Jared Drieling, senior director of consulting and market intelligence at Omaha, Neb.-based merchant-acquiring consulting firm The Strawhecker Group, says the damage the coronavirus is inflicting on consumer spending shows that now might be a good time for acquirers, independent software vendors and other payments providers that have specialized in lucrative but narrow merchant niches to consider diversifying.
“What we’re seeing today is that a lot of those folks that had specialization in certain industries are taking the brunt of it,” Drieling tells Digital Transactions News. “I think they’re going [back] to the drawing board pretty quickly, trying to understand how to pivot in this environment.”