Latest news with #JustinGrooms
Arabian Business
23-05-2025
- Business
- Arabian Business
'We don't want to take an American approach': BOLT's Justin Grooms on building for the UAE
Justin Grooms, President of BOLT, didn't land in Dubai with a pitch deck and playbook. He came to listen. After six years leading the company – North America's leading identity layer and payments aggregator – he's learned that the future of checkout won't be built in a lab. It has to be shaped by how people live, pay, and trust in each market. And right now, he believes some of the most interesting progress is happening in Dubai. 'I've been at BOLT for a little over six years now,' he says. 'The company has, to a certain extent, grown a lot, but to another extent, has been exactly on the same mission the whole time. We are currently North America's leading identity layer and payments aggregator for merchants and consumers, and we're looking at expanding into new markets, and that's one of the main reasons that I'm here in Dubai.' BOLT built its name by solving something deceptively simple: giving users control over how they identify and how they pay – all within a single, consistent checkout experience. It's a principle that sounds obvious, but Grooms says it's been missing from digital commerce for years. 'What we found has really been key to our success is to acknowledge that consumers want to have agency over not only their identity but the payment options that they have inside of their wallets,' he explains. 'This is not a radical concept.' From plastic wallets to digital control Grooms brings it back to a habit most of us had for years: carrying a physical wallet. 'If we think of the physical wallets that you and I carry, or at least used to carry around, we would have the physical cards, our identity, everything there and under our control, and it would be up to us when we would take a card out and hand it to a merchant, or hand cash to someone else to pay them.' What changed in the shift to online retail, he says, was ownership. Suddenly, your identity and your payment method were handled by the platform – not by you. 'Where BOLT has been very successful is allowing consumers to sort of own that identity. When we think about owning identity, one of the benefits that it does is that it allows us to incorporate all of the different payment types that a consumer might have under one roof, and then start to deliver some insights to that consumer about what type of payment might be most appropriate for the transaction that they're considering at that moment.' That choice – not just over what to buy, but how and with what – is where Grooms believes the real shift in fintech is happening. 'We think that that's going to be the differentiator between what we're doing today in fintech and e-commerce, and what happens in the future.' Why AI matters more than ever But there's another piece to this puzzle: how fast and accurately platforms can evaluate risk. For years, companies gathered data but didn't have the tools to act on it in real time. That's changing now. 'The data has always essentially been there, the ability to collect the information,' he says. 'What has not been there, and what's only recently really being commercialised, is the ability to process and action on that information very quickly in a transaction.' This isn't a theoretical improvement. It's a fundamental upgrade to how digital commerce functions. 'What that means in a practical basis is that I can look at thousands or tens of thousands of data points in a transaction and, in real time, evaluate if it looks and feels right, and if I feel good about the transaction, and if we should allow it to essentially go through.' Accuracy isn't just about reducing fraud. It's about removing friction for legitimate users – and protecting the pace of the customer journey. 'If we look at the massive amount of data that we collect through a checkout flow or a purchasing flow, we can get extremely accurate in essentially determining how much risk is associated with an individual transaction.' Thinking like a customer Grooms says that inside BOLT, product decisions don't begin with surveys or stakeholder reports. They begin with one question: what would we want as consumers? 'We like to even think internally when we're developing a product, there's this desire sometimes to go out and do market research or talk to merchant partners or whatever,' he says. 'What we found when we built the best product is when we imagine ourselves as consumers and what we would want.' That's especially relevant in the UAE – a region with its own preferences, expectations, and transaction habits. 'One of the reasons that I'm here is to really understand Dubai specifically, the UAE more broadly, and then the whole region. What are the cultural expectations around transactions? How do people view their identity and how identity is managed? What are they used to in market with other successful providers? And how can we incorporate that into the technology infrastructure that we have?' He's direct about what not to do. 'We don't want to take an American approach to identity and e-commerce and export it to this part of the world, just like it would probably not work vice versa.' Local fit, global lessons That sensitivity to context extends to how BOLT handles regulation. Even in the U.S., the company doesn't roll out one uniform system – it adjusts for each state. 'Even there, we have state-by-state application of different privacy laws, different regulations around banking that we've sort of grown up integrating with,' he explains. The same approach is guiding their expansion abroad. Grooms says the goal isn't to make Dubai adjust to their product – it's to shape the product around Dubai's regulatory and consumer frameworks. 'I don't want to export an American way of handling transactions,' he says. 'I want to build an inherently local way that connects with folks here in Dubai, in the region in general.' That mindset also explains why he's paying attention to what's happening here with crypto and digital currencies – not as experiments, but as real consumer tools. 'The adoption of new currencies, of experimentation with cryptocurrencies and using cryptocurrencies in really everyday transactions – not sort of gimmicky, I'm going to try it out – it's really happening here in a way that very few other, you know, really developing or developed parts of the world see.' 'This place reminds me of Silicon Valley' Asked how he sees the UAE's fintech scene evolving over the next few years, Grooms doesn't hesitate. 'The big thing that we see about UAE is a real openness from the government and from regulators to be best in class,' he says. 'To want to build regulations that will, of course, protect consumers in a very robust and legitimate way, will protect the infrastructure of the national economy here, but are also forward-looking… building regulations for 2030 or 2040, as opposed to trying to make regulations that came from 1930 or 1940 apply to what we're doing today.' But it's more than just policy. It's a mindset – one that feels familiar. 'There is a culture of innovation in the UAE generally, and in Dubai specifically, that frankly reminds me a lot of Silicon Valley – very entrepreneurial, very forward-thinking, very risk-taking, a culture of wanting to make the big bets to sort of change the world.' Final thought Grooms isn't here to copy-paste a model. He's here to understand how people buy, what they expect, and how trust is built. 'This is a community, this is a culture that is very much about innovating for the future,' he says. 'And I think that's some of the best things that have, frankly, come out of Silicon Valley in the past, too.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fintechs egg on ‘willingness to challenge norms,' Bolt president says
This story was originally published on Payments Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Payments Dive newsletter. Digital checkout company Bolt, like other fintechs, is riding a wave of economic and regulatory change roiling the industry, thanks partly to the ascent of the Trump administration and the changes unfolding in Washington. Bolt President Justin Grooms attended the industry Fintech Meetup conference in Las Vegas earlier this month and heard a lot of talk about how those changes may affect the industry. In an interview with Payments Dive shortly after the event on March 18, he touched on the impact of leadership changes happening in Washington, including at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Reserve, and how they will dovetail with industry changes already underway. For one thing, the Trump-propelled shift toward digital assets will have an impact on fintechs like his. Grooms also noted how U.S. payments evolution has been driven by fintechs, such as buy now, pay later firms, as well as novel ideas, like the emergence of stablecoins, all of which are causing upheaval and competition for legacy payments players, including banks. Editor's note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. JUSTIN GROOMS: I didn't hear a broad discussion around that, but what I did hear some discussion about that was interesting is a pick-up in applications for money transfer licenses more broadly. We think about these walls kind of falling down around banking, or at least being challenged…even very powerful fintechs that have a lot of cash don't generally sit on ten billion (dollars) of assets under management, so they don't always hit that classical Fed threshold of what it takes to be a bank type financial institution… So, with Michelle Bowman's nomination to be the vice chair of the Fed, she's historically said, 'Hey, that number might be too high,' which all of a sudden makes banking more manageable for fintechs to look at. And the second thing is that some people that we spoke to that are in the business of helping companies get and manage (money transmitter licenses) were saying business has picked up a lot for us recently, which is interesting to me, because I don't think the biggest fintechs are out there looking to spool up MTLs. This means to me, there might be a lot of innovation happening in the smaller fintechs. I think the biggest thing is just this concept around banks trying to get more creative in how they market their existing products. So, regarding buy now, pay later, there is this amazing situation where these banks offer built-in BNPL capabilities themselves as part of their financial banking products, but consumers are still adopting the branded BNPLs, like the Klarnas and Afterpays and such, at much higher rates than what the banks can get folks to use on their existing cards. There was a lot of discussion that was interesting to me about the need for the banks to partner with companies like Klarna to access that visibility. There was some discussion that was very self-aware coming out of the banks like we need to find better ways to to market our products in a language that speaks to consumers. My knee-jerk reaction would be that Klarna did give them a better deal. I think that Klarna seems to be clearly driving their business towards growth, as opposed to building profits at this time. I take them at their word when they say that they want to be everywhere. The vibe that seems to be emerging right now is the willingness to challenge norms and status quo in how people access finance, financial tools in their life. What's exciting to me is that some of these concepts that are going to shake up the industry, from a deregulation perspective, and challenging, essentially is that we're going to see, from my perspective, more of these niche products emerge, different ways of paying. Stablecoin is starting to get some real traction – this concept of being able to work with different types of digital currencies. I think pay-by-bank payments are slowly getting more and more accepted, especially for people that want to move money quickly. What's exciting to us is that this really puts in a strong need for an identity layer to give consumers agency over all of this. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Immersive Shopping Meets the Needs of Gen Z
New research from Infinite Reality examined how retail is rapidly changing with Gen Z leading the way in regard to how consumers live, work, play and shop. However, many retailers and brands are failing to meet the demands of today's Gen Z shopper. Citing data from Shopify, authors of the report, titled 'Retail's Next Frontier: Immersive Experiences Will Transform E-commerce,' said the current e-commerce system is failing both brands and consumers. The report noted that online conversion rates average 2.5 to 3 percent, which is below the 20 to 40 percent rate of physical stores. Moreover, nearly 18 percent of items purchased online were returned in 2023. That's about $247 billion in returns. More from WWD Narvar Bolsters Leadership Team to Boost Global Expansion and Enhance Customer Success Bolt CEO Justin Grooms Explores the Surging Use of BNPL in Consumer Finance Formula E Looks to Celebrities to Boost Its Visibility That's a problem. In response, the report's authors say retailers and brands need to engage Gen Z with the technologies these digital natives are embracing, which means offering more immersive shopping experiences. The authors of the report said consumers are ready for it, with 66 percent of respondents saying they would feel comfortable using an immersive shopping experience 'where they could virtually interact with products.' This rate increases for younger consumers (72 percent) and gamers (80 percent). Younger consumers are driving most of the change in retail. 'In-game shopping in Roblox, Fortnite and other virtual venues have gone from novelty to commonplace,' the report noted. 'Amazon, MasterCard and others are rolling out AI-powered shopping services. Brands like Amazon, Ralph Lauren, Sam's Club and dozens of others are experimenting with 3D websites.' The report stated that this shift aligns with Gen Z's 'distinct shopping habits, shaped by their upbringing with video games.' Over the next few years, the report's authors said younger Gen Z customers will 'shop online more frequently and have higher expectations for both in-person and digital shopping experiences. They are also more comfortable shopping for digital goods, using new forms of payments like digital wallets, and even with alternative currencies such as cryptocurrencies.' Leveraging immersive technologies could also unlock one category that struggles with returns and other issues: fashion apparel. 'Users can't try on clothing online,' the report stated. 'This presents an opportunity for retailers using mixed reality products such as virtual fitting rooms and interactive product displays to increase sales.' The report's authors said the typical apparel customer tends to mostly buy for themselves and found that nearly all those polled 'have made online apparel purchases in the past and nearly 70 percent report intent to buy something in their journey.' But shoppers also want leisurely shopping journeys. 'They want to examine options from multiple retailers,' the report's authors explained. 'Shopping journeys may last from a single day to nearly a week. However, online apparel purchases leave respondents the least satisfied of any of the verticals we looked at. Dissatisfaction is highest for the latter part of the funnel: payment, delivery and the product itself.' For its part, Infinite Reality found that 55 percent of those polled found the company's immersive online shopping experience appealing. 'Designed for enhancing the online purchase journey, this number increases to 62 percent for younger consumers and 69 percent for gamers.' The Infinite Reality report and survey were conducted in 2024 and was based on 2,500 consumers. Aside from apparel, the researchers also looked at consumer sentiment in home goods, furniture, beauty and wellness, electronics and food and beverage. Best of WWD Retailers Leverage First Insight for ESG Alignment What Steph Curry's Sneaker NFTs Can Teach Fashion Year in Review: Brands, Retailers Go Hyper-digital in a Challenging Landscape
