Leaders in Merchant Payments outline trends and priorities for 2025

In Amsterdam, PaymentGenes recently hosted an event focused on trends in the Merchant Payments sector, bringing together leaders from merchants, retailers and payments. A round-up of the event’s key takeaways.

1. Payments Are No Longer Just Infrastructure

What was once a backend function is now a cross-functional concern. Payments impact finance, product, engineering, fraud, and support. More than that, payment data is a hidden superpower, providing insights into user behaviour, churn, and optimisation opportunities. Custom-built solutions are increasingly favoured over generic PSPs, especially for mature companies seeking flexibility, control, and better performance.

Dominik Fuchs, Head of Payments at Dott: “Payments used to be a technical afterthought, but today they’re a product lever. The data we extract from payment flows helps us understand user behaviour, reduce churn, and even improve product design. When you treat payments as a strategic function, it drives performance across the board.”

2. Build versus Buy: A Journey of Scale

Startups often begin with ready-made payment solutions like Stripe or Adyen for speed and simplicity. But as they grow, managing multiple payment providers, compliance, and complex flows requires more customisation. Building internal orchestration layers, tokenisation vaults, and dedicated teams offers greater control and potential cost savings but demands significant investment and resources.

Alternatively, partnering with payment orchestration platforms provides a flexible, scalable middle ground, offering faster integration and easier scaling without the heavy upfront costs. The right choice depends on a company’s scale, goals, and resources.

Madalina Cerchia, Group Product Manager at Decathlon: “At some point, payments stop being just a finance issue and become a core product decision. Whether you build or buy, it has to align with how fast you’re growing and how much control you need. Flexibility, not just cost, becomes the deciding factor.”

3. Payouts are Hard and Important

For platforms and marketplaces, payouts (especially cross-border) are a major source of complexity. Preferences vary (e.g. wallets, bank transfers), and local partners with domestic rails can significantly improve performance. Orchestration helps ensure the right method is used for the right user at the right time.

Anirudh Narla, Head of Product at Hopper: “Payouts are where things really get messy, especially across borders. The trick isn’t just speed, it’s flexibility. The best optimisation sometimes means delaying a payout or using a local method that users trust more. If you understand your users, you can design smarter, not just faster, payment flows.”

4. Global versus Local: The Balancing Act

While companies aim for a unified global payment stack, local expertise and integration remain crucial, especially in fast-growing markets like Brazil and India. Payment orchestration platforms help bridge this gap by connecting regional payment methods and PSPs into a consistent core system. This approach enables businesses to comply with local regulations, offer preferred payment options, and boost conversion rates.

Ultimately, balancing a centralised infrastructure with deep local knowledge is essential for successful global scaling.

Maarten Rood, Payment Optimisation Manager at Just Eat Takeaway: “There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to global payments. What works for 3DS in the UK might fail in Germany simply because issuers behave differently. Merchants need to go beyond a fixed setup and optimise for local conditions, especially when it comes to things like risk signals and shopper data.”

5. Disputes & Chargebacks: Still a Pain Point

Despite vendor claims, chargeback management remains largely manual and inefficient, costing merchants billions annually. Most companies still rely on spreadsheets or fragmented systems, which limit their ability to respond effectively. As chargeback volumes rise, businesses that build internal tools and automation – like real-time alerts, centralised evidence systems, and API integrations – see faster resolution times, higher win rates, and reduced operational costs.

These in-house solutions offer greater control, adaptability, and long-term resilience compared to outsourcing or off-the-shelf tools.

6. Switching Providers: A Strategic Move

Companies switch PSPs for many reasons – new capabilities, better performance, more flexibility, or simply because they’ve outgrown the original solution. Taking control of orchestration and tokenisation is often the catalyst.

Denis Danskir, Payments Product Manager at Lemonade: “There comes a point where your strategy evolves faster than your provider can keep up. Whether it’s performance, flexibility, or feature gaps, switching isn’t just a tech decision. Taking ownership of orchestration gives you the freedom to move at your own pace.”

What’s Next? Where Payments are headed

As innovation accelerates, all eyes are on where payments are headed – driven by emerging technologies, evolving consumer expectations, and shifting regulatory landscapes.

Omnichannel Experiences

In the coming years, the convergence of online and offline commerce will reach new levels of fluidity. Payments will no longer be siloed by channel; customers expect to move effortlessly between e-commerce, mobile apps, and in-store environments with a unified experience.

Innovations like tokenised checkouts and tap-to-pay online are already closing the gap, while emerging modalities such as voice commerce, AR shopping, and wearables are expanding how and where payments occur. Businesses that unify their payment stack across touchpoints will not only reduce friction but also gain a clearer view of their customer journey, leading to stronger retention and brand loyalty.

‍Identity-Driven Payments
Payments are becoming increasingly personalised, and identity is now at the core of that transformation. Biometrics such as facial recognition and fingerprint scans are replacing passwords and PINs, offering both convenience and improved security. Beyond that, platforms are using data from user profiles, location, device behaviour, and account history to make real-time decisions on payment flows.

The integration of digital identity with open banking and tokenisation is enabling more dynamic, risk-aware transaction logic. This shift will allow companies to authorise, route, or even delay payments based on the unique characteristics of each user, making payments smarter, safer, and more contextual.

Reimagined In-Person Payments
The traditional point-of-sale terminal is rapidly becoming outdated. As hardware gets replaced by software, in-person payments are being redefined by mobile-first, flexible solutions. SoftPOS technology, allowing any smartphone, and potentially retail hardware such as scanners and kiosks, to become a payment terminal, is reshaping how businesses handle transactions, especially in retail, events, and field service.

At the same time, in-person checkout systems are evolving into all-in-one platforms that integrate CRM, loyalty, inventory, and analytics. Rather than seeing POS as a separate system, leading businesses are treating it as an extension of their digital stack, enabling better customer insights and more responsive service at every touchpoint.

AI, Personalisation, and Loyalty
Artificial intelligence is making payments not only faster and safer, but also more meaningful. Leading processors now use AI to fight fraud in real time, optimise authorisation retries, and minimise false declines. But AI’s role goes beyond risk; it’s being used to personalise checkout experiences, recommend products based on transaction history, and even tailor loyalty rewards within the flow of payment itself.

As conversational commerce grows, AI agents are also beginning to influence buying decisions and handle transactions autonomously. This trend blurs the lines between payments, personalisation, and marketing, transforming every transaction into a moment of brand engagement.

‍Ecosystem Collaboration
Payments are no longer built in isolation. The next wave of innovation is being driven by collaboration between fintechs, traditional banks, platforms, and regulators. Shared infrastructure, such as real-time payment rails, ISO 20022 messaging standards, and embedded finance APIs, is enabling faster, more reliable, and more transparent transactions across borders.

Banks are embedding fintech capabilities into their offerings, while platforms are increasingly opening up their ecosystems to external partners. These collaborations are fueling everything from instant payouts to embedded lending and digital identity verification. Companies that adopt an ecosystem mindset will gain agility, scale, and access to new capabilities they can’t (and shouldn’t) build alone.