AI is rewriting the economics of merchant acquiring

Merchant acquiring has rarely been accused of being exciting. For much of the past two decades it has been a business defined by scale, operational efficiency and relentless margin pressure.

AI rewriting merchant acquiring economics

Yet artificial intelligence is now reshaping the sector in ways that make acquiring strategically relevant again—particularly for banks willing to rethink their role in the payments value chain.

Insights from Capgemini’s World Payments Report underline why.

Merchants continue to migrate away from traditional banks towards specialist PayTech providers, citing service gaps in onboarding, reliability and responsiveness. These weaknesses have proven costly.

However, AI changes the calculus by enabling banks to deploy their infrastructure, data assets and trust advantages in more sophisticated ways.

From Commodity Processing to Strategic Infrastructure

Global merchant acquiring revenues are forecast to roughly double over the next decade, from around $25bn today to close to $50bn.

On the surface, this looks like steady, unremarkable growth driven by digital wallets, contactless payments and e-commerce. The more important shift, however, is qualitative rather than quantitative.

AI allows acquirers to move beyond commoditised transaction processing.

By applying machine learning to vast transaction datasets, acquirers can generate actionable merchant insights—supporting pricing optimisation, customer retention, inventory planning and channel strategy.

As Radi El Haj of RS2 has observed, acquirers are sitting on “mountains of data” that only AI can meaningfully unlock.

Agentic Commerce Raises the Stakes

The next phase of disruption will come from agentic commerce. As AI agents begin to intermediate consumer demand, merchants risk losing visibility over customer journeys and attribution.

This will increase dependence on acquiring platforms capable of managing machine-to-machine transactions, tokenisation and automated decisioning at scale.

In this environment, acquirers that evolve into AI-enabled orchestration platforms will control the most valuable layer of the stack. Those that remain focused solely on processing volume will continue to face margin erosion.

Banks Versus PayTechs: A Narrow Window

Large, bank-backed acquirers continue to dominate enterprise merchants, but SME volumes have shifted decisively towards PayTechs such as Adyen, Checkout.com and Stripe.

This is where AI presents banks with a narrow but meaningful opportunity to claw back relevance—if they invest decisively in software, orchestration and data-driven services.

By contrast, incumbents that have underinvested in product development risk stagnation. The recent struggles of Fiserv illustrate how fragile scale advantages can become when innovation is deferred.

So, Does Acquiring Matters Again?

AI is concentrating value in insights, optimisation and intelligent automation.

For banks and PSPs prepared to embrace this shift, merchant acquiring is no longer a utility business—it is once again a competitive battleground and one of the most attractive strategic positions in payments.