Merchant Acquirers’ Priorities: Examining Differences
Report Summary
Merchant Acquirers’ Priorities: Examining Differences
Compared with non-bank acquirers, bank-owned acquirers display a far more forward-looking attitude toward their market’s unfolding technology disruption.
Boston, June 6, 2012 – A new report from Aite Group examines differences in merchant acquirers’ priorities and attitudes by global geography, size, risk tolerance, and ownership structure. Based on a Q1 2012 Aite Group survey of more than 50 global merchant acquirers, completed in partnership with payment consulting firm PayX (www.payxintl.com), the report provides insight into the views of merchant acquirers around the world.
Geography, size, technology risk tolerance, and ownership structure all impact merchant acquirers’ views on the payments industry and approaches to technology and change. Perhaps most significantly, bank acquirers are surprisingly more willing to deal with rapid technology transformation than are their non-bank counterparts. More bank-owned acquirers than non-bank acquirers agree that the next five years will see a significant transformation of POS terminal infrastructure, with POS terminals moving to a hosted, gateway-powered model to more easily support NFC, mobile marketing, mobile payments, and new forms of loyalty marketing such as daily deals.
“In merchant acquiring, it's popular wisdom to deride banks as having retrenched, leaving the floor to non-banks,” says Gwenn Bézard, co-founder and research director with Aite Group and co-author of this report. “But bank-owned acquirers display a far more forward-looking attitude toward their market’s unfolding technology disruption than do non-bank acquirers. Non-bank acquirers should send wake-up calls to their organizations and focus on how they will adjust to the massive business disruption headed their way.”
This 25-page Impact Note contains five figures. Clients of Aite Group’s Retail Banking service can download the report.