Digital Transactions:
Small merchants are generating more payment volume, and health-care providers handily outlive restaurants and bars in their relationships with merchant acquirers, according to a new analysis from The Strawhecker Group.
Data from the Omaha, Neb.-based consulting and research firm’s Acquiring Industry Metrics service show that the average small and mid-sized business will generate $220,000 in annual credit and debit card volume in 2018 versus only $192,000 as recently as 2015. Strawhecker defines an SMB as a merchant with less than $5 million in annual card volume.
The AIM platform contains data on 3.7 million U.S. card-accepting merchants, about half the country’s total, and it comes from 30 acquirers, according to Josh Istas, AIM director. The platform’s data include price, profitability, attrition, and growth metrics.
Multiple factors account for the average SMB’s 4.5% compounded annual growth rate, says Istas. The healthy economy is pushing overall volumes up, and “there’s a lot of conversion from cash and check,” he notes.
In addition, merchants in emerging card-accepting markets nowadays often are in the health-care and business-to-business sectors, sectors which tend to have higher sales tickets than many traditional retail merchants. “The initial accounts are larger,” Istas says.