Building growth through strategic partnerships in the payments industry (Part 3)

An article series exploring how banks, acquirers, fintechs, independent software vendors, and payment facilitators (payfacs) can drive growth through strategic partnerships, innovation, and streamlined compliance.

–

This article is the third in a four-part series exploring how strategic partnerships drive growth by creating value, enhancing merchant services, and streamlining compliance. To read the first and second articles in the series, please refer to Part 1 and Part 2.

Introduction

The payments industry is undergoing rapid change, driven by emerging technologies and evolving business models that are redefining transaction processing.

At the core of this transformation are strategic partnerships, enabling banks, acquirers, fintechs, independent software vendors (ISVs), and payment facilitators to leverage their strengths and foster innovation. Through collaboration, these industry players can develop secure, scalable, and efficient payment solutions that align with the needs of businesses and consumers.

This article series explores how these partnerships add value, simplify compliance, and manage risk while unlocking new opportunities. From enhancing customer experiences to expanding service capabilities and addressing regulatory challenges, collaboration is key to staying competitive in the payments landscape.

Banks and acquirers

Acquirers play a key role in the payments ecosystem, providing essential services such as merchant acquiring, transaction processing, and settlement. They offer payment services tailored to the needs of industries ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. Their extensive networks, established infrastructure, and regulatory knowledge make them key facilitators of payment flows, enabling smooth transactions both domestically and internationally.

While some banks own or operate acquiring businesses, many acquirers function independently, maintaining strategic partnerships with banks to expand their reach and offer integrated payment solutions. These relationships benefit both parties – acquirers gain access to a bank’s customer base, while banks can offer acquiring services without direct operational involvement, often earning revenue through profit-sharing or other incentives.

In Ireland, acquirers such as AIB Merchant Services, Elavon, Worldpay and BOIPA, and in the UK, players like Barclaycard, Global Payments and Worldpay, facilitate secure and compliant payment processing for businesses of all sizes. Banks, including AIB, Bank of Ireland, and Permanent TSB, leverage partnerships with acquirers to enhance their service offerings, providing businesses with tailored acquiring solutions while benefiting from additional revenue streams without assuming direct risk. These collaborations enable smoother domestic and international transactions, ensuring businesses have access to efficient, scalable payment solutions.

Partnership opportunities

Acquirers are well-positioned to forge valuable partnerships with other players in the payments ecosystem, such as payment facilitators, independent software vendors, and payment processors. These partnerships offer mutually beneficial outcomes by combining acquirers‘ financial services and compliance expertise with the innovation and niche solutions brought by other participants.

For example, partnering with payfacs can help acquirers enhance their offerings by outsourcing reach and distribution to merchants while ensuring merchants get access to seamless payment processing built on top of their core acquiring services. Additionally, partnering directly with banks offers opportunities to collaborate on broader financial services, such as liquidity management or lending solutions.

Similarly, partnering with ISVs can enable acquirers to expand into vertical markets that demand tailored payment solutions, such as e-commerce, subscription services, or nonprofit sectors.

By working together, banks, acquirers, and other partners can co-create end-to-end payment solutions that address specific market needs while leveraging each other’s strengths. This collaboration is particularly beneficial when compliance management, risk mitigation, and fraud prevention can be integrated into a unified offering.

Navigating compliance and regulation

Acquirers are highly regulated institutions with strict requirements for AML, KYC, and data protection. As such, their involvement in the payments ecosystem often brings an added layer of security and trust. Partnerships with payment processors, payfacs, and ISVs can ease the compliance burden for all parties involved by ensuring that regulations are met across the entire payment chain.

Collaborating with other payment industry players allows acquirers to streamline compliance processes and avoid costly regulatory missteps. These partnerships can also help banks extend their reach into markets or verticals that may otherwise be outside their direct customer base while maintaining robust compliance frameworks.

Expanding services and innovation

To remain competitive, acquirers must innovate continuously in response to customer demands and market trends. Collaboration with emerging payment technologies, such as open banking or digital wallets, offers significant opportunities for acquirers to expand their service offerings. For instance, partnering with fintech companies and payment processors can help acquirers roll out more flexible, customer-centric payment solutions that provide faster transactions and lower fees.

Acquirers also play a crucial role in ensuring financial inclusion by making payment solutions accessible to businesses, including startups, SMBs, and nonprofits. By partnering with ISVs or payment facilitators, banks can offer bespoke solutions that cater to the unique needs of specific sectors, creating opportunities for growth in underserved markets.

Risk management and stability

Acquirers are highly focused on risk management, as their role in managing customer funds and processing payments necessitates robust systems for fraud prevention, transaction monitoring, and risk mitigation. In partnerships with other payment ecosystem participants, acquirers must ensure that these systems are integrated seamlessly to protect against financial and reputational risks.

By working with other players, such as payment facilitators or payment processors, acquirers can share the responsibility for managing risk and ensure that their partners adhere to the same high standards of compliance. This collaborative approach enables banks to scale their services while maintaining a strong reputation for security and trust.

Benefits of partnering with Fire for acquirers

Large merchant acquirers already provide financial services to a broad range of businesses, from startups to established enterprises. While acquirers have strong relationships with banks – including joint ventures in some cases – they don’t always offer the full range of payment solutions businesses need. Many banks also lack API-enabled accounts, limiting their ability to support seamless, automated payment flows.

By partnering with Fire, acquirers can enhance their SME offering with API-reachable accounts that enable real-time payments, automated reconciliation, and better cash flow management. This allows them to provide their SME networks with modern payment capabilities, including fast account-to-account transfers, on-demand payouts, and multi-currency transactions, helping businesses streamline settlement processes for global operations.

Fire provides a trusted, secure, and regulated platform for major financial institutions looking to bring innovative products to market under their own brand. As a financial institution regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and licenced by the FCA, Fire offers a secure environment for delivering branded account-to-account payment services, such as A2A offerings. Additionally, Fire’s automated payment reconciliation solutions can help reduce operational costs, improving financial management for clients.

Conclusion

As the payments industry continues to evolve, acquirers remain central to facilitating secure, efficient, and scalable payment solutions. By forming strategic partnerships with fintechs, ISVs, and payment facilitators, acquirers can enhance their service offerings, navigate regulatory complexities, and drive innovation in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Collaboration not only strengthens compliance and risk management but also enables acquirers to expand into new markets and deliver more tailored solutions to businesses of all sizes. With Fire’s API-driven technology, acquirers can further optimise payment flows, improve reconciliation, and provide modern, automated financial services to their customers.

By embracing partnerships and leveraging innovative solutions, acquirers can position themselves at the forefront of the evolving payments ecosystem, ensuring long-term growth and success.