Payment Methods Are Not Product Features

Recently I had to sit through a discussion of why what my employer does is better than what the other companies do. Since they don't actually make anything – it's financial services – it was all about the payment scheme. Payment methods are not product features.

I mean, what would you say to the man in the off-licence who made it seem like he was doing you a favour by accepting twenty pound notes as well as ten pound notes and credit cards?

A product or service is one thing, and how you pay for it entirely another. Insurance is a product, and I'm going to choose company A over company B because of price, excess, coverage and comments about them I read on the web. How I pay for it is more or less irrelevant and may be a deal-breaker (“What? No direct debit?”) but is not going to be a deal-maker. Look at personal loans: they make a huge issue about being able to defer the odd payment, delay the start of payment, paying over longer or shorter terms that the competition will allow, you name it. None of those are the product. The product is, well, gee, money. Not even cash. What you're getting is the permission to withdraw what you borrowed from your account. Chances are you won't even be able to lie on the bed and throw it up in the air. All that stuff about how you repay it is not the product, any more than how you pay for your Bose noise cancelling headphones is part of the headphones (Bose do an instalment plan) or the one year's interest-free credit is part of the sofa. At Hertz back in the day they made a big deal about how they could give you different payment options and how neat their invoice was – as if that mattered. The decision was about the car and the price.

Amazon offer me various delivery options, but that's not what I'm buying. They offer me those options to make it easier for me to buy what I want to buy. Same with payment methods: it makes it easier for me to buy what I want to buy, but it isn't what I want to buy.

But don't Visa offer me a product (service)? Yes they do, but they don't make an issue about how I pay for it: Direct Debit or nothing. The fact that I can use Visa to buy a book is not a feature of the book, though the fact that I can't use Mastercard is a reason I might not go back to that retailer.

Payment methods are hygiene factors. And hygiene factors aren't product features – they are product givens (you know, like not falling apart after three days and being easy to clean).

If payment methods are all you've got, you don't have a product. Or you don't understand what your product really is.