To compete in any economy, platforms must do better at retaining global creators

Presented by Tipalti

---

In Tipalti’s recent Illuminate event, industry experts spoke about how platforms can offer best-in-class experiences for their creator partners. Now it’s free to watch on demand. Learn how platforms can deliver — including automation and cryptocurrency on the back end, better market growth on the front end, and more.

Stream this exclusive Illuminate session here.

---

Whether they’re musicians, influencers or gamers, when creative partners choose a platform, their goal is to launch a thriving career. Most platforms and marketplaces focus on building out the best experience for their end users, but often overlook the long-term success of the creative partners that make their businesses great.

“Platform owners spend a lot of time thinking about the craft that they’re trying to support, which is the front-end product,” says Paco Suro, GM, Global Partner Payments at Tipalti. “That’s great, and I think you solve a good portion of happiness for those partners. Where it can get bumpy for platforms is that they may grow and scale relatively quickly, and with it, they don’t think about the entire end-to-end partner experience.”

Long-term, partners are carefully looking for the back-office services that can help them run their businesses and grow. Of course, they’re thinking about the ecosystem a platform potentially brings to the table, the audience it can draw and monetize from — but also how that monetization works on the platform. They’re looking for a partner who can make that process seamless and transparent, however it works.      

In-fact, according to a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research and Tipalti, 83% of creative partners would prefer that their platform manage administrative tasks on their behalf.

The foundation of it all is getting paid, on time, and in the preferred form of payment. And that all depends on many factors, from the geography a creator lives in, to the potential lack of traditional bank accounts creating a need for alternative payment methods, to the complexity of taxes and reporting. All of this is critical if both creators and marketplace owners want to scale.

“Platforms do themselves a great service if they can provide a very seamless experience when it comes to a lot of the mundane tasks associated with building a partner’s business on the platform,” Suro says. “Monetization and building brand awareness is the crux of it.”

Building a better back end

Behind the scenes, technology and the evolution of digital payments are playing critical roles for growing platforms and careers, Suro adds.

First and foremost, automation saves a tremendous amount of time and money, freeing platforms to invest resources at the front of the house to keep building the ecosystem and experience that draws audiences and monetizes them for everyone’s benefit. On the other end, automation enables scale and growth in the back office without the complementary head count and costs associated with it. But more importantly, automation increases your breadth of coverage as platforms scale and the size of the partnership grows and multiplies.   

Partners want a platform they can trust to handle the burden of administrative payment tasks, and 72% of creative partners say that automatic payments would help them grow their business significantly. They need to rely on the terms of their contract, from payment options to iron-clad payment times, knowing there’s technology backing up those promises.

That also means that a platform needs to stay on top of how the world of money movement is evolving.  This means payment mediums that work best for their partners, even as new alternatives emerge — including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, or stablecoins like USDC, which is held entirely in cash and short-dated U.S. government obligations.

“The more optionality that platforms can think of providing their partners, the better they’ll be positioned to succeed,” Suro says. “It’s certainly not an easy thing to accomplish and it’s an area where it’s going to be important for platforms to start considering more and more. How do I distribute earnings to my partners away from just traditional fiat currencies?”

To learn more about what partners are looking for in a relationship with a marketplace, how to make both sides of your platform attractive to creators and more, catch up on this informative session from Tipalti’s Illuminate event.

Watch on demand now!

You’ll learn:

• Why global payment methods are crucial to gain a competitive advantage
• How a flexible onboarding experience improves relationships and attracts partners
• How compliance and tax controls can offload administrative work from your partners
• And more

Presenters

• Michael S. Chang, Bestselling Author; Founder and CEO, VGCD GAMEPLAN Academy
• Martin Caplan, Head of Blockchain Games Vertical, Amber
• Paco Suro, GM, Global Partner Payments, Tipalti

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz