API Strategy Looms Large in Back Half of 2025

As firms consolidate and specialize, they need innovative payment solutions, Maverick Payments VP of Product Justin Downey writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “Halftime 2025: Charting the Future of Payments.”

The major activity we’ve seen in early 2025 underscores a clear trend in the industry: consolidation for scale and specialized focus. These movements are a validation of the increasing demand for integrated, comprehensive solutions. For Maverick Payments, this reinforces our core strategy. While companies are navigating complex organizational shifts that come with mergers and acquisitions, we maintain a nimble, partner-centric approach, seeing this as an opportunity for agile and innovative providers to double down on their proprietary tech stacks. We are doubling down on delivering highly customizable, API-first solutions and look to build out our strategic partnerships to add value to our core offerings to clients while maintaining excellence in our support of services. We look to compete with speed, responsiveness and specialized value.

Enabling Innovation

Our internal developments this year have been heavily influenced by a singular goal: empowering our partners with frictionless experiences. From top to bottom, we look to deliver timely, first-class service from the onboarding of accounts and back-office functions we offer partners, to the operational expertise of specialty markets and the navigation of complex regulatory compliance in the industry. We continue to build and maintain our platform as an innovation enabler for the evolving payments landscape by focusing on a superior developer experience for ISVs and their relationship with traditional ISOs and FIs, so all can participate in payment monetization in a future-proof payment stack. As we look at the core offerings of our platform, we find that a dual approach of technology combined with service support and excellence is what sets Maverick Payments apart in a competitive space that our partners leverage to drive growth while maintaining an unparalleled service level. While we maintain our focus on our core offering, we enhance our ancillary features with strategic partnerships that are adjacent to the service we offer.

Leveraging AI

When we look to the future and the involvement of artificial intelligence (AI) in the payments space, we’re excited to see the rapid evolution within our industry, where large datasets aid in decision-making for veterans or supply information to those with less expertise. We utilize automation for operational efficiency and dynamic risk scoring to help streamline areas of potential friction, such as KYC checks, and we see strong use cases around transactional monitoring. As we look to the future, we continue to see the best alignment in a hybrid model where AI is paired with human decision-making, backed by the data analysis capabilities it offers. There is a natural feedback loop, where AI can support experts in training its models to identify patterns and ultimately reduce fraud.

Trends and Technologies

No surprise here, but we’ll continue to see AI as a disruptor in this space, where fraudsters and risk experts are continuing to utilize it to gain an edge. We will continue to see areas with large data leverage AI and offer it as a value-add on top of core offerings. Additionally, we will continue to see customer preferences drive changes in the payment acceptance and checkout experience. Lastly, we will continue to see strategic partnerships with payment-adjacent players looking to supplement their offerings either with processing or embedded finance.

Regulation and Economic Headwinds

Navigating the complexities of regulatory changes and strategically planning in an ever-changing space is in our leadership DNA. Investing in our technology and our team for continuous evolution in regulatory compliance is a top priority. We double down on a robust and secure environment to safeguard sensitive data so our partners can focus on their offerings. While the economic landscape shifts, our priorities and focus on our infrastructure remain unchanged. At Maverick Payments, we see challenges as a catalyst to drive us to continue to stay nimble and innovate. We remain laser-focused on adaptable, partner-centric solutions that empower partners to thrive with an operational team built around white-glove service.