Omaha, NE, March 29, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TSG (The Strawhecker Group), a globally recognized analytics, intelligence, and solutions-focused firm in the payments industry, worked with payments companies to compile the industry’s most comprehensive resource on merchant acquirers. Collectively, the companies highlighted process over 90% of all card payment volume in the U.S.
2022 in many ways marked the first return to “normalcy” since the onset of the pandemic as several companies outpaced the combined average card volume growth of Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express (12.6%), with notable examples of size being Adyen, Square, Stripe, Toast, and Shift4 all experiencing payment volume growth in excess of 20% in 2022.
“Despite uncertainty last year, payment volumes increased once again. The beautiful thing about the payments industry is that it has a multitude of tailwinds that all result in growth,” said Mike Strawhecker, President at TSG. “These include consumer preferences continuing to move from cash/check to digital, merchant adoption from paper to digital, macro-economic trends including economic growth and inflation, as well as increased adoption of electronic payments at the sector-level, like the growth of eCommerce in retail or B2B, for example. The companies on this list lean into one or many of these tailwinds and aim to capitalize on them.”
Looking at the top-ranked companies, JPMorgan Chase & Co. ranks first for estimated U.S. total processing volume at $2.15T, Fiserv ranks first for estimated U.S. total transactions at 48.5B, and Square ranks first for estimated U.S. total number of merchants at 3.2M. Access the entire top ten here.
This data is highlighted in TSG’s 2023 Directory of U.S. Merchant Acquirers, sponsored by Stax, which features over 9,500 data points on more than 315 companies, covering national leaders to regional ISOs. The complete directory, which includes a quick reference guide for executives to review merchant portfolio statistics, can be previewed and purchased from TSGShop. TSG’s eReports subscribers can access this report and dozens of other deep dives, industry directories, country and company profiles, and educational primers.
Nearly 90% of the payment volume shown in TSG’s directory is processed by the top twenty-five listed companies. In total, the companies featured represent:
- 315+ U.S. merchant acquirers
- $11+ trillion in total processing volume
- 520+ total sponsor bank relationships
- 930+ total front/back-end processing relationships
- 50 total in-house processing platforms
TSG has published several insights on the country’s merchant acquiring landscape below. Read more commentary.
- The top five players processed an estimated $6.5 trillion in card volume in 2022. All five players have a strong bank sales channel, as they are either bank-owned or have bank partners/clients from other areas of their business.
- Stripe broke into the top 10 of processing volume for the first time in 2022. Stripe announced they expect to process over a trillion dollars in volume in 2023 globally.
- Adyen continued its strong pace of growth, increasing its dollar volume by over 50% in 2022. At Adyen’s current growth rate, they may break into the top 5 of merchant acquirers by U.S. processing volume in 2023.
- Only five players listed are estimated to serve more than one million merchants. Square is estimated to serve 500,000 more merchants than the player with the estimated next highest number of clients, albeit its merchant clients have a smaller than average size.
- Authorize.net (a Visa solution) is the payment gateway with the most partnerships among the acquirers listed, partnering with 42% of these players. This is an increase from 38% last year.
- Five of the top ten players listed grew their 2022 volume by more than the combined average volume growth of Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express of 12.6%.
- 35% of the players listed sell Fiserv’s Clover point-of-sale products. This is down from 41% of providers that listed Clover as an available smart POS offering.
- 37% of the players have more than one sponsor bank relationship
- California remained the most common headquarters state for the top 25 players and throughout the ~315 acquirers listed within the directory
For more information, please contact us online or call 1-833-690-1301. For media inquiries, please email press@thestrawgroup.com.
About TSG
TSG (The Strawhecker Group) is a globally recognized analytics and consulting firm that supports the entire payments ecosystem, serving over 1,000 clients from Fortune 500 leaders to more than a dozen of the world's most valuable brands. Trusted by industry leaders, TSG's strategic services, market intelligence, and analytics merge to empower clients with actionable and accessible information. Please visit www.TheStrawGroup.com.
