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Payments tech has never been more innovative, yet never more fragmented. Every month brings new solutions promising faster settlements, smarter fraud tools and slicker checkout experiences.
How payments tech needs to evolve
But for merchants, this flood of development often feels disconnected from reality. Many of the “latest” features don’t address the challenges that actually impact their day-to-day operations – writes Robert Kraal, Co-founder, Business Development, Silverflow.
In short, while technology continues to advance, too much of it fails to solve the real problems merchants face. The assumption that merchants simply want to “get paid”, quickly and cheaply, is outdated.
Payments are no longer a back-office utility – they’re a strategic enabler of growth, efficiency and customer experience. But too often, progress happens in silos, leaving merchants with complex, fragmented systems that add cost and friction.
The Value of Better Payments
In today’s competitive landscape, controlling costs is critical, but focusing solely on price can obscure the true value of payments infrastructure.
Low cost doesn’t necessarily equate to good value. The right payments infrastructure can deliver returns that go far beyond a few basis points saved on fees.
Take cross-border commerce as an example. Expanding into new markets is rarely as simple as adding a new currency or local payment option.
It requires a deep understanding of local consumer payment preferences, regional regulatory frameworks, and cultural expectations that shape how people choose to pay.
Merchants need technology partners who can simplify that complexity, providing both compliance confidence and the flexibility to adapt to different markets at speed.
The same applies to acceptance rates. Improving them isn’t just a matter of tightening fraud rules or adjusting risk thresholds – it’s fundamentally an infrastructure issue.
Without clear visibility across the transaction lifecycle, merchants have little control over where and why declines occur. Every false decline not only represents lost revenue, but also a damaged customer relationship.
The Merchant’s Frustration
Across industries, the same pain points keep resurfacing – lack of transparency around fees, rigid contracts, slow onboarding, limited technical support and outdated systems that can’t adapt to new business models.
Merchants now operate in a digital-first, data-driven economy, yet many payments systems still rely on infrastructure built decades ago. Providers have added layers of functionality over time, but without modern foundations, these layers are fragile and difficult to scale.
What Modern Merchants Expect
Today’s merchants expect their payments partners to be as agile as they are. They want infrastructure that can support higher acceptance rates, integrate new payment methods rapidly and scale internationally without unnecessary complexity.
They also expect smart orchestration – the ability to route each transaction to the most efficient provider automatically, improving reliability and cost efficiency.
Delivering this level of performance requires a rethink of the payments stack. Cloud-native, API-first platforms give merchants the control, flexibility and transparency they need to operate efficiently and adapt quickly to change.
Rather than bolting new features onto legacy systems, it’s time to rebuild payments infrastructure from the ground up.
A New Standard for Payments
As an industry, we talk a lot about innovation, but the real measure of progress is whether merchants feel it. Future-ready payments technology should simplify, not complicate. It should turn payments from a cost centre into a growth driver.
The providers that will lead the next decade of payments aren’t necessarily those adding the most features – they’re the ones building infrastructure that helps merchants thrive.
Because ultimately, the question isn’t just what merchants want from their payments technology – it’s whether the industry is ready to deliver it.
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