Payments Strategy Library

Independent guidance for businesses making bigger payment decisions

As a business grows, payments become less about simply accepting cards and more about cost, performance, technology and strategy.

The payment provider that worked when your business was smaller may not necessarily remain the best commercial or technical fit when you are processing millions each year, expanding internationally, introducing subscriptions, connecting new software or offering payments to your own customers.

The Merchant Advice Service Payments Strategy Library brings together our guidance for established businesses making those decisions.

Our starting point isn't:

“Which payment provider should we use?”

It's:

“What does our business actually need its payment infrastructure to do?”

From there, you can make a much more informed decision about whether to renegotiate your existing arrangement, restructure it, introduce another provider or switch.

Quick Summary

For established businesses processing significant payment volumes, the right payment strategy should consider much more than the headline transaction rate.

A review may need to look at:

• current payment-processing costs;

• blended, IC+ and IC++ pricing;

• payment authorisation rates;

• integrations and APIs;

• stored cards and token migration;

• subscriptions and recurring billing;

• multi-currency and international payments;

• local acquiring;

• multiple acquirers;

• split payments;

• alternative payment methods;

• future expansion; and

• whether payments could become an additional revenue stream.

Merchant Advice Service works with established businesses to understand these requirements before identifying suitable payment-provider options.

Already processing around £750,000+ per month and reviewing your payment setup?

Find Your New Processor

What Are You Trying to Solve?

1. Review or Switch Your Current Payment Provider

Businesses rarely review payment providers for no reason.

The trigger may be a contract renewal, rising processing costs, international expansion, an integration requirement, poor authorisation performance or simply the fact that your business is now considerably larger than it was when your original payment agreement was negotiated.

That doesn't automatically mean you should switch.

Depending on the business, the best outcome could be:

• keeping the existing provider;

• renegotiating your commercial terms;

• changing pricing structure;

• introducing another acquirer;

• changing part of the payment stack; or

• moving to another provider completely.

Reviewing Stripe?

Stripe can support businesses at considerable scale, so growth alone doesn't automatically mean you need to leave.

The more useful question is whether your existing Stripe arrangement still suits the commercial and technical requirements of your business today.

Reasons You May Have Outgrown Stripe — And What to Do Next

For established businesses reviewing Stripe because of processing costs, integrations, subscription requirements, growth or wider payment strategy.

Alternative Payment Processors to Stripe

For businesses actively researching alternatives to Stripe and understanding the different types of payment providers available.

Changing Payment Gateway: Can You Move Stored Cards, Tokens and Recurring Payments?

For businesses concerned about the practical implications of switching, including stored cards, subscriptions and token migration.

Is Your Current Payment Setup Costing Too Much?

At higher processing volumes, relatively small differences in payment costs can become material.

However, reviewing fees shouldn't mean simply comparing one headline percentage with another.

A proper review should consider the complete payment cost, including provider margin, interchange, scheme fees, gateway charges, card mix, cross-border transactions, chargebacks and operational payment costs.

UK Merchant Fees Benchmark 2026: Card Processing Costs, Interchange & Provider Rates

Current UK payment-cost benchmarks and an explanation of why public provider pricing isn't necessarily representative of the rates available to larger merchants.

How High-Turnover Businesses Audit Payment Fees

A practical framework for reviewing your complete payment cost rather than focusing solely on the transaction rate.

How to Reduce Payment Fees When You're Turning Over £1M+ Per Month

A guide specifically for high-volume businesses looking at pricing, provider negotiation, payment methods, routing and payment efficiency.

When High-Turnover Businesses Should Move from Blended Pricing to IC+ or IC++

Understand when greater transparency over interchange, scheme costs and provider margin can become commercially important.

Are Payment Declines Costing You Revenue?

Payment strategy isn't only about fees.

For larger online businesses, authorisation performance can have a direct impact on revenue.

If legitimate customer transactions are being unnecessarily declined, a cheaper processing rate may be worth considerably less than improved payment performance.

How Enterprise Merchants Improve Payment Authorisation Rates

Explore the role of routing, tokenisation, fraud controls, authentication, payment data and local acquiring in improving payment acceptance.

2. Turn Payments Into a Revenue Stream

Embedded and White-Label Payments for Platforms and SaaS Businesses

This is one of the biggest strategic opportunities in payments for software businesses.

If your customers already use your software, platform or booking system to run part of their business, there may be an opportunity to integrate payment processing directly into that proposition.

Instead of referring your customers to payment providers independently, your business may be able to offer a payment proposition through the platform itself.

Depending on the commercial structure agreed with the underlying payment partner, the platform may be able to negotiate an underlying processing rate, set its own customer pricing and retain a margin.

That means payments can potentially move from being simply a feature to becoming an additional recurring revenue stream.

This can be particularly relevant to:

• SaaS companies;

• booking platforms;

• hospitality technology;

• membership software;

• marketplaces;

• vertical software providers; and

• businesses with an established portfolio of commercial customers.

How SaaS Platforms Can Offer Recurring Payments to Clients — and Monetise It

How SaaS companies can add payment functionality for their users while exploring transaction margins and other commercial opportunities.

What Is White-Label Merchant Processing? A Guide for Platforms and SaaS Companies

Understand how a software platform can offer payment processing under its own proposition without building the underlying payment infrastructure itself.

Embedded Payments: Adopting Seamless Payment Solutions

An introduction to embedding payment functionality directly into software, apps and platforms.

How ISVs Can Benefit from Integrated Payments

For software vendors exploring integrated payments as both a product feature and potential commercial opportunity.

Have an existing customer portfolio?

If your software or platform already serves a significant number of businesses, speak to us before approaching payment providers individually.

The commercial structure can matter just as much as the technical integration.

Merchant Advice Service can help you understand the model, work through your payment requirements and identify the type of payment partnership that could suit your business.

Talk to us about monetising payments

3. Solve a Complex Payment Requirement

When an Off-the-Shelf Payment Setup Isn't Enough

Some payment requirements don't fit neatly into a standard online payment package.

Your business may need:

• a custom API;

• Shopify or ecommerce integration;

• booking or reservation software;

• recurring payments;

• stored customer payment details;

• payment-token migration;

• split payments;

• multiple merchant accounts;

• multiple acquirers;

• alternative payment methods;

• complex reporting; or

• several of these requirements at the same time.

At this level, choosing a payment provider based purely on price can create expensive problems elsewhere.

Recurring and Subscription Payments

Subscription businesses need more than the ability to charge a card every month.

Your payment infrastructure may also need to support tokenisation, retry logic, failed-payment recovery, international billing, reporting and customer lifecycle management.

Subscription Payment Processing: A Comprehensive Guide for Businesses

Understand the payment infrastructure behind recurring billing and what to compare when selecting a provider.

Changing Payment Gateway: Can You Move Stored Cards, Tokens and Recurring Payments?

Particularly important for established subscription businesses concerned about moving customers when changing payment infrastructure.

Marketplaces and Split Payments

Marketplaces and platforms can create very different payment flows from traditional ecommerce.

One customer payment may need to be divided between sellers, service providers and the platform itself.

Split Payment Gateways: A Complete Guide for Marketplaces and Platforms

Understand payment splitting, commissions, seller payouts, onboarding, refunds, chargebacks and the questions platforms should ask before selecting a payment partner.

Booking and Hospitality Technology

For businesses operating through booking or reservation platforms, payments increasingly sit inside the booking journey rather than functioning as a completely separate checkout.

Payment Providers for Booking Systems: Everything You Need to Know

For SaaS platforms, booking systems and scheduling software requiring embedded payments, recurring billing, reporting and payment integration.

Hotel Merchant Accounts & Payment Integration for Cloudbeds, SiteMinder and Guesty Users

Guidance for hospitality businesses where the payment provider also needs to work with hotel and booking technology.

Multiple Acquirers and More Flexible Payment Infrastructure

As payment requirements become more complicated, some businesses begin questioning whether every transaction should remain tied to one provider.

Acquirer-Agnostic Payment Gateways: Using One Gateway With Multiple Acquirers

Understand when it may be possible to retain the same gateway while changing or adding acquiring relationships.

This can be relevant to larger merchants considering:

• multiple acquirers;

• local acquiring;

• routing;

• resilience;

• international expansion; or

• greater negotiating flexibility.

Find Your New Processor

4. Expand Into the UK, Europe and International Markets

Does Your Existing Payment Setup Still Work Internationally?

International expansion can expose weaknesses in a payment setup that worked perfectly well domestically.

As the geographic payment mix changes, businesses may need to consider:

• where transactions are being acquired;

• international and cross-border cards;

• settlement currencies;

• customer currencies;

• foreign-exchange costs;

• local payment methods;

• digital wallets;

• local acquiring;

• payment authorisation rates; and

• whether one payment provider should support every market.

The question isn't simply:

“Does our current provider operate in Europe?”

It is:

“Is our payment structure still efficient for the markets we're entering?”

Alternative Payment Method (APM) Gateways

Understand how local payment preferences vary between markets and how an APM gateway can help businesses support additional payment methods.

How Enterprise Merchants Improve Payment Authorisation Rates

Includes the importance of local acquiring, routing and analysing payment acceptance across different markets.

Acquirer-Agnostic Payment Gateways: Using One Gateway With Multiple Acquirers

For businesses considering whether different acquiring relationships could be appropriate across countries or payment flows.

5. High-Volume and Complex-Risk Payments

Established Businesses With More Specialist Requirements

Some established businesses have an additional challenge: their sector or business model is considered higher risk by payment providers.

However, the commercial position of an established business processing significant monthly volume may be very different from that of a new merchant with no processing history.

As a business grows, it can therefore be worth reviewing whether its existing payment terms still reflect its current:

• turnover;

• processing history;

• chargeback performance;

• financial position;

• international exposure;

• settlement requirements; and

• overall risk profile.

A review may identify opportunities around pricing, settlement, reserves, gateway functionality or acquiring relationships.

Our focus here is primarily on established businesses with existing card-processing history, rather than businesses accepting cards for the first time.

Travel Payments

Travel businesses can combine substantial transaction volumes with international customers, advance payment and future-delivery risk.

Merchant Accounts for Travel Agents

Guidance covering travel underwriting, processing history, reserves, international payments and merchant-account requirements.

Explore Payments by Business Model

SaaS and Software Platforms

For SaaS businesses, payments can become both part of the product and an additional revenue stream.

Start with:

• How SaaS Platforms Can Offer Recurring Payments to Clients — and Monetise It

• White-Label Merchant Processing

• How ISVs Can Benefit from Integrated Payments

Marketplaces

If your business sits between customers and multiple sellers or service providers, the payment flow needs to be designed around that structure.

Start with:

• Split Payment Gateways for Marketplaces and Platforms

• White-Label Merchant Processing

Membership and Subscription Businesses

For recurring-revenue businesses, failed payments and migration can be just as important as processing cost.

Start with:

• Subscription Payment Processing

• Moving Stored Cards, Tokens and Recurring Payments

Hospitality and Booking Platforms

Payments may need to connect directly with booking, reservation and hospitality-management technology.

Start with:

• Payment Providers for Booking Systems

• Hotel Merchant Accounts & Payment Integration

• Embedded Payments

Travel

Travel businesses may need specialist underwriting alongside international acquiring and payment infrastructure.

Start with:

• Merchant Accounts for Travel Agents

• Alternative Payment Method Gateways

How Merchant Advice Service Approaches Payment Strategy

For larger or more complex businesses, we believe provider selection should begin with your requirements rather than a predetermined list of payment companies.

Depending on what you're trying to achieve, we may consider:

Commercial Requirements

• current monthly processing volume;

• transaction profile;

• current processing costs;

• pricing model;

• settlement;

• existing provider;

• contract position; and

• expected growth.

Technical Requirements

• ecommerce platform;

• payment gateway;

• custom APIs;

• booking systems;

• subscription technology;

• stored payment credentials;

• tokenisation;

• wallets;

• reconciliation;

• reporting; and

• other existing integrations.

International Requirements

• customer locations;

• countries of operation;

• currencies;

• international cards;

• cross-border processing;

• local acquiring; and

• alternative payment methods.

Strategic Requirements

• whether your existing provider remains suitable;

• whether your commercial terms should be renegotiated;

• whether another provider should be added;

• whether part of the payment stack should change;

• whether a full switch makes sense; and

• whether payments could create an additional revenue opportunity.

Only once those requirements are understood does it make sense to identify providers that could be appropriate.

Find Your New Processor

Payments Should Be Reviewed as a Business Strategy

For a business processing millions each year, payments aren't simply a back-office utility.

A small difference in payment economics can become material.

Poor authorisation performance can create lost revenue.

The wrong integration can create unnecessary development work.

An inefficient international structure can increase cost.

A poorly planned payment migration can put recurring revenue at risk.

And for a software business with an established customer portfolio, overlooking the commercial opportunity within payments could mean leaving a potentially significant revenue stream untapped.

That's why Merchant Advice Service approaches larger and more complex requirements as a payment strategy problem first and a provider-selection problem second.

How Merchant Advice Service Can Help

Merchant Advice Service has helped businesses understand and navigate payment providers since 2016.

For larger or more complex requirements, our approach is straightforward.

1. Understand What You're Trying to Achieve

We start with the business requirement and what has prompted the review.

2. Understand Your Current Payment Setup

Where relevant, we look at your existing provider, processing volumes, payment channels, integrations and commercial requirements.

3. Identify the Important Requirements

We establish what a new or revised payment arrangement genuinely needs to deliver.

4. Identify Relevant Payment Providers

We then consider suitable payment routes based on those requirements.

5. Make an Introduction

Where appropriate and with your permission, Merchant Advice Service introduces you directly to the relevant provider.

The payment-processing contract and commercial relationship remain directly between your business and the payment provider.

6. Remain Available

Our involvement doesn't have to disappear once the introduction has been made.

If you need help during the process or want to discuss your payment strategy again in future, you can come back to us.

Read more about how Merchant Advice Service works

What Does Merchant Advice Service Charge?

Nothing to the merchant.

Merchant Advice Service does not charge merchants for our payment-provider matching and introduction service.

If you choose to proceed with a payment provider introduced through MAS, we may receive commission from that provider.

Our aim is to identify a payment route based on the commercial and technical requirements of your business rather than simply directing every merchant towards the same provider.

Speak to Merchant Advice Service

Already processing significant payment volume?

If you're:

• reviewing Stripe or another existing provider;

• approaching a contract renewal;

• looking to reduce payment-processing costs;

• planning a provider switch;

• facing a complex integration;

• expanding into the UK or Europe;

• introducing subscriptions;

• looking at multiple acquiring relationships;

• operating a marketplace or platform; or

• exploring whether your existing customer portfolio could generate payment revenue,

tell us what you're trying to achieve.

We'll start with your requirements.

Request a Payments Strategy Review

Payment-provider capabilities, pricing, underwriting criteria and commercial structures can change. Information within the Payments Strategy Library is general guidance. Final provider suitability, pricing and acceptance depend on the individual business and relevant payment provider.