The Green Sheet Online Edition
April 4, 2026 • 26:04:02
Does vendor lock-in have a future?
For years, the dominant narrative in merchant acquiring centered on a simple promise: one platform, one provider, one seamless experience. While not universally embraced, the model gained traction, as bundled solutions promised to reduce complexity and accelerate growth. This approach helped define integrated payments and fueled the rise of platforms like Square and Lightspeed, where merchants willingly paid a premium for technology that solved real business problems.
Today, that model is showing its limits. Businesses are placing a higher priority on adaptability, customization and control, according to recent research. Some merchants are pushing back against relationships that restrict their ability to innovate, access their own data or change providers. What was once seen as convenience is increasingly viewed as constraint.
In this article, The Green Sheet examines how vendor and merchant relationships are evolving, and what that shift means for the future of payments.
All-in-one not for all
A March 2026 study from merchant-of-record provider Reach, based on a survey of 1,000 retail and SaaS decision-makers in the United States and the United Kingdom, found 68 percent believed their companies would grow faster if they were not tied to a single technology provider.
Another 65 percent said they would generate more revenue without that constraint, while 67 percent reported that platform lock-in limited their ability to adapt to changing business and customer requirements.
Commenting on the findings, Reach CEO Sam Ranieri, stated that all-in-one platforms can help retail and SaaS businesses manage regulatory, payments and customer service requirements, but may also inhibit growth. "Companies often adopt all-in-one platforms for convenience, but what looks simple at the outset can limit flexibility, increase tech debt and reduce control as businesses expand into international markets," he said in a statement.
Despite these concerns, most survey participants chose to keep their existing technology platforms. Researchers found 16 percent of respondents were satisfied with current providers. Others pointed to practical barriers to switching, including downtime risk or lost sales (38 percent), switching costs (36 percent) and the time and internal resources required to make changes (35 percent).
Evolving business models
Experts interviewed for this article noted that regulatory, compliance and end-user demands are pushing merchants from single-platform models to multi-vendor relationships.
Andy Mortland, senior vice president of product and software development at Accertify, affirmed that companies needing more than a checkbox approach to compliance frequently hire experts and managed service providers.
"Finance, healthcare and other highly regulated companies can't conduct business unless they are compliant," he said. "In these industries, where knowledge and best practice extend beyond PCI DSS, too many firms take the minimum required steps to pass an audit, and if that audit comes up tomorrow, they'll need a defensible control to prove they're meeting all the checks required."
Chris Kronenthal, president of FreedomPay, suggested that a simple technology stack with a POS system, gateway, processor and value-added services is a feasible entry point for small and midsize businesses lacking the resources or expertise to manage a complex ecosystem.
"As merchants grow, they will require more advantageous pricing, more sophisticated tools at each layer of the stack and a more open ecosystem," he said. "Working with a partner that offers fair terms and transparent pricing can ease the transition from a single platform to a multi-vendor environment."
Evolving selling
Experts warned that low-rate, discounted and short-term savings offers can trap merchants in relationships that are difficult to exit.
Goran Bosankic, co-founder and CEO of Field39, noted that low-priced offers accompanied by downtime, operational burdens and limited data access may cost merchants more in the long run. "Sellers must focus on value-added service and reliability," he said. "Helping merchants focus on core business by letting payments work for them is crucial in selling merchant services today."
Kronenthal mentioned that offers built on upfront savings followed by price increases are less effective than trusted partnerships that support upsell and cross-sell opportunities. "Selling needs to pivot from price to value," he said. "By pivoting to a value-based engagement model, with transparency in pricing, potential rate increase mechanisms and contract terms, sellers can start to create a true 'win-win' relationship dialog with the merchant."
Allen Kopelman, co-founder and CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems, urged fellow ISOs to borrow a page from Big Tech and sell technology solutions rather than payment processing. "Merchants who use technology with embedded payments to run their business don't care about rate," he said. "Any payments pro who isn't selling software will soon be extinct or irrelevant."
Sticky or icky?
Enrolling customers in multiple solutions has long been a common practice among merchant service providers, who have found that creating "stickiness," or having multiple hooks in an account, often makes clients less likely to seek alternatives. Experts pointed out that this approach is less effective when it limits choice, especially for merchants using multiple providers who want optionality without exclusive commitments.
Kronenthal called optionality "integration by another name" for platforms with broad networks of connectivity and integrations. These networks offer a diversity of products and services, he said, and create value as they add new partners, payment methods and device manufacturers.
He added that data and autonomous operations are becoming key differentiators for open platforms. Providers with strong reconciliation and observability tools can give merchants greater control over their technology across multiple channels, processors, ISVs and regions.
Stephen Martin, co-founder and CEO of RouteSense, proposed that merchants are more susceptible to vendor lock-in when they can't see transactions and payment flows. "If you don't know your auth rate is underperforming, you don't know your processor is the problem," he said. "If you don't understand chargeback thresholds, you can't push back when your MID gets pulled."
A model built on ignorance is not sustainable, Martin added, particularly as merchants are getting smarter, data is becoming more accessible and programs like the Visa Acquiring Monitoring Program (VAMP) are forcing stakeholders to pay attention to numbers they once ignored. Providers relying on termination clauses and proprietary integrations will need new strategies.
All-in-one or one-to-many
Noting that today's merchants are more technologically advanced and often work with multiple gateways, processors and software providers, experts advised MLSs to be consultative and avoid pitches focused on features and benefits.
Martin acknowledged the days of walking into a business and pitching your stack are over. "Merchants aren't looking for another vendor to add to the pile," he said. "They're drowning in vendors. What they really want is someone who can help them make sense of what they already have: what's working, what isn't and where they are bleeding."
Better yet, he added, if you walk in with actual insight about their portfolio before they've told you anything, you'll have their attention. That's a very different skill than traditional payments sales, and many in the industry have yet to make that shift.
Bosankic advised providers to leverage multi-processor and multi-gateway trends. "Platforms and solutions that put merchants at the center of the experience, with more power and choice, are gaining momentum," he said. "Enabling merchants to control transaction flows and data without being locked in is the difference between an average and excellent provider."
Kronenthal advised service providers to complement freedom of choice with ease of adoption. "Providers that want to offer flexibility to merchants need robust integration tools to onboard new partners, observability tools to ensure a solution's interconnected components are functioning well, and a holistic, aggregated view of data to ensure seamless and consistent reconciliation," he said.
Porting or jail-breaking
Mike Zawitkowski, managing partner of Acorn Analytics Inc., admitted that moving between software platforms is never entirely seamless, even for a developer. "Every system uses different data fields for storing data and the fields won't match," he said. "Developers have to employ tricks, appends and pivots to move data from one system to another without losing key historical records."
There's friction, even with something as simple as migrating to-do list software, he observed, adding, there may be more fields, fewer fields or entirely different ones. If the new software doesn't have a start date field, he continued, do you decide you don't really need it and delete that field before the import?
Platforms that are engineered for maximum exportability and compatibility provide flexible options for exporting and sharing data, Zawitkowski said. Trello, for example, has numerous use cases, from software development and holiday shopping to home repairs. Ease of use and the ability to export each field's history makes it valuable for customizing reports and managing projects.
Kopelman cautioned against workaround solutions that override proprietary software platforms. These unauthorized modifications, sometimes called jailbreaking, enable merchants that are tied to a single payment processor to reroute transactions to alternative processing hosts, which can violate a provider's terms of service and trigger legal actions, fines and voided warranties.
"Software lockdown will get worse as companies use AI to get around software products," he said. "No company would spend millions just to make a SaaS fee; everyone knows the big money is in processing and they will protect and defend their piece of the pie." Kopelman additionally noted that tech companies may take legal action to defend their revenue stake. When they detect an interception by a small or midsize merchant, they may initially issue a warning, restrict access or terminate an account. They tend to be tougher on enterprises that scale, market or sell workarounds, he added, noting these actions can cost defendants legal fees, processing relationships and even compliance penalties when card data is involved.
Building up or locking down
Looking ahead, experts predicted simple integrations and flexible, open-ended partnerships will become increasingly important in an AI-driven software landscape. Kronenthal stated that organizations can use AI to enhance internal processes and external merchant relationships. "A service provider that has achieved efficiencies through AI can pass along better margins to the merchant," he said.
"And a merchant that has adopted AI as a toolkit can accelerate their own integration or enhance the quality of guest and agentic AI interactions."
Martin advised providers to build on merchants' existing infrastructure and use AI to show decline codes, transaction patterns and chargeback signals previously only visible to processors.
"AI can put that information directly in the merchant's hands in real time, and when that happens the whole dynamic changes," he said. "Providers who lean into that are going to build real trust. The ones using AI to optimize their own margins while keeping merchants in the dark are just running the same old playbook with a shinier pitch."
Selling or partnering
Experts agreed that next-generation solutions will not be defined by who offers the most features but by who offers the most freedom to leverage those features. From Martin's perspective, merchants know they have options. Those worth keeping, he said, are not staying out of loyalty; they're staying because you're putting numbers on the board. They're seeing better authorization rates, fewer chargebacks, MIDs that stay healthy, fines that never happen, he noted.
"If you can show up every month and point to something concrete you did for their business, you have a relationship," he said. "If you can't, you're just another line item waiting to get cut." Zawitkowski said customers don't stay because of contractual obligations or the difficulties of moving to another system. They stay because they like using your software. "Design software that is flexible and compatible, with low friction and low vendor lock-in, and people will want to keep using it forever,” he said. 
Dale S. Laszig, content strategy director at The Green Sheet and founder and CEO at DSL Direct, is a payments industry journalist, creator and consultant. Connect via email at dale@dsldirectllc.com and LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/dalelaszig.
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