Five ways acquirers can empower merchants with payment optimization solutions

Checking out is often the final and most critical step in a customer’s journey—but a complicated or fragmented process can increase the risk that they abandon their purchase. And how they can pay is a major factor in their decision of where to shop and whether to buy. Research¹ shows: 

• Three in four global consumers want to use their preferred payment method when shopping.¹
• 55% say the availability of their preferred payment method can affect their decision about which merchant to buy from.²
   

By providing merchants with the tools to build a unified checkout experience, you can help them offer the payment methods customers want while simplifying their operations. Payment orchestration platforms, such as Unified Checkout, can help merchants create a consistent, user-friendly experience across all their channels by allowing them to integrate multiple payment methods through a single interface. This simplifies their operations and allows them to offer their customers diverse payment options, from traditional cards to digital wallets and biometrics. And you can strengthen your relationships and improve merchant satisfaction by helping them boost their conversion rates.

Effectively managing customer payment credentials is fundamental to payment success as well as compliance with potential regulatory requirements. Credentials need to be secured and updated throughout their lifecycle to help ensure enhanced customer experiences. You can become a critical part of this process by offering technologies that enhance credential security and accuracy.

It’s estimated that $18B in declines comes from outdated or expired credentials³—a real issue for merchants who store credentials for smoother checkouts or recurring or subscription payments. Help your merchants ensure they capture as many good sales as possible with smart credentials-management solutions like:

• Token Management Service secures and manages customer credentials, keeping them up to date.
• Verification Solutions help streamline the payment process by validating cardholder attributes with minimal friction.
• Lifecycle Management Solutions automatically update common types of card and account changes to keep your card-on-file portfolio current.
• EMV® 3-D Secure provides an additional layer of security prior to authorization for eCommerce transactions, boosting approval rates.
   

Acquirers’ infrastructure is the foundation on which secure and reliable commerce is built. Given the constant technological change, it needs to be both robust and adaptable. Scalability is critical to support not only traditional card transactions but also the growing ecosystem of digital wallets, real-time payments, and other emerging payment methods.

Modernizing your technology by leveraging cloud-based solutions helps merchants mitigate operational risks and improve resilience. And well-designed infrastructure can help simplify their compliance with evolving regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). By providing a flexible and stable platform, you can help them innovate at the cutting edge of technology while minimizing their compliance efforts.

Visa Intelligent Authorization offers access to six international payment schemes, 10+ domestic payment schemes, the flexibility and composable architecture of the Visa Acceptance Platform, and Visa’s proven 99.999%⁴ uptime , all through a single-integration connection. It allows you to create innovative payment experiences with pre-integrated modular solutions and a growing ecosystem of technology and payments partners—so you can build what you need, when you need it, and continue to evolve it as your needs change.

Acquirers are in a unique position to harness vast amounts of transaction data and turn it into actionable intelligence for their merchants. To move beyond simple processing, leading acquirers are offering analytics that provide deep insights into sales trends, customer behavior, and operational efficiency. This data can help merchants make informed decisions about everything from staffing levels to the timing of promotions.

Data is also a powerful tool for helping to optimize payment routing to reduce costs, prevent fraud, and boost successful transactions. By analyzing transaction data, you can identify anomalies and flag suspicious activity with greater accuracy, protecting your merchants from losses. 

Visa processes 234 billion transactions per year⁵ from which we draw deep insights into customer behavior. We support our customers with self-service analytics, automated optimization solutions, and white-glove advisory, so you can benefit from our vast data and knowledge to build better, more personalized payments experiences.

In the split second it takes to approve or decline a transaction, a lot is at stake. False declines can frustrate customers and result in lost revenue. 

By adapting to network conditions and transaction context, Service Orchestration intelligently routes and retries transactions to help maximize the likelihood of successful authorization without compromising speed or security by adapting to network conditions and transaction context.

The role of acquirers is evolving. Success is no longer defined by simple transaction processing—acquirers need to move beyond the role of a service provider to become a true strategic partner.

By empowering merchants with access to these cutting-edge solutions—allowing them to craft strategies tailored to their unique needs—you support them to boost approval rates, improve customer experience, and drive revenue growth.

Are you ready to empower your merchants with a more resilient and optimized payments ecosystem?