Research

Payments, and the payments landscape, are changing fast. Financial institutions, issuing processors, the global card networks, acquirers, acquiring processors, and merchants are all upgrading their infrastructure. It is no longer possible to ign...

Mercator looks back to 2020 and ahead to 2022 to provide our perspective on the merchant services and transaction processing ecosystems. Our forecast for this year was very accurate, COVID-19 notwithstanding, and we are confident that our roadma...

In this viewpoint, Mercator examines the prepaid card market, revisiting the forecasts we made last year, identifying current trends, and offering predictions for the future. On the whole, the market is one of the fastest growing segments of the...

After spending the pandemic years shoring up processes and capabilities to keep business moving, lenders can now pivot toward greater efficiency and borrower insight and allow for finding a place among the many upstarts in the marketplace. Nimbl...

Fraud detection has made rapid improvements in a short period. In the year ahead, look for the charge toward global identity trust to make big advancements even as society deals with problems that seem more reflective of modern times, such as su...

The COVID-19 pandemic brought sweeping changes to the ways consumers make payments. If anything, 2022 could see even more dramatic shifts in payment trends, particularly in terms of regulation, how card networks position themselves technological...

The rise of direct indexing goes far beyond a trend. Rather, it is the crucible in which the wealth management industry is being reshaped. It allows the formation of a basket of stocks into something reflective of client preferences, whether tho...

Fraud has always been a challenge for the gift card market, and recent years have seen an increase in the number of cases and total financial losses. Despite this trend, recent advances in technology are helping in fraud prevention and detection...

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of e-commerce sales across the U.S., but it also caused a major increase in the number of chargebacks experienced by merchants across all scales and industries. Understanding the key causes and impl...

Open-loop prepaid card loads increase as a result of the pandemic. New research from Mercator Advisory Group shows which segments of the U.S. open-loop prepaid card market will grow and which will shrink through 2025.