CEO CORNER: Acquiring as a Service + Commercialization

Over the last several months, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the evolution of the acquiring industry and, specifically, the growing opportunity for Independent Software Vendors. The technology has come a long way. ISVs can integrate payments directly into their platforms, participate in the economics, gain greater control over the customer experience, and use transaction data to better understand the businesses they serve.

But as payments become more deeply embedded into software, I think we need to broaden the conversation beyond the integration itself. Because integrating payments is not the same thing as building a payments business.

That is where Acquiring as a Service + Commercialization comes into play.

What Is Acquiring as a Service?

When most people hear “acquiring,” they think about processing transactions. A merchant accepts a card. The transaction is authorized. Funds are settled. The acquiring infrastructure works behind the scenes to make that transaction possible. That is obviously still fundamental to what an acquirer does.

But Acquiring as a Service is much broader than transaction processing.

At its core, Acquiring as a Service gives a software company, fintech, financial institution, or other distribution partner access to the infrastructure and capabilities required to operate a payments business without having to independently build every component themselves.

Think about everything that sits behind a successful payments program. There is payment technology and connectivity. Merchant boarding and underwriting. Risk management. Compliance. Settlement. Reporting. Operations. Customer support. Data. Pricing. Product strategy. Integration support. Sales enablement. Portfolio management. Building all of that internally requires significant capital, specialized expertise, regulatory knowledge, technology resources, and ongoing operational investment.

Acquiring as a Service allows a partner to leverage those capabilities through an acquiring relationship while still creating a payments experience that aligns with its own brand, software, customers, and business strategy. In other words, the acquirer provides the acquiring engine and expertise behind the scenes while the partner determines how payments fit into the broader customer experience.

For an ISV, that can mean embedding payments directly within its software platform, creating its own payments offering, participating in the economics, maintaining greater control over the merchant relationship, and using payments data to create additional value for its customers.

The goal isn’t simply to provide another way to process a transaction. It is to give partners the infrastructure necessary to build payments into their business model.

From Processing Service to Business Platform

That distinction is important.

Traditional acquiring relationships have largely focused on whether the infrastructure works. Can you board the merchant? Can you authorize the transaction? Can you settle the funds? Can you manage risk? Can you provide the necessary reporting? Those capabilities remain essential.

But if an ISV wants payments to become a meaningful part of its business, those capabilities are only the foundation. The next generation of acquiring relationships should also help answer questions like:

How should payments fit into the partner’s overall product strategy? How should the offering be positioned and priced? How can the organization efficiently convert its existing software customers to payments? How can payment data help improve customer retention or identify additional revenue opportunities? How can the partner continue increasing adoption, transaction volume, and recurring revenue over time?

This is where an acquirer begins moving from being primarily an infrastructure provider to becoming a strategic growth partner. And it is where commercialization becomes critical.

Integration Creates the Capability. Commercialization Creates the Business.

A payments integration creates opportunity. Commercialization turns that opportunity into adoption, revenue, and ultimately enterprise value.

One of the biggest misconceptions around embedded payments is that once the technical integration is complete, merchant adoption will simply follow. In reality, going live is where much of the commercial work begins.

You still have to determine how the solution will be positioned. Who the target customer is. How it will be priced. How existing software customers will be converted. What the sales organization needs to successfully communicate the value proposition. How objections will be handled. How adoption will be measured. And how the strategy will evolve as the payments portfolio grows. Those are commercialization questions. And they are just as important as the technical questions that come before them.

Successful commercialization requires a coordinated approach that can include go-to-market strategy, pricing, positioning, marketing, sales enablement, training, co-selling, onboarding, portfolio analytics, and ongoing optimization.

At Woodforest Acceptance Solutions, we don’t want to simply hand an ISV an integration and wish them luck. We want to help them commercialize it.

From Payments Capability to Revenue Strategy

Commercialization changes the way an organization thinks about payments. Instead of treating payments as another feature within the software, payments can become a strategic revenue engine.

For many established ISVs, the most immediate opportunity may already exist within their installed customer base. They have already done the difficult work of acquiring the customer and building trust. Those customers may already be using the software every day to run critical parts of their businesses. Payments creates an opportunity to expand that relationship.

That means the question shifts from simply, “How do we sell more software?” to “How do we create more value from the relationships we already have?”

But capturing that opportunity requires intentionality. There needs to be a strategy for identifying the addressable payments opportunity within the portfolio, converting customers, increasing adoption, optimizing pricing, improving retention, growing transaction volume, and building sustainable recurring revenue. That is the difference between offering payments and commercializing payments.

And as payments become more deeply embedded into the operating environment, the benefits can extend well beyond the transaction itself. The ISV gains greater visibility into how its customers transact. The customer gains a more seamless experience. The relationship becomes more integrated. And the software platform becomes even more central to the customer’s day-to-day operation.

Sales Enablement Turns Strategy Into Execution

One of the most important components of commercialization is sales enablement. An ISV may have an exceptional sales organization. But those salespeople were typically hired and trained to sell software—not merchant acquiring. Payments introduces a different set of conversations around pricing, economics, implementation, security, transaction flow, and operational considerations. Expecting a software sales organization to immediately navigate all of those conversations without support can create unnecessary friction.

This is another area where Acquiring as a Service can provide significant value. The acquiring partner can help create the commercial infrastructure around the payments offering. That may include sales playbooks, co-branded collateral, pricing guidance, competitive positioning, objection handling, sales training, demonstration support, assistance with complex opportunities, or helping identify payment opportunities within an existing customer portfolio.

The goal isn’t to turn every software salesperson into a career payments professional. It’s to give them the tools, knowledge, and support necessary to confidently bring payments into the conversation. When that happens consistently, payments stops being an optional add-on and becomes part of the company’s core value proposition.

Commercialization Doesn’t End at Launch

Another important distinction is that commercialization isn’t a one-time go-to-market exercise. It should continue throughout the life of the payments program.

Once merchants begin processing, the transaction data starts telling a story. Which customers have adopted payments? Which haven’t? Where is transaction volume growing? Where is it declining? Which merchant segments are performing particularly well? Where are there pricing opportunities? Where could new payment products or services create additional value?

That intelligence creates an opportunity to continuously refine the commercial strategy. The payments business becomes something that can be measured, optimized, and expanded. And that is where the combination of acquiring infrastructure, transaction data, and commercialization can become incredibly powerful.

The Acquirer Should Help Create Revenue, Not Just Process It

For years, our industry has measured acquiring relationships around basis points, authorization rates, uptime, processing capabilities, and transaction volume. Those things matter. They always will.

But I believe we should be asking another question: How much value are we helping our partners create?

That fundamentally changes the role of the acquirer. If we can provide the technology to accept payments, the infrastructure to support them, the operational and risk expertise to manage them, the data to understand performance, and the commercialization resources necessary to drive adoption and revenue, then acquiring becomes much more than a processing relationship. It becomes a business platform.

That is what Acquiring as a Service + Commercialization means to me. It is giving ISVs and other partners access to the capabilities of a sophisticated acquiring organization without requiring them to independently build that organization themselves—and then helping them turn those capabilities into a scalable payments business.

Technology. Operations. Risk. Compliance. Data. Strategy. Commercialization. Sales enablement. All working together behind the partner.

Building the Next Generation of Payments Partnerships

I believe the winners in the next phase of payments will be companies that recognize that infrastructure alone is no longer enough. A successful integration should not be the finish line. It should be the starting point.

The next question is how we take that capability to market, create adoption, generate sustainable recurring revenue, strengthen customer relationships, and continue finding new ways to create value from the payments ecosystem.

For ISVs, that means having the ability to own more of their payments strategy without needing to independently recreate the acquiring infrastructure that sits behind it. For acquirers, it means being willing to move beyond our traditional role. We shouldn’t simply be asking partners to send us transactions. We should be giving them the infrastructure to build a payments business—and the commercialization resources to grow it.

That is the opportunity behind Acquiring as a Service + Commercialization, and I believe it represents an important part of where our industry is headed next.

— Todd Linden
President & CEO
Woodforest Acceptance Solutions