Save 0

The sad reality about payments is that they have become so much commoditised that the traditional acquiring model no longer holds.

Merchants no longer view acquiring as a value-added relationship — but as infrastructure. The pressure is no longer on getting access, but on making that access invisible, reliable, and cheap. Payments are no longer the differentiator — they’re the expectation.

What was once a service merchants paid a premium for i.e. card acceptance, infrastructure, compliance, is now expected to 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 work. And to work 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴.

Large merchants have the scale, volume, and leverage to negotiate acceptance fees down to razor-thin margins, sometimes to the point where the cost of acceptance becomes almost negligible. For these merchants, payments have become a cost of scale, not a cost of doing business. Acquirers compete fiercely for their business, often sacrificing margin in exchange for volume, brand association, or access to broader service opportunities. In many cases, the commercial viability for the acquirer is wafer-thin, sustained only by hopes of cross-sell or long-term retention.

Meanwhile, smaller merchants operate in a very different reality.

Many don’t have a dedicated payments resource or internal expertise to question what they’ve been sold. They often overpay for basic services, lack visibility into fee structures, and have limited access to customisation or support. The irony? Many don’t realise what’s missing, or what’s possible, until they outgrow their provider. By then, they’ve already absorbed years of unnecessary cost and friction.

This disparity reflects a broader imbalance in the market where payments can either be a strategic lever or a silent drain, depending entirely on the merchant’s size, awareness, and who’s sitting across the table.

In 2025, acceptance is expected, reliability is assumed, and merchants, particularly digital-native or omni-channel businesses don’t perceive value in the transaction alone. Pricing pressure has intensified, margins have collapsed, and the traditional acquirer-merchant relationship has fundamentally changed.

Traditional acquirers once controlled the core infrastructure of payments but today many risk fading into the many interchangeable components in a stack they neither designed nor meaningfully influence. Platforms like Shopify, Toast, and Stripe rewrote the rules by embedding payments into tools merchants actually use i.e. CRMs, booking systems, storefronts etc…

The market is demanding infrastructure that connects payments, data, diverse payment methods, channels, customer experience, fraud, and loyalty integrating seamlessly into the merchant’s broader business operations, while remaining modular and flexible, 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 prescriptive or monolithic.

It’s no longer 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 about access or integration. It’s about giving merchants ownership and control with autonomy, balanced with the transparency to understand performance across the stack, the agility to adapt, and the intelligence to optimise and grow.

The infrastructure itself should feel 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦.

What matters is the 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 it enables, how that value is delivered, and the quality of relationship it fosters. The impact is driven by relevance, adaptability, and operational performance.

Today, much of the innovation are emerging where the infrastructure is:

Today, much of the meaningful innovation [𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘐𝘔𝘖 ]  are emerging where infrastructure isn’t just functional, but intentional. It’s being built not to serve everyone, but to serve the right things well, with purpose, context, and alignment.

🔹 Vertical by design
↪️ Native to merchant operations — designed with the realities of each industry in mind, from workflows to integrations to compliance.

🔹 Contextual by default
↪️ Orchestrating smarter flows — adapting in real time to optimise outcomes based on behaviour, risk, intent, or channel.

🔹 Embedded in the way merchants actually operate
↪️ Creating relevance, not dependency — supporting merchants within their ecosystem, not locking them into yours.

This is what modern infrastructure must deliver: not rigid rails or off-the-shelf solutions, but adaptive systems that evolve with the merchant not against them. It scales because it flexes. It performs because it understands the context, not just the code. And it endures because it’s built around the merchant’s business, their workflows, their goals, their customer journey, rather than forcing them to reshape around someone else’s model.

In this new reality, merchants aren’t looking for access; they already have it. They’re looking for enablement, the kind that gives them ownership without technical debt, control without rigidity, and intelligence without overload. They expect infrastructure that integrates seamlessly, operates invisibly, and adds value continuously. And they want partners who empower, not gatekeep.

Because in the end, it’s not the infrastructure that defines the merchant, it’s how well the infrastructure responds to who the merchant is becoming.

#PaymentExperts, in that context, who do you think is leading the acquiring space these days? 🎤

—

𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲? 

👉🏽Let’s talk: intro@paypr.work

𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬?

👉🏽Check out our unique hub: https://lnkd.in/dKsmxGnT

🖇️ Follow Paypr.work [ˈpeɪpəwəːk] for more weekly #paymentinsights #paymentinfographics

Save 0