In a world of unplanned restarts, outages, service interruptions and more, to drive payment acceptance, merchants should consider building relationships with a range of acquirers if and when the need arises. made felt.

According to Debbie Guerra, Executive Vice President of ACI Worldwide, this so-called multiple acquisition approach is a way for companies to ensure not only continuity but also resilience by being able to take advantage of leading opportunities. where and when a backup is needed.

In the age of digital commerce, merchants need this protection against bank downtime in the event of increased transaction volume, ever-active (virtual) marketplaces, and payments that cross borders, time zones and more. currencies. At a high level, Guerra said, multiple acquisition means traders can lower costs and improve conversion rates.

Merchants must have independence and choice in how they conduct their transactions to multiple endpoints, Guerra said, noting that ACI’s own payment orchestration engine is “basically a robust global gateway” with hundreds of connection points – and the points can be to an acquirer, country or type of payment.

“These choices are important and help determine where they send transactions to deliver the highest conversion rates,” she said, which in turn has a positive impact on revenue growth while offering the best customer experience.

With a nod to “smart routing,” Guerra said customer payments can typically fail at the checkout when verification efforts fail or banks are down. Payment can be rejected and frustrated consumers can abandon their online shopping cart. Smart routing construction means that card transactions are routed to different acquirers based on attributes that may include risk profiles or even brands or card locations.

Guerra noted that it may not make sense to always use global acquirers – it may be more efficient (and profitable) to route a transaction to a local acquirer. Conversely, transactions that cannot be carried out with a local acquirer can be repeated with a global acquirer.

Smart new attempt

“Smart” retry features can automatically resend card transactions to the same acquirer or alternate them to ensure they go through. As ACI said, the Smart New Attempt allows merchants and PSPs to configure authentication processes for each channel on a separate basis, without needing to update or adjust the integration elsewhere. The experience is dramatically improved as the customer is not required to re-enter details, while merchants enjoy higher levels of acceptance.

“With some clients, we’ve seen it increase transaction conversions by up to 15%,” Guerra said. Machine learning can promote “least cost” routing to help merchants increase their margins or avoid fraud.

While smart routing offerings can benefit merchants of any size or vertical, Guerra said cost control and resiliency tend to be more focused on larger companies who can also negotiate acquisition rates with various schemes. and payment methods. “But we have also seen great interest from intermediaries such as payment service providers and payment facilitators, as well as businesses looking to offer an option to the merchants they serve,” he said. she declared.

There is also interest from high-risk segments of traders who want to have a deeper acquirer network for resilience, such as CBD traders.

Looking to the future, said Guerra, “we are seeing an explosion in consumer demand that merchants offer a choice of payment method, and this is really manifesting itself with a lot more emphasis on local payment methods and alternative payment methods “such as buy now, pay later (BNPL).