Fintech expert Magda Milas, Business Development Manager at Monri Payments, speaks with Alma Ribanovic, Group Practice Leader Affinity at GrECo Group about the profound impact of digital transformation on businesses, highlighting the essential role of leadership, the challenges faced, and the innovative solutions that are driving change.
The Definition and Importance of Digital Transformation in Business
Ribanovic: Can you define digital transformation and why it is important for businesses?
Milas: Digital transformation is really a change in mindset: not just about adding new technology, but about rethinking how we work, how we create value, and how we serve customers in a digital world. In financial services and payments, it means becoming more agile, using data more intelligently, and finding new ways to reach and support customers. It’s how we stay relevant in a fast-changing, competitive environment.
In the payments space, it’s about building secure, efficient, and user-friendly experiences. Real-time access, personalization, and reimagined business models are no longer nice to have. They’re actually expected. Throughout my career, digital transformation has helped me create payment flows that keep up with the way people live and pay today: from card payments, embedded payments (wallets) to crypto payments.
Transformation doesn’t mean everything has to be new: it just needs to be better for the user. Innovation without purpose is just technology. But when you have a clear “why”, innovation builds trust, creates market value, and drives long-term growth.
Changing to Meet Customer Expectations
Ribanovic: What are key drivers behind the digital transformation in an organisation?
Milas: In my experience, the biggest drivers are changing customer expectations: people want fast, simple, digital-first solutions they can trust. There’s also growing pressure from agile fintechs and BigTech, as well as regulatory shifts like PSD2 and MiCA that are reshaping the landscape.
In the payments space, we see this clearly: the rise of instant payments, tokenization, crypto, and embedded finance is accelerating the need to transform legacy systems. At the same time, digital transformation is being driven by very practical business goals: from finding new revenue streams, reducing operational costs, to speeding up payment flows. For example, this is especially important in ecommerce, where slow or limited payment options often lead to cart abandonment.
Offering diverse, modern payment methods, including crypto, not only improves conversion but also helps businesses reach new customer segments that expect more flexibility and innovation. Transformation needs to be the path to staying relevant, competitive, and profitable.
Transformation Occurs When People Believe in the Change
Ribanovic: What role does leadership play in the successful implementation of digital transformation?
Milas: Digital transformation doesn’t just happen because of new tools or systems. It happens because people believe in the change. And that belief starts at the top. Great leaders inspire others, bring different teams together, and aren’t afraid to challenge the way things have always been done. In the payment’s world, where security is critical, leaders have to walk a fine line between pushing for innovation and protecting what already works.
From my experience, impactful transformations are led by people who understand both tech and the bigger picture: how the business works, what customers need, and market trends. What also makes a big difference is how change is communicated. Transparency, early involvement, and continuous learning build trust. People don’t really resist change – they resist being changed without knowing why or feeling supported. Leaders must provide clarity, confidence, and a shared direction.
Resistance to Change Creates the Biggest Hurdles
Ribanovic: Can you describe a digital transformation project you have been involved in? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
Milas: One of the most challenging projects I’ve been involved in was at a crypto fintech startup during the beginning of the COVID pandemic. We built a new payment method based on cryptocurrencies from scratch and introduced it to major retail chains in Croatia. It truly was a “from zero to hero” journey: Overcoming regulatory uncertainty and consumer trust issues, we transformed a niche concept into a secure and widely accepted payment form.
I also transformed the payments experience in a major telecom company. We moved from traditional bill payment processes to one-click digital payments, saving customers time and reducing friction. In ecommerce, we streamlined payment flows, reduced cart abandonment, and increased conversion rates to create a more seamless checkout experience.
Across both projects, internal resistance, legacy system limitations, and educating users and stakeholders posed major challenges. We addressed these through constant communication, data-driven decisions, and by demonstrating early successes: proving that digital payments enhance convenience, loyalty, and revenue opportunities.
Defining KPIs is Essential from the Start
Ribanovic: How do you measure the success or ROI of digital transformation initiatives?
Milas: It really depends on the size and maturity of the company. A startup and a large corporation will measure success very differently.
In corporate environments, success is usually tied to a business case that includes predefined KPIs right from the start. If the initiative doesn’t generate a minimum level of revenue within a set period, it won’t move forward, especially when integration costs are high. There are, of course, exceptions for strategic decisions that serve a longer-term vision.
Startups, on the other hand, often have more flexible or qualitative goals. Their focus is usually on establishing market presence, building brand awareness, gaining user trust, or validating product market fit. ROI in that context might mean acquiring the first 1,000 users or reaching a certain conversion rate, rather than hard profit from day one.
Personally, I always combine both quantitative metrics: like revenue growth, cost reduction, or speed of delivery, and qualitative ones, like customer satisfaction, internal adoption, or digital maturity. What matters most is that KPIs are defined at the design stage of the project, and that the team is aligned on what “success” actually means.
Treating Data as a Strategic Asset
Ribanovic: What role does data play in digital transformation and how can companies leverage it effectively?
Milas: Data is at the heart of every successful digital transformation. In the payments and crypto world, data allows us to detect fraud in real time, understand customer behaviour, personalise experiences, and make more strategic, evidence-based decisions. Real-time, high-quality data doesn’t just optimise performance: it can literally save transactions and preserve customer trust.
But having data isn’t the same as using it well. To unlock its full potential, companies need to invest in data quality, system integration, and accessibility. Just as important is building data literacy across the organisation, not just in IT or business intelligence teams, but also in customer success, operations, and product. I’ve seen the biggest impact when they all speak the same “data language” and use insights to improve things in real time.
Of course, it depends on the company’s size. Big corporations usually have dedicated business intelligence teams, sometimes powered by AI, offering deep insights into customer behaviour, performance metrics and predictive patterns. Startups, on the other hand, can build things the right way from the start without legacy systems. They can collect the right data from day one, set up clean structures, and avoid clean-up work later.
No matter the size of the company, one thing is clear: when data is treated as a strategic asset, not just something that sits in dashboards, it can unlock real growth, better decisions, and more meaningful innovation.
You Don’t Need a Big Budget to Move Forward
Ribanovic: How can small or mid-sized businesses approach digital transformation on a limited budget?
Milas: Focus on one specific problem – something that directly improves the customer experience or helps money move through the business more efficiently. That could be as simple as making it easier for customers to pay online or speeding up how invoices are sent and tracked.
You don’t need a big budget to move forward. There are many affordable, easy to use tools that can help you make quick improvements without needing complex systems. The key is to focus on solutions that solve real, everyday problems and bring visible results.
Partnerships also play a big role. It’s smart to team up with larger, more established companies who already have the systems and reach. This can help you scale faster without heavy investment and give you access to tools, expertise, and even customers you might not reach on your own.
And above all, transformation starts with mindset. When your team is open to learning, trying new things, and improving step by step, even small changes can lead to big results over time.
Customer Experience First is the Key to Survival
Ribanovic: How do you see the role of customer experience evolving with digital transformation?
Milas: This is my favourite question. Customer experience isn’t just a support function anymore: it’s become the centre of everything. Especially in payments, people expect things to just work: fast, secure, and without any friction. They don’t want to think about the process, they just want to feel, “Oh, that was easy.” Digital transformation helps us get there not only by improving the process, but by giving us the ability to listen to users, adapt quickly, and even design better solutions together with them.
And honestly, companies that don’t put customer experience first won’t last. The whole world is moving in that direction. From one-stop-shop services and conversational interfaces to embedded payments, digital wallets, biometric logins, instant refunds… the bar is raised daily. People expect smooth, intuitive, tailored experiences. The real magic isn’t showing off the tech; it’s making it disappear. That moment when a user thinks, “Wait, it’s already paid?” – that’s the goal.
The companies that excel are those that embrace a digital-first approach while knowing when to add a human touch. Personalisation, simplicity, trust, and emotional connection are the foundations of enduring customer relationships.
About Magda Milas
Magda Milas, a fintech and payments expert, is currently the Business Development Manager for international markets at Monri Payments, member of Payten, one of the leading regional fintech companies specializing in payment solutions. She is the President and co-founder of Alice in Blockchains, a non-profit supporting women in blockchain, crypto and fintech, and she also serves as the Executive Board Member at EWPN – European Women Payment Network.
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Magda Milas
Business Development Manager
Monri Payments
