NMI Acquires Fee Navigator for AI Pricing Intelligence

Embedded payments infrastructure company NMI said it has acquired pricing intelligence provider Fee Navigator.

The deal is designed to expand on NMI’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities by adding specialist pricing intelligence to its embedded payments platform, the company said in a news release Tuesday (June 2).

“Built for ISOs, ISO agents, ISVs and other payments partners, Fee Navigator’s technology analyzes merchant statements and recommends optimized pricing based on partner-defined goals and risk tolerance,” the release added. “It gives partners smarter ways to win more merchants, optimize their margins and improve portfolio performance across their merchant relationships.”

The deal follows NMI’s acquisition of account-to-account payment company Dwolla last month. Put together, the release said, these deals are designed to help NMI customers expand the way they can move money and manage payments.

“Fee Navigator is a natural next step in our strategy to build the most robust, white-label, embedded payments platform for our channel and enterprise partners,” Steve Pinado, chief executive of NMI, said in a statement.

“Merchant pricing is one of the most important and complex parts of payments, and this acquisition gives our partners smarter tools to quote with confidence, protect margin and turn payments into a greater commercial advantage,” Pinado added.

Pricing a deal, the release continued, requires expertise that’s historically rested with a small group of payment professionals. By acquiring Fee Navigator’s technology, NMI said it is making these capabilities more accessible to partners.

In other embedded payments news, PYMNTS wrote in April about efforts by banks, merchants and technology providers to build next-generation systems that can automatically identify and apply the best available offer in real time, in order to keep customers interested.

Research from the PYMNTS Intelligence/FIS report “Embedded Offers: The Billion-Dollar Opportunity Inside Recent Consumer Spending” found that nearly 90% of consumers want to see all discounts before deciding what to buy, and upwards of 80% say such a system would help shape their choice of merchant. Just as importantly, 77% said they would change their default payment method if it provided real-time savings.

“This has the characteristics of a platform shift. Control is moving away from discrete components such as cards, coupons, loyalty programs, etc., and toward the systems that coordinate them,” PYMNTS wrote. “That system becomes the interface through which value is experienced and, by extension, the place where loyalty is established. What makes this development strategically significant is that no single player currently owns this layer.”

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