Huh 🤔, we've been looking deeply into this landscape for a number of months and these are some of our findings (so far):
- Yes, acquirers lose interchange if volume moves off cards, but the decision pressure comes from the merchant. If a merchant can save bps on the 2-3%+, they’ll push for it, and the ecosystem adapts around that
- There are different payment types (i.e. closed loop tokens like gift cards) that don't carry the same onerous fees associated with credit cards. Stablecoins, as programmable payment instruments are well-suited to take advantage of some of these existing token types
- Acquirers (esp in US post-GENIUS) are looking at stablecoin payments and how to incorporate these txs into their reconciliation processes because they see where the puck is going
- Terminals WILL be opened up at some point in the future. There have been some notable movements on this on the anti trust litigation side as all merchants are fed up paying 100B+ to middlemen (mostly the card networks) to settle transactions
To see where the future is going, I'd focus on the incentives of merchants that own distribution and customer relationships, NOT the acquirers.
