National Processing Co., a Louisville, Ky.-based merchant acquirer, announced July 26 plans to resell integrated point-of-sale payment software made by Datacap Systems Inc.
Merchants may add Chalfont, Pa.-based Datacap’s payment software to many software products they use to operate their businesses.
Representatives from both companies were unavailable to comment by deadline.
National Processing’s move illustrates some of what is ahead for the acquiring industry, Adil Moussa, an analyst at Boston-based Aite Group LLC, tells PaymentsSource.com. Traditional POS terminals that only process transactions could lose favor with many merchants, he forecasts.
“I don’t see any other way for merchant acquirers to survive if they are not part of a software or hardware [service],” Moussa says. “Merchants will find more value in the software than they will in a traditional POS terminal.”
Integrated POS software in particular is important, he says. “If you’ve helping a merchant by alleviating all of his problems through software, it makes sense to include the payment component.”
Adopting integrated POS products also may help reduce a merchant acquirer’s attrition rate, suggests Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group, a Centennial, Colo.-based consulting firm.
Because merchants tend not to switch their business software unnecessarily, they often use the software for a long time, a benefit to acquirers whose payment service is integrated into the software, Ablowitz says.
National Processing says it has more than 240,000 merchants in its portfolio.
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