A look back on 2020

2020 really has been the year that no one expected. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, there were other topics that kept us talking, distracting us as much as possible from the global lockdown. From the devastating bushfires in Australia at the beginning of the year and the guy who tamed wild animals being talk of the world back in March, to the 46th president of the United States being announced in November, it has been a whirlwind ride with plenty of highs and lows.

Over the year at Compass Plus, we were lucky enough to visit a few physical events before they all turned virtual, we celebrated International Women’s Day, held our first monthly (soon turned fortnightly!) Zoom quiz, we gave to local charities in desperate need of help, and importantly, our teams stayed in contact year-round. Our annual team building still took place, as did our Christmas party, with the added difference of being held virtually of course.

Let’s look over some other things that happened at Compass Plus in 2020.

The ability to be flexible and adapt quickly has been crucial this year, a topic that was covered in our blog ‘In a world where you can be anything, be flexible’. Here, we covered partnership, being customer-led and focusing on the delivery of your products with support and guidance to and from your clients.

June saw the release of an independent report into our open development payments platform TranzAxis from internationally renowned payments specialists PayX. This report saw TranzAxis heralded as ‘an agile, well-designed and architected suite of products suitable for the needs of businesses with rapidly changing business needs. It allows the customer not only flexibility to control its own destiny but gives them the potential to grow in terms of functionality and volume for the foreseeable future.’ Our AVP, Market Development and Business Support, Bethan Cowper, covers more about the decision behind doing an independent study of our payment platform in her podbyte.

The year has seen the majority of the world, where able to, move to working from home. According to Owl Labs, 55% of global businesses have managed to offer this in some capacity and 18% of those working from home are now doing so full-time, with 77% saying they are more productive. Compass Plus has always had remote workers, and in June we published our ‘Remote project delivery e-book’ which shows how we enable project implementation from the comfort of our (and your!) own homes. If you wanted to listen in to our Project Director, Gary Dunsmore, go in to more detail about how he stays in contact with all of his customers via online channels, his always-available nature, and ensuring projects go-live, you could listen to his podbyte.

In October, our mobile payments service, MobiCash, released a white paper, The rise of the payments super app – a fad, or the future? The white paper covered the successes of super apps in the East, what actually makes a payments super app, and the different approaches – whether to team up or go it alone. In conjunction with the white paper, a podbyte covering further topics, including what to consider when thinking about developing your own super app or onboarding onto a successful one.

Lastly for this blog, in October we dived in to future ready payments platforms with Consult Hyperion, an independent global payments consultancy. The result of the collaboration was a white paper and insightful webinar alongside the experts from Consult Hyperion to discuss why some financial institutions choose to stay with their traditional 2nd generation payments platform rather than migrate over to a 3rd generation, business transforming payment platform.

All in all, it’s been a strange, but productive year. Here’s to 2021!