by David True | Aug 5, 2026 | 2026 Q3, Cost Optimization, Operations
The Rise of Invisible Payments Invisible payments are becoming a quiet but important shift in how customers complete purchases — and small and medium-sized merchants should pay attention. Whether you sell through your own site, a platform like Shopify or WooCommerce,...
by David True | Jun 18, 2026 | 2026 Q2, Cost Optimization, Operations
Card Acceptance Costs: What Merchants Can Actually Do Interchange and network fees routinely consume 2–3% of merchant revenue, and the trend has moved in one direction for years. For most of the past two decades, the practical options were: absorb it, price it in, or...
by David True | Jun 3, 2026 | 2026 Q2, Operations
Agentic Commerce Planning for SMBs If you are involved in any way in digital commerce, you will have heard talk about agentic commerce – essentially using AI to help customers make purchases. The purpose of this article is to give you a way to think about...
by David True | May 16, 2026 | 2026 Q2, Cost Optimization, Legal
Interchange and Value Redistribution: Clarity in the Noise A recent Harvard Business School working paper has drawn pushback in the payments industry. Drawing on Fiserv settlement data covering roughly one-fifth of U.S. card volume, it estimates that card rewards...
by David True | Apr 5, 2026 | 2026 Q2
Cost Reduction through Transparency: Why I love IC++ As we noted last year, (https://payments-roundup.com/example-q1-2025-article-6/ ) small and midsize merchants can reduce card acceptance costs most effectively by moving from opaque flat-rate or tiered processing...
