How enterprise organizations can future-proof their vendor choices, according to Gartner^®.

Customer expectations around payments are evolving rapidly. No matter where they shop, today’s buyers want instant, frictionless checkout experiences. They expect to be able to use a variety of payment methods, from local wallets to buy-now pay-later options, all in just a few taps. Limited payment options or clunky checkout processes are enough to send customers elsewhere quickly. 

Selecting the right payments vendor is critical to delivering an experience customers will stick around for. In their April 2025 report, “12 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Digital Commerce Payments Vendor,” the Gartner Analysts Debbie Buckland and Peter Ryan lay out a set of twelve considerations to keep top-of-mind during the process of selecting such a vendor.

The framework provides a structured, vendor-agnostic way to test payment providers across four dimensions: Customer Experience, Finance, Operations, and Merchant Experience. 

 

 

The value to enterprise leaders is twofold. First, the framework ensures a selection process that balances conversion, cost, and risk, so payments become an engine for growth, not a constraint. Second, it helps avoid short-term fixes that don’t scale as you enter new markets or channels. “Imagine moving into a new country only to find the business launch delayed by months because the payments vendor cannot process payments there,” Buckland and Ryan write.

At Fiserv, we’re committed to payments procurements aligned with what leading analysts like Gartner recommend. By focusing on global coverage, flexible integration options, robust security, and a seamless customer experience, we believe Fiserv ensures that enterprises have the tools and capabilities needed to address all of Gartner’s four focus areas:

Focus area 1: Customer experience

Start by prioritizing payment flexibility. Look for providers that go beyond credit cards to support a wide range of options – like local wallets, bank transfers, account-to-account payments, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), and gift cards. Offering diverse payment methods can significantly improve conversion rates by meeting customer preferences at checkout. While global reach and regional expertise are important, it’s the breadth of payment options that truly drives performance across markets.

Focus area 2: Finance

Gartner advises starting with the markets you operate in and planning to grow. A provider with strong local presence and regional payment support can improve authorization rates and ease expansion. Also consider how they handle settlement and currency – local currency settlement reduces FX costs and simplifies fund movement. Evaluate fund access speed and pricing models carefully and look for support for compliant surcharging to help offset processing fees.

Focus area 3: Operations

Seamless integration is essential. Choose providers that offer flexible ways to accept payments – such as plugins, hosted checkout pages, and APIs – that easily connect with your existing platforms and systems. A well-integrated solution ensures a smooth checkout experience and minimizes disruptions. Equally important is reliability: review the provider’s SLAs, guarantees, and incident response plans. As Gartner notes, “Customers unable to complete the payment process will go elsewhere to make their purchases,” making resilience and recovery planning critical.

The technical foundation matters. Providers with direct network access across merchant, issuer, and financial institution ecosystems are uniquely positioned to help reduce costs and latency. Support for Level 2 and 3 data enables B2B card acceptance and unlock interchange savings. Equally important is access to highly detailed transaction data and strong integration capabilities – seek providers with prebuilt connectors to commerce, ERP, POS, fraud, tax, and loyalty platforms to accelerate deployment and reduce complexity.

Focus area 4: Merchant experience

Managing risk and reducing operational complexity go hand in hand. Leading providers offer robust fraud prevention tools – such as tokenization, 3DS, AI-driven rule sets, and the flexibility to retain tokenized data when switching vendors. Gartner recommends combining tokenization with hosted payment fields to secure data in transit and at rest, while minimizing PCI DSS scope. To further ease the burden on internal teams, managed services like outsourced chargeback handling and fraud operations can significantly cut costs and headaches. Together with these capabilities, the right provider helps streamline dispute resolution and risk management across the payment lifecycle.

Don’t underestimate the power of rich operational dashboards and accessible APIs – they’re essential for streamlining daily reconciliation, dispute workflows, and transaction research. By leveraging consolidated, business-critical data, leading providers help you gain visibility into every stage of the payment lifecycle, fast-track reconciliation, and manage funding flows with precision. These tools also enable deeper customer understanding through targeted profiles that incorporate demographics, socioeconomics, and intent – giving your finance and support teams the insights they need to operate smarter and faster.

Always align with industry best practices

Enterprises that work through the twelve questions from Gartner put themselves in position to land on providers that balance reach, security, and innovation. Bring these questions into RFPs, renewals, and vendor discussions to uncover the real fit and risk of a potential payments provider.

Finally, don’t be afraid to bring up any other questions that these twelve issues raise. Yes, it’s a checklist, but more importantly, it is a conversation starter – all part of the effort to ensure that your payment needs are met and procured according to the best practices of a rapidly evolving global payments industry.

Gartner, 12 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Digital Commerce Payments Vendor, By Debbie Buckland, Peter Ryan, 2 April 2025

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