customers.

Having recently welcomed two new team members who are helping us on our growth journey – Andrew Hocking as Chief Strategy Officer, and Robin Anderson as VP of Acquiring Product – I’m confident that 2024 will be Tribe’s most successful year to date, driven by our trailblazing processing technology and passionate payments people.