Key Factors Driving the Payments Landscape in 2025

The payments industry is experiencing a transformative shift. While digital innovation has been reshaping payments for over a decade, a second wave of digital revolution is now redefining acquiring. This shift is driven by three key factors: a rise in merchants accepting electronic payments, diverse payment options, and stricter regulatory frameworks. 

This is the first in a series of blog posts exploring the next-generation acquiring landscape. We’ll dive into what’s driving this transformation and what it means for acquirers in today’s digital economy. 

The Market Shift – What’s Driving the Change?   

Acquiring has always been the core of payments, but the landscape is shifting faster than ever. By 2030, the number of merchants accepting electronic payments is expected to grow by 30%, driven by micromerchants and SMEs moving away from cash in favor of digital transaction. These businesses are turning to cost-effective, flexible acquiring solutions such as SoftPOS. Instead of investing in traditional POS, merchants are using mobile devices as payment terminals, which do not require additional hardware. The SoftPOS market alone is projected to grow by 22% annually over the next five years, providing an accessible entry point for small business into digital payments. 

At the same time, the different ways consumers and business can pay are becoming more diverse. Beyond card payments, there is an increase in alternative payment methods - from account-to-account (A2A) payments to QR-code transactions in Asia to Super-Apps such as Brazil’s Pix and Kazakhstan’s Kaspi and Buy-Now-Pay-Later and Installment payments widely used across Europe and North America.  

With cross-border e-commerce expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030, merchants need acquirers that can support a wider range of payment options to meet the demands of today’s digital-first customers.  

The Regulatory Changes  

While acquirers expand their capabilities to support emerging payment methods, in response to this adoption of new tech, governments and regulatory bodies are actively developing and implementing legislations aimed at enhancing transactional security and consumer protection.  

New legislation like the EU’s Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA, due in 2025) and the third payment services directive (PSD3, planned for 2027-2028) will require stricter security and authentication measures for acquirers. The SCT-Inst mandate (2025/2026) is set to make faster, instant payments the standard across Europe, pushing acquirers to modernize their infrastructure. Open Banking regulations will continue to progress, allowing innovation but also requiring acquirers to adapt their systems to comply with data-sharing rules. 

The rise and popularisation of digital payments expectedly offshoots into appearance of new fraud types such as Account Takeover (ATO), Synthetic ID fraud and Automated Push Payment (APP) fraud. APP fraud alone accounts for 75% of electronic payment fraud in regions like the UK and the US, with losses over $5.75 billion annually by 2026. This has driven regulators to introduce stronger mandates for security, authentication, and fraud prevention, making compliance a key differentiator for acquirers and issuers. 

Merchants today expect more from their acquirers – they demand faster payments, lower costs, and added value beyond transaction processing. Many small merchants, unable to afford POS hardware or high transaction fees, seek low-cost, omnichannel acquiring solutions that support multiple payment types. Acquirers that fail to meet these expectations risk losing market share. 

The acquiring market is shifting toward a more digital, real-time, and alternative payment-driven future. As transaction volumes increase, payment methods diversify, and regulations get stricter, acquirers must modernise their systems to stay competitive.  The most successful players will be those who invest in scalable, real-time payment solutions, support SMEs and micromerchants with flexible, cost-effective acquiring models, enhance security and fraud prevention measures to meet evolving regulatory demands, and adopt innovative models like Acquiring as a Service (AaaS) to reduce costs and enable quick innovation. 

If you would like to know more about next-gen card processing, download the full whitepaper.