The Green Sheet Online Edition
December 8, 2025 • 25:12:01
Making space for impact and for yourself in December
With holiday lights up and merchant storefronts brimming with activity, you, as a merchant services provider, are navigating one of the most demanding stretches of the year. By now, you, your partners and support team have already spent weeks, or often months, helping merchants fortify their systems for the holiday rush.
Gateways have been tuned, terminals refreshed, fraud tools tightened, websites tested and backups reviewed. Much of the heavy lifting was done early, long before the first holiday shoppers crossed a threshold or clicked "Add to cart."
And yet, this in-between time, after Thanksgiving but before the final year-end surge, is where your payments expertise can matter most.
This is when merchants start discovering the small stress fractures the holiday rush reveals: a checkout flow that suddenly feels sluggish, a POS that hiccups during peak traffic, a settlement question that surfaces just when staff are stretched thin. These are rarely catastrophic issues, but they can chip away at a merchant’s confidence during their most make-or-break season.
Your availability, not constant, not round-the-clock, but reliable, can make all the difference. A quick check-in, a reassuring call or a reminder that support is close by can calm nerves, restore momentum and strengthen the relationship well into the new year.
But there’s a second, equally important responsibility this month: taking care of yourself.
The payments industry is built on responsiveness, but December has a way of expanding every request, inflating every urgency and tempting people to push past their own limits. It’s easy to forget that you deserve the same care and attention you offer your merchants.
So protect time for the people who ground you. Let yourself step back from the rush long enough to enjoy the warmth, the rituals, the music, the meals, the faces you treasure. A rested, grounded professional is far more effective and far more ready for the opportunities and challenges the new year will bring.
This season, your merchants need your expertise. Your family and friends need you. And you need the space to honor both. 
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