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4. Beyond speed and payment options, what up their line. That is a tangible, high-impact
improvements would make the biggest difference improvement that a rigid, one-size-fits-all cloud
for your merchants (e.g. lower costs, fewer disputes, system cannot deliver."
easier integrations, better service)? 5. If you could name one thing merchants wish the
"Our merchants' primary focus is on the lowest total cost industry would fix, what would it be?
of payments," Cardarelli said. "Shift4 owns and provides "If I had to name one thing merchants universally wish the
a secure gateway technology that supports PCI-validated industry would fix, it would be the outdated, rigid, legacy
point-to-point encryption, tokenization and EMV, as well payment infrastructure that currently acts as a significant
as free payment devices, gift cards & loyalty solutions, bottleneck to progress," Kraal said. "Too many PSPs, ac-
and merchant services. All of the above is offered at the quirers and processors are still operating on systems de-
lowest cost of acceptance." signed decades ago—architectures that were simply not
built for today's digital-first, global economy."
Kraal feels the single biggest difference comes from im-
provements that directly impact the merchant's bottom These old foundations, he added, are maintained with
line and future-proof their operations. "This starts with manual workarounds, patches and middleware, creating
higher acceptance rates and smarter dispute manage- opacity and inhibiting innovation. "This technical debt is
ment," he said. "Every lost transaction is lost revenue, and directly responsible for slow onboarding times, the lack of
providing merchants with clear, granular data and the data transparency, and the difficulty in rapidly integrat-
tools to dynamically adjust risk rules is transformative. ing new payment methods.

"Beyond revenue, however, is the necessity of migrating "The industry needs to collectively move beyond just
to modern, cloud-native infrastructure. This is the key to layering new features onto old systems. The solution is
unlocking the efficiencies inherent in 'easier integrations' building truly cloud-native, modular platforms from the
and 'better service.' Legacy systems make accessing use- ground up that are flexible by design, ready for tomor-
ful, real-time data difficult and slow down every aspect of row's technologies, and focused entirely on enabling the
a provider's service—from technical support to innovation merchant's growth and operational control."
deployment."
Erick Tu emphasized that merchants wish the industry
By moving the core processing layer to the cloud, Kraal would stop its obsessive push for 100 percent cloud-based
added, providers can offer "modular, API-driven plat- solutions for mission-critical, in-store functions. "The real-
forms that deliver real-time data visibility, scalability, and ity is that the public internet is not, and never will be, 100
continuous innovation without system downtime, turning percent reliable," he said. "Merchants are tired of paying
payments into a competitive advantage." the price for downtime, but they're also tired of being told
'that's just how the software works.'
Tu believes the biggest difference would come from three
areas: "Our merchants wish the industry would prioritize build-
• Guaranteed uptime: "I'm not talking about a lim- ing resilient and customizable systems that are not cloud-
ited 'offline mode' where functionality is crippled. dependent. They want a partner to generate solutions to
I mean systems built on native or hybrid architec- pain points and not just send them to a support forum.
ture that remain 100 percent functional—payments, Ultimately, technology that adapts to their business and
inventory, kitchen displays, everything—regardless solves their specific operational challenges and plays a vi-
of internet status. This eliminates the high cost and tal role in scaling business operations."
stress of downtime."
• Actionable data: "Merchants don't need more re- Dale Cardarelli summed it up succinctly: "Simplifying the
ports; they need insights. A system that links sales fragmented technology required to accept payments."
data to employee performance or inventory levels is From the desk of Patricia Carlin
a huge improvement. This allows managers to coach
staff effectively, recognize top performers, and prep In response to our questions about what merchants really
smarter, which will directly impact profitability." want, Patricia Carlin, co-founder and CEO of Deposyt,
• Deep customization: "A huge improvement is a was inspired to write the following essay:
system built to be customized. For example, when
a high-volume airport coffee shop struggled with After two decades in the payments industry, I can tell you
order times and needed to put customer names on with certainty that business owners are exhausted. It's not
each ticket, BLogic developed a custom feature that just from running their companies, but from the endless
pulled the customer's name directly from their cred- swirl of "innovation" that was supposed to make their
it card. lives easier. Every week brings another "disruptive" plat-
form, a new gateway, dashboard, or feature set promising
This drastically reduced human error and sped smarter payments but for most merchants, progress has
come with a price of even MORE complexity. They aren't
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