Retailers Prioritize Data Over Cost in Payments Orchestration, ACI Study Finds

Retailers are shifting their focus from simple cost-cutting to data-driven performance, according to new research from ACI Worldwide. For fintech professionals, this signals a maturing orchestration market where the ability to recover declined transactions and access cross-channel insights is becoming more valuable than competitive routing, despite persistent gaps in board-level visibility.

What was announced

ACI Worldwide has released a new report titled The Revenue Hidden in Plain Sight: Closing the Retail Payments Optimization Gap, based on research designed and fielded by Retail Systems. The findings reveal that 47% of retail payments professionals prioritize access to richer payments performance data across all channels as the primary benefit of payments orchestration. This requirement outranked the ability to retry declined transactions (44%) and the flexibility to expand into new markets (36%). Notably, reducing processing costs through competitive routing was the least selected benefit, cited by only 19% of respondents.

The study highlights a significant "visibility gap" within the industry. While 60% of organizations measure the success of payments optimization through the cost of processing, only 37% track revenue directly attributed to performance gains. Furthermore, 75% of respondents reported that payments optimization lacks board-level visibility at their organizations. Currently, only 30% of retailers place their payments performance at or above market benchmarks, and 12% admit they do not have enough data to assess their performance accurately.

In terms of future intent, 61% of retailers plan to engage external expertise or managed optimization programs over the next 12 months. Additionally, 57% plan to implement or expand a payments orchestration solution, while 30% intend to adopt AI or machine learning tools for optimization. These figures reflect stated intent rather than finalized commitments, as retailers look to address internal resource constraints, which 55% of respondents identified as a major barrier to improvement.

"Payments teams are often asked to make a revenue case with a cost-centric scorecard. The question is how approval rates, declines and retries affect completed sales. Processing cost matters, but on its own it is only part of the picture, and in my experience the teams that can also show what payments performance contributes are the ones that get the investment."

Dan Coates, Director, In-Store and Omnichannel at ACI Worldwide.

The companies involved

ACI Worldwide, traded on the NASDAQ as ACIW, is a global provider of real-time payments software and solutions. The company describes itself as an original innovator in the space, providing a suite of products that allow corporations and financial institutions to manage digital payments and omni-channel commerce. Its payments orchestration platform is designed to connect a retailer’s entire ecosystem, offering tools for transaction routing, automated retries for declined payments, and the aggregation of performance data from multiple providers.

The research was conducted in collaboration with Retail Systems, also known as Retail Data Systems. Retail Data Systems is a provider of point-of-sale (POS) technology, focusing on hardware and software integration for the merchant sector. The partnership between these two entities aims to identify the barriers preventing retailers from maximizing their payment efficiency. According to the report, these barriers include competing internal priorities (34%) and a lack of clear ownership of the payments optimization process (32%). Currently, 35% of retailers have no structured retry strategy for declined transactions, relying instead on manual processes or simple rules.

What FF News has reported before

ACI Worldwide has been a frequent subject of coverage regarding its expansion into emerging markets and its role in the European instant payments landscape. We previously reported that ACI Worldwide and dLocal Partner to Unlock Latin American Alternative Payments for Global Merchants, a collaboration designed to help international retailers navigate the complexities of the Latin American market.

In Europe, the company has been instrumental in supporting new payment schemes. FF News covered how ACI Worldwide Powers Rabobank’s Wero Instant Payments, Advancing Europe’s Real-Time Payments Transformation. This followed an earlier announcement that ACI Worldwide and EPI to Power Instant Payments in Europe, highlighting the company’s focus on modernizing infrastructure for real-time transaction processing across the continent.

What this means

The shift in priority from cost-cutting to data access suggests that the payments orchestration market is entering a second phase of maturity. While early adoption was driven by the promise of lower interchange fees through least-cost routing, the industry is now moving toward a "performance-first" model. Retailers are beginning to realize that a 1% improvement in authorization rates or a successful automated retry is often more valuable than shaving basis points off processing fees. However, the lack of board-level visibility remains a critical bottleneck. For the sector to advance, payments must be reframed as a strategic revenue driver rather than a back-office cost center, putting pressure on vendors to provide more transparent, revenue-linked reporting tools.