Payments On Fire

You’d have to be aggressively disinterested in the payments industry not to be aware of its attraction to investors. The COVID-19 pandemic has done nothing to dampen the interest, if not outright enthusiasm, for the payments industry among investors of all stripes. Actually, the pandemic has lit a fire under key industry segments like the e-commerce domain, digital banking, and disbursements. The dynamics of change pushing the payments industry ahead are only increasing. Incumbent Consolidation The payments industry has been dominated by networks and processors. While networks have remained largely independent, the processing industry has undergone tremendous consolidation over the last decade, accelerated recently by the giant acquisition of First Data by Fiserv. Scale really matters in processing. But that scale comes at the cost of agility because the incumbents must rely on the systems they already have and the ones they’ve acquired. Consolidation onto just a few platforms is hard. And that means incumben