Holi(p)ays from hell - When “all-inclusive” payment stacks aren’t what they seem

• Nobody chooses the wrong platform on day one. All-in-one providers usually meet the needs a merchant has when they sign. The gap opens later, when the business wants to move.

• Merchants buy for today's needs, and needs change.

• You only discover how locked in you are when you try to change a single part of your stack, and the swap pulls in far more teams, time, and cost than anyone expected.

• All-inclusive isn't a con. It gets businesses up and running fast. The problem is that nobody reads the small print until they need it.
  

• Orchestration means you're booking the trip, never the resort. You can change one part of your payment setup without rebuilding the whole thing.

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You booked the all-inclusive because it was easy. One price, one booking, everything sorted. Flights, food, pool, entertainment, all of it covered…or so the brochure said.

Then you arrive. The good restaurant costs extra. The “private” beach is packed, and the day you fancy doing something the resort doesn't offer, you find out just how much leaving the grounds actually costs.

Payments has its own version of this.

The all-in-one platform promises to cover everything, and for a while it does. The problems only start when your plans change.

To dig into why the brochure and the reality keep drifting apart, Aevi's in-house payments experts, Harry Sahota, Head of Partnerships, Sarah Reineck, Director of Marketing & Communications, and Fabrizio Barni, Head of Retail EMEA, share what they hear from merchants who found out the hard way.

And just to be clear, you don't need the experience of a ruined holiday to follow along.

If you've ever been sold a "complete" payment setup and later found the important parts cost extra, you already know how this trip goes.

Though, for total clarity, here’s a quick key before take off:

• The all-inclusive resort = the all-in-one payment provider
• The brochure = the sales promise that everything's covered
• The small print = what's actually included, and what costs extra
• Leaving the resort = trying to change one part of your stack
• The real all-inclusive = orchestration, or picking what you want and switching when you want

Fabrizio Barni has spent years talking to the payment teams of large international retailers, and he says one thing almost never happens: nobody tells him they chose the wrong platform.

He remembers one head of payments at a global retailer describing their setup as a puzzle. Each region had its own PSP and acquirer, and every one of those decisions made perfect sense at the time, because every one solved a real business need. The trouble only appeared when you looked at all the pieces together and realized the company was running lots of different payment environments instead of one.

On paper, every booking made sense, as nobody plans a bad holiday after all.

The moment of truth comes later, the first time the business asks for something new…

Harry Sahota sees the same pattern from the buying side. Merchants choose a platform based on what they need today, and today's version of the business is the one thing guaranteed to change. A buyer looks at Europe as one region, then discovers every country has its own local payment methods, hardware, acquirers, even form factors.

That flexibility problem isn't hypothetical though, as Fabrizio watched a global retailer live it recently.
The retailer had to replace one of its acquirers, because the provider was leaving the market. No drama there - finding a new acquirer was straightforward.

What shocked them was everything around the swap: a single provider change pulled in multiple teams and far more technical work than anyone had planned for.

That was the moment they understood how dependent they'd become on individual providers, and they started asking how to avoid running the same painful project every time the business needed to change.

Sarah Reineck says this is exactly the question to ask before you sign (when it's cheap), instead of after, when it's expensive.

In short, back at the resort: checking in was easy, booking dinner is where the trouble starts.

Here's the part where we should be fair to the all-inclusive.

None of our experts think it's a scam. Sarah is clear that plenty of businesses genuinely need one provider to get up and running quickly, and for them it delivers real value on day one. Harry goes further and challenges the label itself. Every payment solution has strengths and trade-offs, so his version of the real question: does it fit your business, and do you know exactly what's included before you sign?

The trouble is the small print. Because who reads the small print?

We asked Sarah, as the marketing director in the room, what an honest all-inclusive brochure would actually say. Sarah’s answer: 

That's the sentence to hold in your head during every sales pitch. 

So, what does a better holiday look like, then? Taking the analogy further, Harry described it like this…

And if today's plan changes tomorrow, that's fine too. You switch.

Payments has become deeply specialized. One company is brilliant at acquiring, another at hardware, and the merchant shouldn't have to care who does what behind the scenes. In Harry's view, they just want it all to work together, without replacing an entire setup because they'd like one new terminal.

That's the job of an orchestrator. Sarah describes it as the hotel manager:

Which is the twist in this story. Everything handled, nothing to think about, and the freedom to change your plans whenever you like. That was the all-inclusive promise all along. Orchestration is just the first version of the holiday that actually delivers it.

So yes, the better holiday exists. But every provider in payments will tell you theirs is the one, and a promise is only as good as the small print behind it.

A payment stack proves itself the day you want to change your mind. So whatever the brochure says, ask these before you book:

• What happens if I only want to replace one part of the solution?
• Who in our business actually understands payments, and are they in the room for this decision?
• What's genuinely included, and what will "included" cost us when we grow?

Good answers sound specific. Vague ones tell you exactly what kind of holiday you're signing up for.

Bon Voyage.