The 2025 Payment and Banking Industry Survey is based on 56 replies from companies across Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Every participating company operates internationally with cross-border transactions in multiple currencies. Reported monthly revenues range between €100,000 and €5,000,000.

The purpose of this survey was to establish a fact-based view of how companies currently manage payments and banking, how responsibilities are allocated internally, and what operational risks and inefficiencies this creates. Our goal was to compare perception with reality, quantify the financial impact of poor structures, and identify whether ownership exists at a senior level.

The results show a consistent pattern across industries: fragmented responsibilities, limited ownership, reliance on provider sales teams for decision-making, and recurring operational failures. The responses were collected during a four-week period in the summer of 2025, ensuring the findings are both recent and reflective of the market environment.

More than 80% of respondents face serious gaps that expose them to financial loss and instability. These findings support the need for a central, defined executive function that consolidates responsibility, builds resilience, and turns payments and banking into a strategic asset.

This survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire developed by our team based on recurring issues observed in consulting projects. The instrument included both quantitative and qualitative questions across six areas: ownership, cost tracking, performance measurement, incident history, technology and security practices, and FX/liquidity management.

The outreach targeted international companies with significant exposure to cross-border payments and multi-currency operations. All respondents fell into the defined monthly revenue range of €100,000 to €5,000,000, and each had active operations across at least 3 currencies; many handled 5 or more in any given month, and most rely on multiple payment service providers and banks without structured governance.

Data collection ran for 4 weeks in summer 2025. Invitations were distributed to decision makers in finance, operations, and management roles. Responses were validated against consistency checks, and the dataset was cleaned to remove incomplete or contradictory answers.

Percentages in this report are calculated on the base of 56 companies. To aid interpretation, results are always presented with both the percentage and the corresponding number of companies. This ensures clarity and avoids misrepresentation of scale.

Only 4 companies (7%) reported a senior leader with clear end-to-end accountability for payments and banking, while 52 companies (93%) distributed responsibilities across finance, operations, IT, and product without a single owner.

Reliance on vendors and providers' advice drives internal decisions in most cases, instead of independent reviews or formal due diligence that would test options, risks, and long-term fit.

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3.1.1 Procurement Narrative: Managing Fragmentation Through Strategic Vendor Governance

As the global payments ecosystem becomes increasingly fragmented across multiple rails, regional systems, and technology providers, organizations are facing a parallel rise in internal complexity. The growing diversity of payment methods, intermediaries, and platform-driven solutions has significantly expanded the vendor landscape, making procurement a critical control function rather than a purely transactional one.

In many organizations, fragmented ownership across finance, operations, and technology leads to inconsistent provider selection, duplicated integrations, and limited visibility into total payment costs. This often weakens negotiating leverage, increases operational risk, and limits the ability to respond effectively to market changes.

Adopting a more strategic procurement approach, built on centralized accountability and structured vendor governance, allows organizations to manage this complexity more effectively. Standardizing vendor evaluation, consolidating relationships where appropriate, and introducing clear performance tracking can improve both cost outcomes and service quality.

As payments continue to evolve with multiple rails, digital assets, and increasingly intelligent systems, procurement is shifting from a sourcing function to a broader role in ecosystem management. This includes ensuring interoperability, strengthening risk controls, and aligning payment infrastructure with long-term business priorities. [5]

A total of 48 companies (86%) do not present a consolidated payment and banking cost report to their board detailing acquirer margins, scheme fees, FX spreads, fraud losses, chargebacks, orchestration fees, or the use of detailed payment data. This lack of structured reporting leaves executives blind to one of the largest controllable cost centres in their business.

As a result, strategic decisions are taken without full visibility, creating silent profit erosion and heightened operational risk.

3.2.1 Procurement Narrative: Operational & Commercial Insight: Building End-to-End Cost Visibility

Payment-related costs are often fragmented across multiple providers, limiting the ability to assess total spend and benchmark effectively. This reduces the ability to identify inefficiencies and optimize pricing structures.

Research highlights that cross-border payments remain costly and lack transparency, driven in part by intermediary layers and foreign exchange spreads [6].

Without consolidated visibility, organizations are unable to manage one of their largest controllable cost areas actively.

3.2.2 Case Study: Unlocking Hidden Value Through Payment Cost Optimization

Problem: Adobe, operating a global subscription business, faced increasing complexity in its payment ecosystem with limited visibility into cost drivers. Payment routing inefficiencies and suboptimal use of payment methods made it difficult to identify margin leakage across regions.

Solution: Adobe partnered with Adyen to consolidate its payment operations and gain transaction-level visibility. The focus was on optimizing routing (including debit vs. credit usage), improving reporting, and centralizing payment data to better manage cost structures. [1]

Result:

While every company recognises payment and banking fee lines, yet the vast majority leave these unchallenged even as volumes and circumstances change, missing the opportunity to apply structured renegotiation with banks and providers.

Only 11 companies (20%) include acceptance rates as part of strategic planning, which leaves preventable declines hidden in topline conversion. Fintech innovation is also reviewed on an ad hoc basis rather than through a formal process, which means new alternatives are rarely considered, and options such as replacing card payments with open banking are not evaluated in a timely manner.

Across this sample, hidden costs typically range between 10% and 33% of profit, showing how easily silent erosion eliminates earnings when unmanaged.

3.3.1 Procurement Narrative: Operational and Commercial Insight: Moving from Static Pricing to Continuous Optimization

Payment pricing and commercial terms are often treated as fixed, even as transaction volumes, geographic reach, and customer behavior continue to evolve. This static approach limits the ability to fully capture value from increasing scale and shifting business dynamics.[7]

Introducing structured review cycles enables organizations to reassess provider performance and pricing on a regular basis. This includes benchmarking fees, evaluating acceptance rates, and comparing alternative providers or payment methods. By linking commercial terms to performance metrics and volume thresholds, organizations can ensure that pricing remains competitive and aligned with business growth and market expectations.

Shifting from passive acceptance to active management allows organizations to improve cost efficiency while also identifying opportunities for incremental revenue. Over time, this approach supports stronger commercial outcomes and better overall payment performance.

3.3.2 Case Study: Driving Revenue Growth Through Authorization Rate Improvement

Problem: Zapier experienced low authorization rates with its existing payment provider, resulting in failed transactions and lost revenue. The lack of detailed reporting limited its ability to understand and address the causes of payment declines.

Solution: Zapier migrated to Stripe and conducted A/B testing to compare performance. By leveraging improved authorization optimization tools and detailed transaction-level insights, the company refined its payment flows and addressed decline patterns. [2]

Result:

A total of 46 companies (82%) experienced at least one serious incident in the last 12 months, including frozen accounts, delayed settlements, blocked transactions, or sudden offboarding by a provider, and 44 companies (79%) reported significant delays in account opening or prolonged KYC reviews that disrupted operations.

While counterparties are known in most cases, 47 companies (84%) confirmed they have no contingency plan ready in case a bank or provider fails them, which leaves exit strategies, backups, and parallel structures unprepared when issues strike.

3.4.1 Procurement Narrative: Reducing Vendor Concentration Risk and Enhancing Resilience

Dependence on a limited number of payment providers creates a concentration risk that can significantly impact operations in the event of disruptions. These disruptions may arise from compliance reviews, regulatory actions, technical failures, or changes in provider risk appetite.

Building resilience requires a proactive approach to vendor strategy. This includes diversifying provider relationships, establishing multi-provider architectures, and ensuring contractual flexibility to enable rapid transitions when needed. In addition, organizations should maintain predefined contingency plans and periodically test fallback mechanisms. Institutional research highlights the importance of reducing concentration risk and strengthening resilience in payment systems [8].

A total of 49 companies (88%) lack a defined tokenization and portability strategy, which creates exposure during migrations or provider exits and slows any attempt to improve routing or pricing. A total of 45 companies (80%) remain uncertain about Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) analytics to quantify conversion loss from additional authentication steps. Many respondents also remain unaware about how to conduct sanction screening themselves and if they also have to double-check the source of funds from their own clients, since obligations sit with the company as well and cannot be delegated entirely to banks or payment providers.

3.5.1 Procurement Narrative: Embedding Data and Capability into Vendor Selection

Payment infrastructure decisions are often driven by immediate functional requirements or pricing considerations, while evolving merchant expectations increasingly emphasize advanced capabilities such as analytics, seamless integration, and value-added services. This gap can limit an organization’s ability to analyze performance, identify inefficiencies, and continuously improve outcomes.

A more forward-looking approach involves evaluating providers based on their ability to deliver granular data, advanced analytics, and flexible integration capabilities. Access to detailed transaction-level insights enables organizations to optimize routing, improve authorization rates, and refine fraud management strategies. Industry research highlights that capabilities such as payment orchestration, enhanced analytics, and data-driven services are becoming key differentiators in improving transaction performance and customer experience [7].

3.5.2 Case Study: Leveraging Data and Machine Learning to Optimize Payment Performance

Problem: Postmates, a high-volume on-demand platform, faced challenges with payment failures and needed to improve transaction success rates at scale. Existing systems lacked advanced optimization capabilities.

Solution: Postmates implemented a data-driven payments strategy using Stripe, incorporating machine learning models, smart retry logic, and account updater tools. Extensive testing enabled continuous optimization of payment flows. [3]

Result:

The issue centres on challenge and review rather than basic awareness. A total of 47 companies (84%) accept current FX arrangements as fixed and do not test the market or renegotiate with existing providers, even when volumes grow or business mix changes.

A total of 43 companies (77%) accept settlement terms that slow cash flow without building a liquidity plan that compensates for delayed funds, which weakens working capital and increases operational stress during growth or volatility.

3.6.1 Procurement Narrative: Optimizing FX, Settlement Terms, and Working Capital

FX conversion and settlement timelines are often accepted as standard terms, despite their significant impact on profitability and working capital. In many cases, organizations do not actively monitor FX spreads or reassess settlement conditions as transaction volumes increase.

A structured approach involves regularly benchmarking FX rates, renegotiating spreads, and exploring alternative providers. Similarly, optimizing settlement cycles can accelerate cash flow and improve liquidity planning. Global research highlights that inefficiencies in FX and settlement processes are key contributors to high cross-border payment costs [6].

Readiness was scored across ownership, measurement, resilience, and governance. A total of 50 companies (89%) fall into level 1 or level 2 on the scale, where decisions remain vendor-led, reporting stays partial, and resilience stays fragile. Only 6 companies (11%) show practices consistent with level 3 or higher, where leadership, structured analytics, redundancy, and tested contingency plans are in place.

The index underlines a structural weakness where the foundations for reliable, scalable operations are still missing in the vast majority of cases.

4.1 Procurement Narrative: Advancing Toward Data-Driven Vendor Management

Lower levels of payment maturity are often characterized by limited internal visibility and fragmented data environments, which reduce the organization’s ability to independently evaluate performance and make informed strategic decisions.

Advancing maturity requires structured evaluation frameworks and data-driven decision-making processes. This includes implementing performance dashboards, conducting regular provider reviews, and leveraging market benchmarks. Industry research highlights the importance of benchmarking progress against peers and using maturity-based assessments to evaluate capabilities and performance. Organizations that adopt this approach are better positioned to improve efficiency, reduce risk, and scale effectively, with leading institutions demonstrating significantly stronger outcomes through more advanced data, analytics, and modernization capabilities [9].

4.2 Case Study: Scaling Global Payments Through an Integrated and Mature Payment Strategy [4].

Problem: Creative Group, a global organization, faced fragmented payment systems, inconsistent acceptance rates, and rising fraud risks across multiple regions. Managing different providers across geographies created operational inefficiencies and limited visibility.

Solution: Creative Group adopted an integrated payments platform through Adyen, enabling local acquiring, centralized data visibility, and built-in fraud management. This allowed better control over transaction routing and risk.

Result:

Our recommendation shows that if companies introduce a Chief Payment Officer with mandate and budget, acceptance rates can improve by at least 10–15% overall through better fraud settings, method expansion, and more efficient vendor selection and routing, while hidden costs can be reduced by 10–33% of profit through term resets, active FX and fee management, and data-driven provider governance.

Companies also gain live contingency plans that protect against frozen funds, blocked accounts, and settlement delays, which reduces incident frequency and keeps operations stable during stress.

In this survey, no company reported having a Chief Payment Officer, and at best 6 companies (11%) have individuals who understand payments deeply and recognize how planning payments and banking operations change outcomes for revenue, risk, and liquidity.

Payment and banking continue to be a critical blind spot for most companies, yet none invest in structured training or dedicated expertise to close the gap.

The survey findings confirm that payment and banking require the same level of structured leadership as finance, risk, or technology, and without defined ownership companies will continue to lose profit and face disruption.

Establishing a Chief Payment Officer role and investing in professional expertise is the clearest path to protect earnings, strengthen resilience, and secure sustainable growth.

The findings of this survey point to a clear and consistent gap in how organizations manage payments and banking. While these functions play a critical role in revenue, cost control, and operational stability, they are often fragmented, loosely owned, and heavily reliant on external providers.

Across key areas such as ownership, cost visibility, resilience, data capability, and liquidity management, many organizations show limited internal control and a largely reactive approach to decision-making. This leads not only to measurable financial inefficiencies but also to avoidable operational and regulatory risks.

The survey findings confirm that payment and banking require the same level of structured leadership as finance, risk, or technology. Establishing a Chief Payment Officer role with clear mandate and budget is the clearest path to protect earnings, strengthen resilience, and secure sustainable growth.

As payment ecosystems continue to grow in complexity, shaped by new technologies, evolving regulations, and global expansion, the need for a stronger internal structure becomes more pressing.

Organizations that do not address these gaps risk falling behind both operationally and competitively.

Establishing clear ownership, strengthening internal expertise, and making decisions based on reliable data are essential steps toward building more stable and effective payment operations. A more structured and deliberate approach to managing providers, infrastructure, and performance can significantly improve outcomes over time.

[1] “Adyen, “Maximizing profit in subscription payments (Adobe case study),” Adyen Knowledge Hub

Available:https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/maximizing-profit-in-subscription-payments.,

[2] Stripe, “Zapier sees 4% uplift in auth rates with Stripe, creating $3M+ in additional revenue,” Stripe Customer Stories.

Available: https://stripe.com/en-bg/customers/zapier

[3] Stripe, “Postmates boosts authorisation rates with Stripe, adding $70+ million in revenue,” Stripe Customer Stories.

Available: https://stripe.com/in/customers/postmates-auth

[4] Adyen, “Creative Group growing globally with Adyen acquiring,” CaseStudies.com.

Available:https://www.casestudies.com/company/adyen/case-study/creative-group-growing-globally-with-adyen-acquiring

[5] McKinsey & Company, “The 2025 McKinsey Global Payments Report,” McKinsey & Company, 2025

Available: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/global-payments-report

[6] Bank for International Settlements, “Enhancing Cross-Border Payments: Building Blocks,” Oct. 2020. Available: https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d193.htm

[7] Capgemini Research Institute, World Payments Report 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.capgemini.com/in-en/insights/research-library/world-payments-report/

[8] Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) and International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures. Basel, Switzerland: Bank for International Settlements, Apr. 2012. Available: https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d101a.pdf

[9] KPMG, Partnering for Payment Modernization: Executive Summary. Feb. 2026. Available:https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmgsites/sg/pdf/2026/03/modernising-payments-executive-summary.pdf

Author Bio

Viktoria Soltesz is a payments and banking strategist with over 20 years of experience across banking, payments, and international taxation. She focuses on establishing payment and banking operations as a standalone strategic business function that integrates user experience, risk management, technology, compliance, and profitability.

She is the founder of PSP Angels s and leads an accounting, audit, and tax consulting firm in Cyprus specializing in global corporate tax structures and payment infrastructure strategy. Viktoria developed the Soltesz Payment Framework, used by international companies worldwide to optimize payment and banking operations.

She also established The Soltesz Institute, an EU-certified independent certification body dedicated to education and professional standards in the global payment and banking industry. Viktoria previously served on advisory boards for several financial institutions and is a European Certified Trainer, having lectured at the University of West London.

She is a frequent speaker at international industry conferences and the author of the bestselling book Moving Money – How Banks Think and The CPayO – Chief Payment Officer: The Role Which Doesn't Exist (but should!) (2025).

Abhinand V is a Senior Research Analyst at Beroe Inc, a global provider of customized procurement services. He specializes in tracking industries such as Banking, Financial Services, Insurance (BFSI), Global Business Services, and Procurement.

His expertise spans areas like market trends, sourcing and engagement models, best practices, benchmarking, trend forecasting, supplier identification and analysis, negotiation levers, supplier value generation, relationship management, and cost-savings opportunities. He has contributed to numerous projects for Fortune 500 companies across diverse sectors, including Oil and Gas, Telecom, BFSI, and CPG.

Abhinand holds an MBA in Marketing and Finance from AIMS Institutes, Bangalore, and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Amrita School of Engineering, Bangalore.