Latest Report from The Strawhecker Group Analyzes 300+ U.S. Merchant Acquirers

According to the Strawhecker Group’s (TSG)  Top 300: Directory of U.S. Merchant Acquirers report, the top 10 merchant acquirers according to card volume directly process $5 trillion annually, and manage the majority of the country’s $6 trillion in annual card spend.

“Today’s acquirers are processing more transactions than ever, as credit card acceptance and usage continually moves upward due to trends such as consumers using cards for smaller purchases, and merchants seeing new upside in underpenetrated areas like B2B,” Trevor Forbes, Director of Metrics at The Strawhecker Group told Transaction Trends.

The new TSG report analyzed over 300 U.S. Merchant Acquirers, representing over 90 percent of all card payment volume in the country, and uncovered trends and insights in the merchant acquiring industry.

Recent high-profile merger and acquisition activity has impacted the top ten acquirers. With the pending acquisitions of First Data and Worldpay, the report found that eight of the top 10 acquirers “will have an exceedingly strong bank-channel.”

The acquiring space is top heavy, the report found, with the top five players processed an estimated $4.3 trillion in card volume in 2018.

Other findings from the report include:

• 21 percent of the entities listed in the report are publicly traded companies.
• Newer entrants from the technology space are growing; Adyen, Stripe, Shopify, Square, & Braintree are all top 30 players by card volume.
• 61 percent of the entities listed offer cash advances or business loans
• 40 percent of the top 10 were determined to have 10 percent or more growth in card volume, transactions and/or merchants since last year
• 34 percent of the entities listed sell First Data’s Clover products.
• Chase made its way to the top of the list in terms of total U.S. est. card volume.
• Georgia is the most common state for industry headquarters among the top 25 players.

TSG’s analysis uncovered over 8,000 data points across the 300 entities reviewed, Forbes said. Data was sourced from the institutional knowledge & estimates of its acquiring experts, direct surveys, and secondary data gathering efforts. “This analysis resulted in the largest U.S. acquirer directory that TSG has ever completed,” Forbes told Transaction Trends.

The Strawhecker Group is a sponsor and will be at TRANSACT, the world’s largest payments technology event April 30-May 2 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The world’s largest acquirers, featured in the report, will be present at TRANSACT on the show floor, on the SecureTrust Main Stage, and in the seven educational tracks.

TRANSACT, produced by ETA, provides 4,000 attendees with a robust exhibit hall with more than 200 exhibitors, extensive networking events, and forward-looking educational sessions on the groundbreaking technologies, trends and policies shaping the payments industry. To register, click here.