Web Griebel

Why Payment Facilitators Are Becoming Acquirers (And What It Means) The line between payment facilitator and acquirer is disappearing. PayFacs that spent years relying on sponsor banks are now applying for acquiring licenses and connecting directly to card networks. This shift isn't accidental. It's economic gravity at work. Payment facilitators built businesses by simplifying merchant onboarding and payments for specific verticals. Hotels, restaurants, SaaS platforms. They understood their merchants' needs better than traditional acquirers ever could. But they paid a steep price for that convenience. Sponsor bank fees, processor markups, and limited control over the payment experience. For every dollar in revenue, 30-40 cents went to intermediaries. The math stopped working once PayFacs reached scale. When you're processing billions annually, those intermediary costs become massive profit leaks. Vertical specialization that once justified the markup now makes direct acquiring more attractive. Technology costs have dropped dramatically, too. Building acquiring infrastructure used to require tens of millions in investment. Modern cloud-native platforms cut that cost by 80%. The barrier to entry isn't what it was a decade ago. Card networks like Visa and Mastercard are rolling out the welcome mat. They see specialized PayFacs as more ambitious partners than legacy banks that treat acquiring as a side business. The registration process is more streamlined, the support more engaged. Volume thresholds matter less than they used to. A PayFac processing $500 million in a focused vertical can negotiate better economics than a general acquirer doing $5 billion across scattered merchants. Concentration gives you leverage. The risk management piece has flipped, too. PayFacs already handle underwriting, fraud monitoring, and chargeback management for their sub-merchants. Becoming an acquirer just formalizes what they're doing anyway. What this means for the industry is fragmentation at the top and consolidation at the bottom. Specialized acquirers will dominate specific verticals while generic processors lose differentiation and margin. At Silverflow, we're seeing this transformation accelerate. PayFacs who had to rely on large incumbant acquirers, are now switching and becoming the acquirer themselves, using our platform. The payments value chain is compressing. Middlemen are becoming principals or disappearing entirely.

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Alloy's partnership with MANTL has always been about making digital banking faster, safer, and more efficient for banks and credit unions. Last month, we hit 100 shared clients – proof that we’re delivering on that promise! Here’s why our partnership matters: 📈 Growth without growing pains – Together, we’re helping banks and credit unions scale efficiently without sacrificing security or customer experience. 🍃 Frictionless onboarding at scale – MANTL makes it seamless for customers to open accounts from anywhere, and Alloy ensures that FIs have the clearest possible picture of who their customers are. 🛡️ Automated fraud prevention – Alloy’s identity and fraud prevention platform helps financial institutions detect risk in real time while keeping conversion rates high. It's been quite a ride partnering with 100 mutual clients - here's to 100 more! Nathaniel Harley

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Moov's biggest competitor isn’t another platform. It’s doing nothing. When we talk to customers about why they haven't new payment rails - like FedNow, Visa Direct, or RTP - tech is almost never the blocker. It’s uncertainty. Nobody wants to juggle multiple sponsor banks, hold extra reserves, or run separate KYC flows just to “see who uses it.” They can’t put a confident forecast on adoption, so they don’t even try. That’s the real growth challenge: Not convincing people that we’re better at Visa Direct. But making it safe/easy for them to take the first step in offering it and seeing if customers bite. If we want these rails to grow, we have to make testing low-risk, ROI visible, and adoption as close to one-click as possible. When the alternative is “do nothing,” the friction has to be nearly zero.

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Eleven forward-thinking financial institutions have joined Swaystack to increase account activation and engagement, and the results are paying off. In just the last six months, these community banks and credit unions saw: • 84.6% registration completion rate from onboarding link click to online banking access • 4.3-day average time to sign in for indirect members, down from 10.7 days with in-house automation • 73.9% open rate and 55.3% click-through rate on onboarding outreach These aren’t vanity metrics. They’re proof that when onboarding is personalized, purposeful, and embedded into digital banking, members actually take action. 👉 See how these institutions turned early engagement into lasting growth: https://lnkd.in/g8Tij7zT #Swaystack #SwayForward #DigitalOnboarding #MemberEngagement #DigitalBanking #CreditUnionStrategy #CreditUnion #Bank #BehavioralBanking #FintechLeadership

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An article with my thoughts just dropped in Forbes - on why banking is quietly moving from mobile-first to AI-first. We’re getting close to a point where screens and menus stop being the main thing. What matters more is intent, context, and systems that act before you even think about the next tap. AI isn’t another feature in a banking app. It’s becoming the operating layer - handling decisions, reducing friction, and making finance feel less mechanical and more natural. Sharing the piece here for anyone tracking where fintech is heading next 👇 https://lnkd.in/d_tRJjri

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In last week's LinkedIn Live on the launch of the Fireblocks Network for Payments, Zach called out one of the biggest challenges in fintech today: 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. To build at scale, fintechs and PSPs are forced to stitch together multiple providers. It slows innovation and adds unnecessary complexity. As Zach Abrams (Bridge/Stripe) put it during our LinkedIn Live: "What Fireblocks is shipping now enables teams, through one core service, to bring together everything they need to get up and running. It turns months of work into days, and once you start building with stablecoins, you only want to build more." That is the Fireblocks Network for Payments in action, removing friction so institutions can go from idea to scale faster. Watch the full event replay here → https://lnkd.in/ehZ7-4rQ

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Should Fintechs Stick with BaaS, or Build Their Own Path? Official Link: https://lnkd.in/g9EBhRsb Skaleet’s white paper on BaaS vs. unbundled BaaS + SaaS models and it’s a must for any fintech thinking about how to scale sustainably. Early on, all-in-one BaaS solutions help startups launch fast. But as fintechs grow, these models can become a burden, costs skyrocket, flexibility drops, and control over customer relationships weakens. The paper shows how moving to an unbundled, modular setup can give companies more control, lower long-term costs, and the freedom to innovate. Loved the example of Helios, a neobank that made the shift and saw 3x customer growth. If you’re in fintech, definitely give this a read. It might change how you think about your scaling strategy. #fintech #banking #BaaS #SaaS #digitalbanking #innovation

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