The Power 50 x Aevi: Breaking free from payment lock-in

Join The Payment Power 50 for an interview with Sarah Reineck, Director of Marketing & Communications at Aevi, as she explores why payment flexibility is becoming a business imperative. In this conversation, she discusses how legacy payment infrastructure continues to limit innovation, why merchants are pushing back against vendor lock-in, and how payment orchestration is helping businesses adapt to an increasingly complex payments landscape. Sarah also shares her perspective on the shift towards more open, modular payment ecosystems and why giving merchants the freedom to choose the best partners in every market is critical for driving innovation, reducing complexity, and staying competitive.

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Why does it still take retailers up to 18 months just to add a second acquirer in 2026?

The reality is that much of the payments industry was never built for flexibility. Most payment infrastructures are still deeply connected to a single acquirer, processor, terminal provider, and certification process. As a result, adding a second acquirer is rarely a simple commercial decision. What should be a relatively straightforward change often becomes a major technical transformation project involving multiple integrations, testing cycles, certifications, and operational updates across the payment stack.

That's a problem because retailers are moving faster than the payments industry can support them. They want to enter new markets, optimize routing, reduce costs, and improve customer experiences in real time. But when even a basic change requires months of effort, innovation slows down. The infrastructure simply isn't designed to support the level of agility retailers need today, which is why payment orchestration has become such an important part of the conversation.

Is the payments industry trapped in a lock-in model that merchants no longer want?

In many cases, yes. Historically, the payments industry was built around vertically integrated models where a single provider controlled everything, from acquiring and routing to data, and even the product roadmap. While that approach delivered stability, it often came at the expense of flexibility, leaving merchants with limited control over how their payment ecosystem evolved.

Today, we are seeing merchants push back against that model. Businesses increasingly want the freedom to connect to the best acquirer, processor, or service provider for each market and use case. They want the ability to adapt as their needs change without disrupting their entire payments operation. Once merchants experience that level of openness and choice, it becomes very difficult to return to a more restrictive environment.

Are today's payment providers slowing innovation more than enabling it?

It's not that payment providers are intentionally slowing innovation, but many of the systems and operating models that exist today can have that effect. Much of the industry's infrastructure was built around control and stability, which made sense when change happened more slowly. Today, however, retailers need to respond quickly to new customer expectations, new markets, and new business opportunities.

The challenge is that many merchants are constrained by the complexity of their payment environment. When every change requires significant technical effort or lengthy implementation timelines, innovation becomes harder than it should be. Payment providers should be enabling merchants to evolve and adapt, not creating barriers to change. That's why orchestration is gaining momentum. It removes many of those structural bottlenecks and gives merchants the flexibility to innovate without having to rebuild their payments infrastructure every time they want to move forward.

press@aevi.com