How KIKO Milano uses payments data to beautify customer journeys

KIKO Milano faced difficulty offering personalized experiences due to fragmented regional payment systems. The lack of a unified view of customer behavior made it challenging to understand preferences and streamline financial reconciliation.

Solution: A single source of truth

By unifying payments with Adyen, KIKO Milano gained valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and spending patterns. This unified approach enabled better decision-making across all channels and regions.

Results: Smarter insights, faster reconciliation

With consistent, high-quality data, KIKO Milano simplified financial reconciliation, reducing manual processes. More importantly, they built detailed customer profiles, allowing them to craft personalized journeys and loyalty programs that drive engagement.

“The integration with Adyen has contributed significantly to this achievement, providing another important data point that has allowed us to enrich our customer profiles to develop more targeted marketing activities in line with their preferences and behavior. This has led to higher engagement rates and more effective campaigns.”

Kaveh Vahabi

Chief Information Officer, KIKO Milano

Challenge:  Staying ahead of customer expectations

As customer experience evolves, convenience, speed, and security are more important than ever. KIKO Milano recognized that payments are a key part of the shopping journey and wanted to refine the process across all channels to meet and anticipate customer needs.

“Payments represent a key aspect for KIKO Milano. For this reason, we wanted to optimize this crucial phase in our customers' purchase journey. Also guiding us in this case was the desire to best meet their specific needs on the different channels.”

Cristina Casa

Chief Retail Officer, KIKO Milano

Solution: Seamless flexibility with unified payments 

With Adyen, KIKO Milano has implemented a unified payments solution that offers frictionless payments across all channels. Customers can pay how they want as they want without complications thanks to innovations like click-and-collect, endless aisle and cross-store purchases, and mobile POS terminals. 

KIKO Milano introduced Tap to Pay on iPhone in markets like the US, UK, UAE, Netherlands, and Italy, minimizing wait times and simplifying transactions.

The result: An increase in in-store payments

Offering a smoother experience, with quick and easy payments, had a direct impact on KIKO Milano's conversion rate. Beauty Advisors now have more time to build valuable relationships with customers with fewer operational hurdles, enhancing the overall shopping experience.

“The integration of Adyen into our existing systems and processes has been a comprehensive and transformative experience. In particular, it has improved payment security, enabling us to obtain and maintain PCI certification with greater ease. Similarly, it has helped increase the level of security perceived by customers, leading to an overall increase in digital payments in stores to 50% on average globally with peaks of up to 65% in key European markets from 2023, when the partnership began.”

Kaveh Vahabi

Chief Information Officer, KIKO Milano

Challenge: Adapting to local payment preferences

Expanding globally means adapting to diverse customer expectations, especially when it comes to payment methods. KIKO Milano faced challenges with offering popular payment methods in new markets, creating friction for customers and slowing entry into new markets. 

Solution: Local flexibility and global consistency with a unified platform

With Adyen's unified payments platform, KIKO Milano now supports popular local payment methods worldwide, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, while maintaining a consistent and seamless experience across all regions. An out-of-the-box integration with New Black's EVA POS platform ensured a hassle-free rollout of this solution globally. 

Result: A record-setting global rollout

Adyen’s flexibility and seamless integration allowed KIKO Milano to achieve unprecedented speed in their global expansion. In less than nine months, they rolled out 10,000 devices, setting a new benchmark in retail efficiency.

“The Adyen integration with New Black and the rollout of unified commerce was very smooth. It allowed us to roll out across our 1000 stores with 10,000 devices in a period of less than nine months.”

Kaveh Vahabi

Chief Information Officer, KIKO Milano

KIKO Milano is committed to staying at the forefront of innovation, delivering exceptional experiences to customers worldwide. With Adyen as an integral part of Kiko Milano’s IT landscape, their brand is poised to achieve even more ambitious goals.

“Customers want and expect a seamless shopping experience, both online and in store, and payments play a key role in achieving this," adds Cristina.

"Customers want and expect a seamless experience, both online and in store, and payments play a crucial part in this sense. Thanks to our collaboration with Adyen, we were able to implement a unified payment solution that provides seamless transactions across all channels ensuring our customers have the flexibility to use the payment they prefer without any complications. This had a positive impact on our CR and allows us to analyze payment data thus providing us with a deeper understanding of what’s working and what should be improved. Adyen’s platform is flexible, scalable, and handles everything from compliance to local payment methods supporting KIKO Milano’s success in entering new markets."

Cristina Casa

Chief Retail Officer, KIKO Milano