Source: Fxquadro/People/Adobe Stock.
Now in its sixth year, our study conducted by S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research provides a unique view into the strategies, trends and technologies that are top of mind for 500 commerce technology buyers. Our survey queries heads of payments and e-commerce, omnichannel leaders, CTOs and other decision-makers across more than 10 business-to-consumer verticals to better understand where they are focusing and why. This blog post highlights data from the payments and fraud prevention components of our survey.
The Take
Payments have become a priority for the boardroom, with more enterprises modernizing their acceptance infrastructure to meet growth, customer experience and profitability objectives. Multi-processor payment architectures are growing widespread as merchants pursue these priorities, and the desire for payments flexibility has become increasingly clear. Payments providers should prioritize modular and composable payments offerings to accommodate this dynamic. We also see demand from merchants to plug into new commerce frameworks that promise higher conversions — such as agentic commerce and accelerated guest checkout. These areas offer new payment enablement opportunities for vendors.
Merchants are working to optimize payments strategies in the face of mounting and diversifying fraud threats that have yet to cool off since the pandemic. Friendly fraud in particular has become one of the fastest growing and most challenging threats facing merchants, and solutions to effectively combat it remain limited. Unsurprisingly, fraud tools that can tackle threats across the end-to-end customer journey have become a top criterion for buyers as they look to harness identity-based insights for better threat detection at every customer touchpoint.
Key findings
Boardrooms are prioritizing payments. As merchants progress down the path of digital transformation, many find that their payment infrastructure reflects where the business has been, not where it is headed. In turn, we have seen a growing focus over the years on modernizing payment processes to better drive desired business outcomes. In our inaugural 2020 survey, 54% of respondents indicated that payments were a highly strategic areas of focus within their business; in our 2025 survey, that figure stands at 73%. Further, 66% of respondents agree that leadership understands the strategic value of payments.
Payment processing infrastructure investments are holding steady, but more enterprises are leaning in. The percentage of merchants increasing investment in payment processing technologies over the next 12 months has remained relatively flat, rising slightly from 33% in 2024 to 34% in 2025. However, merchants with $500 million or more in annual revenue are devoting greater budget, with 42% planning to increase investment, up from 29% in 2024. For these merchants, we find improving payment system uptime/resiliency, improving payment analytics capabilities and increasing payment method acceptance are the most important payment initiatives within their business.
Multi-processor payment stacks are widespread, and preference is on the rise. For most merchants, it is difficult to address all of their payments needs through a single provider; in fact, 40% of merchants are working with four or more payment processing partners. Additionally, the percentage of merchants that prefer to work with multiple providers to process transactions has risen to 62%, up from 50% in 2023. The message is increasingly clear: Payments providers need to invest in flexibility and modularity to better align with merchants’ multi-processor requirements.
Expectations for payment optimization capabilities are growing, but monetization strategies remain unclear. More merchants are looking for tools that can increase authorization rates, such as smart retries, dynamic routing and adaptive transaction messaging. This is especially the case for the most digitally advanced merchants, where 59% indicate payment optimization capabilities are highly important when selecting a payment processing partner. The challenge for processors comes when determining whether they should monetize their payments optimization tool sets or include them as part of their core offering. There is no single pricing model that overwhelmingly resonated with respondents, though a fixed monthly fee was the top choice at 34%.
Accelerated guest checkouts are garnering attention. Guest checkout has become a conversion killer for merchants due to excessive friction.
In fact, 62% of merchants strongly agree their checkout experience needs to be better optimized to improve conversions, rising to 76% of digital goods merchants.
A slew of providers has emerged in recent years — including Shop Pay, Stripe Link, PayPal Fastlane, Bolt, Paze and Skipify — to tackle this challenge with digital identity networks linked to payment credentials that deliver a one-click buying experience. These providers appear to be capturing mindshare with merchants, considering 45% of respondents are in proof of concept or planning to adopt an accelerated guest checkout flow in the next 12 months.
Large merchants show strong interest in agentic commerce. Agentic commerce marks a paradigm shift from consumer-initiated transactions to delegated agent-driven purchasing. Players such as Visa, Mastercard and Stripe have made recent moves to provide the underlying payment infrastructure to bring agentic commerce to life. Early interest is promising, as 60% of merchants with more than $500 million in annual revenue are very interested in enabling customers to place orders and make payments automatically via virtual assistant. From a payments standpoint, network tokens and the ability to ingest new fraud signals will be paramount to effectively supporting agent-led payments.
Network token sentiments continue to improve. The percentage of respondents that anticipate network tokens will provide “significant value” for their organization over the next three years has increased from 33% in 2023 to 53% in this 2025 survey. The trifecta of cost optimization, authorization optimization and fraud mitigation associated with network tokens appears to be resonating. This signals a growing need for payments providers to equip merchants with frameworks to easily enable and manage network tokens across their business.
As fraud volume increases, merchants struggle to maintain a strong customer experience. Fraud volume increases softened in 2022 and 2023, following a pandemic-induced spike in 2021. However, fraud has been an increasing focus since 2023.
In this year’s survey, 69% of respondents cite a year-over-year increase in the volume of fraudulent online transactions, up from 58% in 2023.
Concerningly, we note an inverse relationship between fraud volume and merchants’ ability to effectively balance their fraud prevention and user experience priorities. Just 21% of merchants believe they are effectively balancing both priorities, down from 30% in 2023.
Friendly fraud remains the top area of fraud growth outside of traditional payment fraud. Friendly fraud is often seen by consumers as a victimless crime, and one with few penalties. This has led to explosive growth in recent years. More than a third (35%) of respondents indicate their business has experienced a noteworthy increase in friendly fraud. Consistent with last year, this positions it as the top source of fraud growth outside of traditional payment fraud. Traditional fraud prevention tools cannot effectively combat friendly fraud, and while programs such as Visa Compelling Evidence 3.0 are a step in the right direction, more must be done to help merchants better manage this growing threat to their business.
Fraud prevention technology buyers put coverage and convenience atop their evaluation criteria. The ability to protect against multiple fraud types (e.g., account takeover, policy abuse) and ease of deployment are tied for the top criteria at 41%. Fraud prevention vendors must be able to articulate their ability to provide “journeywide” protection and play up partner integrations, such as with major e-commerce platforms. However, not all needs are equal. For merchants with more than 100 US store locations, the desire for a chargeback guarantee rises to 47%, well above the average of 35%.
The Total Experience Journey: How CX is Evolving in the Digital Age
Want insights on consumer tech trends delivered to your inbox? Join the 451 Alliance.
