Merchant Acquiring and Processing in Western Europe 2008

Introduction

Lafferty Merchant Acquiring and Processing in Western Europe 2008 provides an analysis of key merchant acquirers and their market share in terms of number of cards, billed volume and number of POS terminals. It also analyses credit card issuing processors market share by cards and credit card acquiring processors market share by transactions. It contains 16 country studies: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods is used by a dedicated team of in-house researchers and analysts to produce accurate and unbiased data. The report is reader-friendly through the use of a bullet point format and graphs, pie charts and tables to help illustrate key data.

Highlights Across Western Europe generally, merchant service charges are coming under increased pressure. Lafferty Group research indicates an average merchant service charge of 1.51 percent in 2007, compared to a rate of 1.96 percent in 2003. Lafferty Merchant Acquiring and Processing in Western Europe 2008 looks at maximum, minimum and average merchant service charges in markets across Western Europe.

As merchant acquiring is a low-profit, high-volume business, the industry has been consolidating globally. Retailers are increasingly trading in many different countries so the facility for multi-country acquiring services is becoming more important. RBS Streamline is just one acquirer with a significant European and global presence.

The processing function, both on the acquiring and issuing side, remains fairly diverse, with players such as First Data and TSYS active in a number of Western European countries, and with a significant number of acquirers and issuers preferring to keep their processing in-house.

Globally, there is a trend away from domestic-only processors to companies with international operations that enable them to benefit from economies of scale, international experience and knowledge. SEPA, too, is driving the industry towards processing operations that have European coverage.