Transforming Merchant Acquiring with FICO®
From risk to retention, FICO® powers smarter merchant decisions at every stage. The merchant acquiring landscape is evolving rapidly. Acquirers are now expected to deliver more than payment processing — they must offer a modern, full-service platform with seamless onboarding, proactive fraud protection, dynamic pricing, and access to embedded financial services. Meeting these expectations is no longer optional; it’s a competitive necessity.
Technology, Insights, and Solutions
The market is polarizing, consolidation amongst the biggest players is accelerating modernization, while fintech and paytech disruptors are setting new expectations for experience and value. The payment processing domain is being reshaped by disruptive innovations such as embedded finance, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies are revolutionizing transaction management and presenting acquirers with opportunities to enhance their service portfolios.
To maintain a competitive edge, acquirers must prioritize investment in these technologies to streamline onboarding processes, fortify security measures, and address the diverse requirements of their merchant base. Strategic adoption of such advancements will not only drive operational efficiency but also ensure sustained growth and relevance within the rapidly evolving marketplace.
Key challenges faced by acquirers
What merchant acquirers want and need
Faster onboarding
Smarter approvals
Chargeback protection
Risk-based pricing
Dynamic limits and reserves
Merchant-facing analytics
Embedded lending
Lower attrition
Why FICO
FICO brings a powerful advantage to merchant acquiring: the ability to embed decision intelligence across the entire merchant lifecycle. By aligning data to decisions, turning those decisions into real-time insights, automating intelligent actions, and tracking measurable outcomes, we empower acquirers to optimize key touchpoints across the merchant lifecycle—driving smarter decisions in onboarding, monitoring, engagement, and portfolio management. This Data-Insights-Actions-Outcomes model positions acquirers to lower risk, unlock hidden margin, deepen merchant loyalty, and transform their portfolios into growth engines.
We are enabling acquirers to build dynamic, configurable decision strategies across key lifecycle stages:
- Onboarding: Automate approval decisions using configurable risk, identity, and behavioral signals
- Transaction Monitoring: Apply real-time risk thresholds, velocity logic, or merchant-specific rules
- Interchange Optimization: Use merchant data to route transactions toward optimal interchange buckets
- Chargeback Triage: Score disputes based on fraud signals, transaction history, and merchant behavior
Instead of static rule sets, acquirers gain a strategy-driven decision layer—adaptable over time and designed to support growth and risk reduction simultaneously.
Acquirers need to treat SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise merchants differently—without maintaining separate systems. Our platform makes it possible to:
- Apply unique onboarding or risk rules per merchant profile
- Automate comms and workflows based on merchant type or transaction patterns
- Drive personalization at scale—within a single orchestration layer
This enables precise treatment without added operational complexity.
FICO’s approach unlocks new revenue streams for acquirers—not just efficiency gains. For example:
- Interchange fee intelligence: Classify merchant segments and transactions to unlock cost savings
- Churn scoring: Predict merchant attrition before it happens and trigger intervention strategies
- Chargeback automation: Reduce losses and manual review with dispute decision models
These are the kinds of high-margin, monetizable insights that traditional processors can't deliver.
FICO Platform is built to integrate into existing infrastructure through modular APIs and tools. Acquirers can start with a single use case and expand over time without replatforming. Key advantages:
- Faster implementation than custom dev
- No disruption to current workflows
- Scales with acquirer growth and complexity
In a market where onboarding speed and integrations are table stakes, acquirers need a new edge. FICO provides that edge through applied decision science—so acquirers can manage risk, reduce attrition, and grow revenue intelligently across their merchant base.
We’re not just enabling faster flows—we’re enabling smarter ones. That’s the difference between being a vendor and being a strategic growth partner.
Why FICO® Platform is built for the entire merchant lifecycle
From risk to retention, FICO powers smarter merchant decisions at every stage
64% of merchant acquirers still rely on siloed systems for onboarding, risk, fraud, and collections.
Only 27% of acquirers say their credit, fraud, and pricing decisions are made using a unified strategy.
Acquirers lose an average of 22% of high-quality SMB leads due to manual or slow onboarding decisions.
Fraud, credit, and underwriting teams often use different data sets — cited as the #1 internal blocker to automation by global acquirers.
91% of global acquirers plan to replace or augment their decisioning platforms within the next 24 months.
FICO Platform use cases for acquirers
These are some of the high impact, revenue-driving use cases that FICO can deploy to solve immediate merchant acquirer pain points — each tied to clear KPIs that demonstrate measurable business value.
| Use Case | Description | KPIs | Value to Acquirer |
| Instant Onboarding | KYC, KYB, MCC validation, approval orchestration | Time to Activation, Abandonment Rate, Pull-Through | Accelerates merchant revenue, reduces drop-off |
| Fraud Prevention | Fraud monitoring capability | Chargeback Rate, False Positives, Fraud Loss | Reduces losses and enables upsell to merchants |
| Risk-Based Pricing | Dynamic pricing based on risk profiles | Margin per Merchant, Approval Rate | Preserves margins; enables safer growth |
| Merchant Dashboards | White-labeled analytics, trends, and benchmarking | Dashboard Engagement, Retention Rate | Improves stickiness; creates new monetization option |
| Churn/Upsell Models | Predictive merchant behavior scoring | Retention Rate, Lifetime Value (LTV) Growth | Boosts retention and expands high-potential accounts |
| Embedded Lending Enablement | Pre-qualification and risk scoring for SMB credit | Offer Conversion, Lending Volume | Drives new revenue without requiring acquirer lending |
Learn more about FICO Platform
