Merchant Acquiring IT Priorities: A Global Review
Report Summary
Merchant Acquiring IT Priorities: A Global Review
While their competitive landscape is rapidly shifting, merchant acquirers remain uncertain as to how they should structure their IT capabilities to respond.
Boston, April 12, 2012 – A new report from Aite Group reveals merchant acquirers' attitudes toward key business trends and discusses their technology needs and priorities. The report is based on a Q1 2012 survey of more than 50 merchant acquirers around the world, conducted by Aite Group and Europe-based payment consulting firm PayX (www.payxintl.com).
In the face of an industry that is increasingly being transformed by the Internet, mobile technologies, and software developers, merchant acquirers remain surprisingly conservative in their approach to addressing these changes. Merchant acquirers, for example, still rely enormously on a traditional sales playbook to drive revenue. Acquirers, on the other hand, do recognize that their competitive landscape is rapidly shifting. A majority of acquirers expect mobile technology to drive software and Web companies (e.g., PayPal, Amazon, Google, Square) to become formidable competition within five years, and EMV and NFC acceptance to converge with wider acceptance by merchants of contactless EMV within five years. Acquirers also expect that NFC/contactless transactions and transactions originating from a mobile point-of-sale terminal will grow tremendously in the coming years and that cloud-based digital wallets will displace hardware-based NFC wallets when it comes to mobile payments at the point of sale. How acquirers adjust their IT strategies to respond to this changing landscape will ultimately determine their ability to compete in the future.
“Though acquirers around the world understand the formidable forces that are being unleashed on their industry, they still struggle to grasp the full extent of the disruptive threat,” says Gwenn Bézard, research director with Aite Group and co-author of this report. “It is vital that they fully comprehend the trajectory that their industry is now on and that they not brush aside any threats merely because emerging competition is still nascent.”
The report references: ACH Direct, ACI Worldwide, Alaric, Alipay, Atos Worldwide, Amazon, Borica, BPC, Chip’n’stripe, Clear2Pay, Compass Plus, CTL, Distra, ElectraCard, Euronet, Fifth Third, First Data, FIS, Global Payments Europe, Google, HPS, ISIS, Lusis, MasterCard, Metavante, Monetplus, Moneris, N&TS, OpenWay, PayPal, RS2, S1, Shopkick, SIA CE, SiNSYS, Square, Tieto, TSYS, Visa, Where.com, and Wincor.
This 47-page Impact Report contains 44 figures and one table. Clients of Aite Group’s Retail Banking service can download the report.