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TSG’s yearly review of more than 300 U.S. merchant acquirers is out, and there is little surprise that JPMorgan Chase & Co. retains the top spot with an estimated 2023 U.S. processing volume of $2.4 trillion.
While the top three slots in the annual TSG Directory of U.S. Merchant Acquirers were rounded out by Fiserv Inc., exclusive of CardConnect, at $1.8 trillion in volume, and Worldpay, at $1.7 trillion, in the second and third spots, there was shuffling among other top 10 entities.
The other top-seven acquirers moved around a bit. Wells Fargo Merchant Services ranks fourth, the same as last year. At number five is Bank of America Corp.; it was number five the prior year. Stripe Inc., though, jumped from ninth to sixth this year, followed by Elavon, which was number six. In eighth place is Global Payments Inc., excluding TSYS, ProPay, EVO Payments, and Heartland, which was seventh. Number nine is TSYS, moving up from 10 last year. Amsterdam-based Adyen fills out the top 10 this year, dropping from number eight.
The data show little change at the top. “JPMorgan continues to dominate the top spot, and while some of the chairs in the top 10 changed positions, the same entities remain at the table from 2022 to 2023,” Alex Ferguson, TSG product manager, tells Digital Transactions News via email.
Stripe’s jump from nine to six stands out as one of the biggest moves among the top acquirers. “At a high level, I think Stripe in 2023 continued to win market share at the enterprise level,” he says. “Stripe’s jump in processing volume is likely a direct result of those enterprise wins and their jump in rank from 10th to 7th (by total entity volume).” TSG also ranks directory entries by their total volume, including business units, which explains the different ranking for Stripe by total entity volume.
For example, CardConnect, an independent software vendor owned by Fiserv, was acquired in 2017 by First Data Corp., which in turn was swallowed up by Fiserv in 2019. It is listed separately in the detailed report. “If possible, we try to break out notable subsidiaries from the totals of the parent (but combine all entities within the “Top 10 Roll Up” tab),” Ferguson says.
And it is little surprise the top 10 acquirers largely stayed the same. “Consolidation in the payments space certainly wasn’t as active as in years past—the overwhelming majority of acquirers we tracked last year, were still active in the market this year,” he says.
Published for more than 15 years, the directory includes data on national and regional acquirers that, in total, have more than $12 trillion in 2023 processing volume and have more than 550 sponsor-bank relationships.
