How to Build a Go-to-Market Strategy for a Bank Acquirer

Table of contents:

1. Step 1: Define and analyze your target geo
2. Step 2: Research and segment your competitors
3. Step 3: Understand your own strengths and weaknesses
4. Step 4: Set your target customer segments and personas
5. Step 5: Develop your brand positioning
6. Step 6: Outline your product and solutions
7. Step 7: Build and strengthen your brand identity
8. Step 8: Choose a competitive strategy
9. Step 9: Implement and scale
10. Partner with Boxopay to support your bank acquirer

A study by Harvard Business Review found that around 75% of products fail to meet their objectives since launch. In most cases, the reasons were hidden behind lack of planning and systematization. That’s why you’ll need a go-to-market strategy for your bank acquirer to launch successfully.

In this guide, you’ll learn about creating an acquirer go-to-market strategy based on our team’s experience. We’ll share examples, tips, and unique solutions to help you launch seamlessly. Read on for more!

Step 1: Define and analyze your target geo

The first step of any go-to-market strategy for banks is analyzing the market to find regions that offer the greatest potential. Markets differ in terms of regulatory compliance requirements, consumer habits, competition, and credit card processing trends.

You will have to complete two key steps:

1. Collect relevant data. Gather statistics like e-commerce volume, card penetration rates, smartphone usage, and others. This quantitative approach helps narrow your focus to geographies with the most promising revenue models.
2. Assess regulatory compliance. Each region follows distinct payment regulations. Ensuring you can meet KYC, AML, and local licensing standards is crucial. We recently shared a Visa/Mastercard licensing guide for acquirers that can help you get started.

If you’re planning to work on the international market, you’ll also need multi-currency and multi-language capabilities. Boxopay’s white-label payment gateway solution is perfect for both physical and digital stores in any country, allowing you to cover any geographical location in your business model.

Step 2: Research and segment your competitors

Creating an effective go-to-market for acquiring banks will require a clear understanding of both direct and indirect competitors. This step helps you find gaps in the market and establish your product’s unique value propositions. It’s a bit more complex, as you’ll have to consider both low-risk and high-risk merchants depending on your business model.

You’ll have to do the following:

1. Track direct competitors. Look at other acquirer go-to-market strategy implementations in your target region. Analyze their pricing, features, merchant onboarding process, and brand positioning.
   • Typical examples include major acquiring banks like Chase, Worldpay (FIS), Elavon, and local financial institutions providing credit card processing services.
2. Find indirect competitors. Fintech providers, digital wallets, and large payment processing companies can also pose competitive threats in your area.
   • Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Square, and digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Apart from finding your competitors, you’ll have to conduct a SWOT analysis. This is a structured framework to spot your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Below is an example sheet with a possible SWOT analysis.

Strengths	Wide merchant base, strong technology stack, and brand recognition.
Weaknesses	Limited coverage, high transaction fees, and outdated user experience.
Opportunities	Emerging e-commerce sectors, new local markets, advanced features.
Threats	Price competition, tight regulations.

You won’t have to worry about the size of your competitors with Boxopay. Our solution accommodates merchants across different risk tiers: high-risk, mid-risk, and low-risk. This gives you the agility to serve diverse verticals and surpass your competitors.

Step 3: Understand your own strengths and weaknesses

The next step in building your acquiring bank go-to-market strategy requires an honest internal assessment. Comparing your product’s features, pricing, and scope to competitor products helps you find space for extra improvements. This includes:

• Feature gap analysis. Evaluate how your services compare to market leaders. Do you offer omnichannel solutions, reliable APIs, and easy integration?
• Operational efficiency. Assess the scalability, reliability, and adaptability of your payment infrastructure. If you haven’t set up an IT infrastructure, follow our guide for an easy process.
• Risk management. Check your compliance procedures and your capacity to handle fraudulent activities.

Boxopay’s white-label acquirer solution helps you cover all these features. You’ll get instant scalability, a compliant ecosystem, advanced reporting, reliable fraud monitoring, and everything needed to work successfully. We also provide custom development and specialized integrations if needed.

If you’re still setting up the fundamental components, check out our team’s insights on starting an acquirer to boost your internal processes. You will find a detailed guide covering all essential steps.

Step 4: Set your target customer segments and personas

Market segmentation is where you translate raw data and competitor research into specific customer groups. You can adapt your credit card processing marketing strategies by understanding precise personas, and creating effective messaging in your brand.

This is how you should segment your market:

1. By industry. Find the most relevant verticals for your acquiring business. These can be retail, travel, SaaS, gaming, and many others. Each sector may have distinct transaction volumes and risk profiles.
2. By merchant size. Sales volumes and expectations vary in each industry. E-commerce businesses and large enterprises will have different needs, so you’ll have to categorize them too.
3. By personas. You’ll need detailed profiles that show pain points, buying behavior, and indicate relevant KPIs. Usually, marketing teams create around 3–5 personas and adapt the product accordingly.

As the market is likely already saturated with acquirer products, you will have to seek out blue oceans. These are less competitive niches where you can use your product’s advantages to stand out.

Some basic examples can include:

• Specialized payment flows for healthcare providers;
• Billing and recurring payments for e-learning programs;
• Donation and grants management for non-profit organizations;
• Risk-tier support and advanced fraud tools for high-risk verticals, and more.

It’s necessary to show how your services solve payment bottlenecks and highlight any specialized B2B & omnichannel capabilities. You can easily experiment with niche approaches using Boxopay’s scalable white-label solutions.

Start as an MVP without having to acquire a license and scale into a full-fledged bank acquirer with all the necessary features. Boxopay helps you stay afloat by providing all the required functionalities without heavy upfront investment. It’s your pre-built solution with extra capabilities available.

Step 5: Develop your brand positioning

Effective brand positioning anchors your entire bank acquirer GTM strategy. The payment solutions market is overcrowded, so you’ll have to differentiate by providing solutions unavailable to your competitors. This requires you to set your core positioning concept. Some ideas can include:

• Focusing on small merchants who are often underserved by larger providers, offering them highly personalized solutions and dedicated support;
• Working as a go-to-acquirer for advanced business services like extra technologies, integrations, and other solutions to simplify business operations.

You must find an element that allows you to be better than an existing competitor’s service. It’s an integral part of your fintech strategy, so you’ll have to analyze strengths and weaknesses carefully for a full understanding. The key is to answer the question: “Why should people use your product instead of a competitor?” If you’re having a hard time answering, try making a comparison sheet.

Once you set your core positioning concept, you can amplify it with a brand voice and messaging. This will help you stand out even more. Some other elements that can be included in your USP may include:

• Lower fees;
• Faster merchant onboarding;
• Specialized support for high-risk merchants, etc.

Branding also includes the look and feel of your software. Integrating Boxopay’s white-label solutions in your bank acquirer will let you fully customize your system. You will be able to present it as your company’s own solution with a unique design.

Step 6: Outline your product and solutions

A clear product roadmap shows potential merchants and partners exactly what they can expect. Regardless of whether you’re focusing on domestic or international market segmentation, your product system should detail key features and future expansion plans.

Start by describing the core features of your solution in detail. Add use cases, instructions, benefits, and visual representations. This will help you explain the benefits to your clients and partners. You must also clearly highlight your product’s USP.

For example, as part of a go-to-market for an acquirer, you can show your solution’s omnichannel focus to handle mobile, online and in-store payments. All these capabilities are supported by Boxopay’s rich ecosystem. You’ll get seamless support for all kinds of payments.

Although it’s common knowledge, many acquirers lack a user-friendly merchant portal with all the necessary features. You should include a detailed dashboard with analytics, chargeback management, settlement tracking, and more. Boxopay’s solution helps you get:

• Fiscalization;
• Action logs;
• Order currency;
• Multicurrency accounts;
• Payment management;
• Payment page settings;
• Client management, and more.

All these features allow you to get a full-scale solution covering all merchant needs. Creating a customized merchant app is also a possibility with Boxopay’s solutions. This will help you get a module approach with only the required blocks added.

Step 7: Build and strengthen your brand identity

After defining your product’s solutions, it’s time to start marketing. This is an ongoing process that covers social media outreach, event participation, partnerships, and more. You’ll have to target your audience through LinkedIn, fintech forums, and industry-specific events.

One of the key ways to gain more visibility is by working with conferences. Demonstrate your payment processing go-to-market approach and demonstrate how your technology solves real-world problems. This will attract possible investors and partners, allowing you to amplify your capabilities.

It’s also necessary to use content marketing. Publish thought leadership pieces on topics like competitive strategy, regulatory updates, and best practices for merchant onboarding. This will help you generate organic traffic and prove your expertise.

Boxopay can help with custom development and system integration, ensuring your branding stands out in the market. Our engineers help you get a unique design, customized features, and anything else your company needs to succeed.

Step 8: Choose a competitive strategy

There are several ways to compete in the market. You will have to choose between an aggressive broad-based approach and a niche-led market entry. The choice will determine how you allocate resources, manage partnerships, and set your revenue model.

Let’s take a closer look at the key strategies:

• Aggressive broad-based approach: target high-volume merchants across multiple regions quickly, investing heavily in marketing, brand recognition, and direct acquisitions. This can speed up growth but also requires substantial capital and careful risk management.
• Careful niche approach: focus on specialized verticals and high-risk segments where you can offer unique features, capabilities, and pricing. This helps you get around fierce competition and position yourself as a subject-matter expert.

It’s also necessary to understand whether you’re meeting existing demand or creating new demand. Below are several examples of both.

Meeting demand	Creating demand
Faster settlement times	AI-based risk engine
Transparent pricing models	Crypto-friendly payment solutions
Improved onboarding	Embedded finance
Better customer support	Biometric payments

Boxopay’s flexibility allows you to pursue both mass-market and niche verticals simultaneously. You can easily scale with our multi-risk-tier support and white-label infrastructure. The best part: you can quickly switch to another strategy if needed due to our feature-rich payment processing ecosystem.

Step 9: Implement and scale

Your acquirer’s go-to-market strategy doesn’t stop at launch. Continuous optimization, strategic partnerships, and performance tracking are essential to achieve long-term success. This is set by several approaches that are typically used in the software industry.

First of all, you’ll have to test new features with select merchant segments before a full-scale launch. Continuously refine pricing, marketing messages, and distribution channels. It’s also important to set clear KPIs to measure success:

• Conversion rates;
• Merchant satisfaction;
• Churn rates.

These metrics guide you toward improvements in retention and market share. As payment technologies evolve quickly, you’ll have to incorporate feedback and roll out updates to maintain compliance and meet your merchants’ needs. Most importantly, you will have to respond quickly to any arising issues.

Boxopay’s multi-risk-tier model helps mitigate potential merchant issues and offers the flexibility to extend your solution across various geographies and industries. This will allow you to easily grow, adapt, and change your product for long-term success.

Partner with Boxopay to support your bank acquirer

Teaming up with a reliable and innovative technology provider is the only way to stay afloat in the competitive fintech market. Boxopay offers a white-label payment gateway and white-label acquirer solution that adapts to your requirements: local onboarding, multilingual checkout, advanced analytics, and more.

The best part – Boxopay is suitable for all business models. You can easily adapt it to your needs in a matter of clicks while searching for your perfect market fit. This allows you to quickly change your approach according to the market’s trends, grasping all opportunities on time.

These are only some of the benefits you’ll get:

• Scalability;
• Customization;
• Risk-tier support;
• Future-proof solutions;
• Custom development services, and more.

Contact our experts today to learn more about our offer and see how we can help your business grow!