Large enterprises are facing challenges when looking for the right payment mix for the European market. Significant expertise and resources are required to implement payment methods that meet local customer needs and improve acceptance rates. Merchants need to understand both technical specifics and regulations at the same time.

During a webinar hosted by the Merchant Risk Council (MRC), Payplug, Cartes Bancaires and PPRO provided exclusive insights on how to optimise payment performance in Europe, with a specific focus on France, the leading card payment market in the eurozone.

Keep ahead of industry trends so you can prepare for better payments in 2025. Analyze opportunities in machine learning, tokenization, and local payment methods. Secure, safe, and simple payments – in the customer’s preferred method – are as critical for revenue in 2025 as any other year. Yet technology is evolving, and your business needs to evolve with it. You need to know what’s coming around the corner so you can prepare to meet it.

In unregulated markets, inconsistent payment authentication methods often result in poor customer experiences, exposing both businesses and consumers to increased fraud risk while driving away legitimate customers. The goal is clear: Balancing seamless experiences with robust fraud prevention. Too often, businesses overcompensate, deterring legitimate customers to mitigate risk, rather than effectively preventing fraud.

More than nine out of ten business leaders are leveraging embedded finance to help their brand drive enhanced customer engagement and revenue.¹ By offering financial products such as payments, deposits, rewards and insurance, these companies are providing the seamless, contextual, digital experiences today’s customers demand–and reaping significant business rewards in the process. But developing and implementing a winning embedded finance program requires a strategic approach. A new report from Galileo and Payments Dive offers key data and actionable insights to guide your brand’s embedded finance journey and take full advantage of this transformational opportunity.

Payments are the cornerstone of e-commerce and a driving force of the European digital economy. They enable businesses and consumers to sell and buy goods and services online in a seamless and secure way. E-commerce businesses are low-margin, navigating a difficult economic climate and facing increasing global competition. How consumers choose to pay, along with the associated costs, significantly impacts the overall profitability and resilience of the sector. In this context, the persistent rise in the cost of payments , a phenomenon observed by our members across Europe and over the years, has become a pressing concern for merchants and consumers.

Whether you are a new merchant trying to accept credit card payments or looking for a better education on payments as a benefit to your business, the entire card payment chain can appear very complex. There are many players in a payment transaction, with each of them providing essential services to keep the process moving.

Two of these players are the payment processor and the payment gateway. On the surface, the two terms look similar. However, a payment gateway is completely different from a payment processor as they both serve entirely different functions.

The fintech industry is undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by new technologies and evolving consumer needs. Similar to the internet and the dot-com crash of 2000, the fintech industry underwent a shakedown in 2022 which has helped to weed out the  weak business models and showed the resilience of the rest.

Today, nearly three years on, we are at an inflection point. While the growth parallels with the internet are yet to fully manifest, as business models adapt to the new normal, shaped by rising interest rates, inflation, and macroeconomic shifts, fintech  as a sector is poised to drive growth re-acceleration.

Every declined credit card transaction puts your customer relationship at risk, hurting your revenue and threatening your retention. But here’s the thing: not all payment failures are the same and treating them that way means you’re leaving money on the table. What you’ll learn from our guide:​

Not all decline codes are created equal

Payments fail for all kinds of reasons. Knowing the right approach for each decline type is key to keeping your customers — and keeping them happy.