Pam Stults was elected to the MAG Board of Directors in 2024. We spoke with her about her journey into the payments industry, what led her to engage with the MAG, and her path to becoming a Board member.
How did you initially become responsible for payments in your organization?
During my time at Visa, U.S. Bank, and Chase, I had the opportunity to work with Marriott, where I supported them with insights and expertise in payments. When Marriott decided to make payments a strategic focus, they approached me about leading this new initiative within the company.
Which teams do you regularly collaborate with to address payments needs?
You wouldn’t think this would be a complicated question, but payments is like water running through the plumbing of the organization; therefore, depending on the initiative, you work with many different teams. It’s critical to understand the various areas impacted and to nurture relationships with these leaders to ensure an understanding of how your decisions impact these areas. The constant interaction for my team is primarily with technology, digital, and legal, although understanding the impact of payments on accounting, treasury, and tax is also critical. It is also important for us to work with the franchise organization to educate on procedures, changes, and requirements, and depending on the product, we sometimes pull brand and loyalty into the equation.
In what ways can effective payments management enhance customer experience and business performance?
In the old days, payments management primarily focused on leveraging acquiring and/or gateway relationships, overseeing performance, and staying informed about upcoming payments-related changes because payments acceptance was pretty ‘vanilla’. While these factors are still critical - since partner performance still directly impacts the customer experience –payments today encompasses so much more. Payments strategy now plays a key role in enhancing customer satisfaction by identifying ways to reduce friction in the checkout process. As you look at these options, you also must balance costs, operational efficiency, and risk impacts.
In more complex businesses, such as lodging, there is certainly a broader opportunity to enhance the customer experience through various payments channels. These include online reservations and retail purchases, in-app transactions for services like conference rooms, tipping, and cabana rentals, as well as on-property payments at the front desk, room service, and hotel venues such as restaurants, golf, retail, and spas. Each of these touchpoints require a thoughtful look at the customer experience and operational excellence to ensure seamless payment processing throughout the organization.
What resources help you stay current and deepen your industry knowledge?
First and foremost, we rely on our acquiring and card brand partners to share their expertise as rules and regulatory changes are made. It is critical that they not just provide high-level updates, but also help us understand why the changes are happening, what the future strategy may be behind the changes, and how they specifically affect our industry. As new products are offered, we ask them to help us understand how the product works, how it can affect and benefit our business operations, and how it can integrate into our environment. An example of this is network tokenization.
It’s also critical to leverage your own payments network to understand other interpretations, challenges, and experiences of payments changes or products. This is where the MAG is critical for me. It gives me a forum to regularly connect to other merchants while also obtaining insights from conference content in areas that I may not have had the opportunity to experience or explore. One of the things I always find most interesting is understanding where the MAG is focusing their efforts and their reasoning behind those priorities.
How does MAG membership and your role as a Board Director benefit your work at Marriott?
Sometimes, you get so wrapped up in the internal challenges and initiatives that it becomes difficult to look beyond your immediate world and anticipate what’s coming next. The MAG keeps me connected, broadens my perspective, and gives me insights into others’ experiences, all allowing me to think more broadly and strategically.
How has the role of payments evolved?
In many organizations, payments was not considered strategic and in many cases, it still isn’t. However, payments can enhance the customer experience, which is directly related to the company’s commerce; not to mention, it can add considerable costs to an organization if not managed properly. Today, I think you’ll find many organizations are augmenting their payments teams to manage the increasing complexity and opportunities in payments, while providing a more strategic outlook. It’s crucial to proactively integrate payments into the customer experience, but it’s equally critical to acknowledge and address the added complexity of increasing regulations, new channels, additional technology, multiple providers, and the growing number of payment methods and wallets. These factors make managing payments and resolving issues more challenging.
What role does cross-functional collaboration play in building payments expertise, and what tips would you share for building strong partnerships across teams?
Cross-functional collaboration is key because payments impact many areas of the organization. Gaining support is easier when people understand your purpose, its importance, and your approach to minimizing disruptions. Developing internal relationships and educating the organization on payments is essential—like peeling an onion, starting with the basics and adding detail. As payment experts, we often live in this space every day, making it easy to speak in terms that others may not fully grasp. Ensuring their understanding, while also considering how payments impact their areas, fostering transparency, and building trust, will help reduce friction and drive effective collaboration.
What guidance would you give leaders advocating for a stronger focus and greater resources for payments within their organizations?
Some organizations don’t have a payments team because they don’t understand the value of such a team or the complexity of payments. A payments strategy can benefit an organization, and the lack of one can hinder it. My experience has been that a business case must be developed to reflect the value of a team. For example, identifying what costs can be deterred and what value can be achieved. Consider the risks of not monitoring payments trends, managing interchange qualification, mitigating risks, ensuring compliance, overseeing payments partnerships, or offering payments options or the expected customer experience.
What advice do you wish you’d received earlier in your career?
That’s a tough question. I received a lot of wonderful guidance throughout my career because I had great mentors. So, I’ll share some of what I learned from them along the way and what really helped me be successful:
- Develop great relationships with your industry peers and leaders. This network is critical in payments because it’s not always black or white, so varying perspectives are helpful.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you don’t know something, there are likely others that also don’t know. If you don’t ask, you don’t know. It’s easy to get left behind because this industry is consistently changing.
- Don’t be afraid to speak up. Your voice is important and provides a different perspective. Find a mentor to talk through critical strategy and decisions. I recommend this at all levels.