SNCF Connect & Tech and Lemonway ensure secure, compliant payments that build customer trust and support marketplace growth.

Digital leader and pioneer of French e-commerce in the mobility sector for over 20 years, SNCF Connect & Tech, works every day to make sustainable mobility accessible to all and to improve its quality of service. In this context, SNCF Connect & Tech called upon Lemonway’s services to rethink the security of its marketplace transactions. Explanations.

SNCF Connect: a platform to facilitate multimodal and sustainable mobility

SNCF Connect is the flagship service in the SNCF Connect & Tech product portfolio for all travelers.  The aim? To make all journeys easier by combining short and long distances, daily and occasional travel, ticket purchase, and passenger information. 

SNCF Connect & Tech, a subsidiary of SNCF Voyageurs:

• Among the pioneers of French e-commerce, created in 2000 with Voyages-sncf.com
• 4.3 billion in business volume and 145 million tickets sold in 2021 with OUI.sncf.
• 1 200 employees, including nearly 900 Tech experts in Paris, Nantes and Lille

SNCF Connect:

• More than 500,000 tickets have sold on average daily since the launch, nearly 60% on the application.
• More than 3 million visits every day on average on the site and the application.
   

As a key player in mobility, SNCF Connect & Tech must offer optimal payment flow management to its customers and merchants on SNCF Connect. In this sense, the choice of its PSP (Payment Service Provider) was essential.

Securing transactions in the age of PSD2: the SNCF Connect challenge

Coming into force in September 2019 in the European Union, the second European Payment Services Directive (PSD2) has overturned existing security regulations. Directly affected, marketplaces have had to adapt to the new requirements, particularly buyer authentication. 

However, due to strong authentication, the old payment systems on the SNCF Connect platform were triggering several authentication requests when the user’s shopping cart included several merchants. The risk of errors and cart abandonment at checkout was exceptionally high. 

This multi-vendor organization does not correspond to the standard of the e-commerce market. It also implies specific financial flow schemes that must be dealt with.

Against this backdrop, SNCF Connect & Tech set out to find a new payment solution for SNCF Connect’s third party account at the end of 2019. The new PSP thus had to be able to secure transactions in accordance with PSD2 while facilitating the customer journey.

Lemonway, a strategic partner for the development of SNCF Connect

“We turned to Lemonway for its marketplace expertise, which includes compliance, security, and reconciliation of flows on a European scale. It is also a solution recommended to us for its innovation, robustness, and expertise. We could have been under the ACPR exemption regime, but that meant running a large project in-house for compliance and managing the financial flow patterns. It was more efficient and safer for us to call on a recognized market player who already had a handle on these matters. ” - Yohan Ouaziz, Director of Payments and Fraud at SNCF Connect & Tech

SNCF Connect & Tech has therefore adopted Lemonway technology to manage payment flows on its SNCF Connect marketplace, with many issues under consideration (reconciliations, cash-in, cash-out, integration of new partners, KYC collection...).

Today, Lemonway performs a daily and automatic financial reconciliation of all the platform’s transactions... a feature particularly appreciated by the SNCF Connect team! The volume of business transiting through the platform being very high, manual processing was not an option.
 

Specific integration and customized support

To implement the automatic management of payment flows, Lemonway carried out a specific integration. This adaptation was necessary to meet SNCF Connect’s technical requirements and constraints.

The results are in

• An optimized conversion rate
  Since integrating the Lemonway API, SNCF Connect has seen a better conversion rate. Strong authentication is applied to the entire shopping cart and not to each merchant. Result: the customer journey is optimized; banks validate payments more quickly, and the risk of non-payment on the different authorizations is limited.
• Concrete operational benefits
  Yohan Ouaziz, Director of Payments and Fraud at SNCF Connect & Tech is also pleased with Lemonway’s operational benefits. Reconciliation, KYC/KYB control, contact with merchants... All active management is handled by Lemonway, which removes a significant burden from SNCF Connect teams.
• New integrated partners
  Since SNCF Connect turned to Lemonway, five mobility partners have been integrated into the platform. The diversification of mobility is a strategic axis for SNCF Connect. Lemonway has been actively involved in the integration and connection of the partners. “The integration on the platform is going very well: given the volumes we handle, our partners have full confidence in Lemonway to open payment accounts,” confides Yohan Ouaziz.
• The continuous evolution of the payment strategy
  To respond to new consumer purchasing habits, investing in the payment experience is necessary. SNCF Connect & Tech can rely on Lemonway’s expertise and know-how! The latest achievement: is the implementation of Apple Pay in August 2022.