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April 2025 • Issue 25:04:01

Secrets of payments industry

resilience – Part 2

Adam Atlas
Attorney at Law
1. Three things position the acquiring business as
fit for survival in turbulent times. First and fore-
most, acquiring is sales-driven. Like it or not, front-
line salespeople lead the way in bringing business
from one processor to another. Sales skills cannot be
taken away. Indeed, an ISO is often valued as much for
its deal-flow (that is, new sales) as it is for its existing
portfolio of business.

Second, payments are not optional for merchants: they
all need payment processing. The challenge of selling
payment services is therefore not in the sale of the ser-
vice itself, but the products around that core service
and the pricing of the underlying service.

hrough the years, the payments industry has Finally, the rails on which payments operate are much
faced numerous curve balls—recessions, dis- much harder to change than we imagined. The first per-
ruptive startups and technologies, data breach-
T es, major lawsuits, and onerous legislation, for
example. Every time, we've collectively risen to the chal-
lenges to not merely stay afloat but to adapt, innovate and Contributed articles inside by:
thrive.

With this in mind, members of The Green Sheet Advisory Allen Kopelman .....................................................................................16
Board answered the following questions: 1. Why are we so Cheryl Fitzgaarald ................................................................................26
good at this? 2. And what plans should payments enter-
prises have in place to surmount curve balls we might face Ken Musante ..........................................................................................28
in the next 12 months? Lee Jones and Habib Ansari .............................................................30

Following is a portion of the responses we received. The Zaki Farooq .............................................................................................32
first set of responses appeared in our second March issue, Adam Atlas ..............................................................................................34
25:03:02. Thank you to all who participated in this discus-
sion.

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