Every member of the payments value chain is confronted with a bewildering variety of options when seeking to partner with a fintech to retain their competitive edge, reduce costs, and build a better user experience.

To solve this problem for its clients, Mercator Advisory Group developed the Fintech RFP Counsel program. In the program, Mercator recommends the correct field of recipients for the request for proposal (RFP) based on a specific needs assessment performed by its expert analysts and guides its clients through the interview and selection process.

To further discuss the value of Mercator’s Fintech RFP Counsel, PaymentsJournal sat down Ted Iacobuzio, Vice President and Managing Director of Custom Research and Consulting at Mercator Advisory Group.

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What is a fintech?

While the word fintech is widely used in the industry, Iacobuzio offered specific insight into how he defines the word. It is “a small technology company that has created one application, program, interface, or API that solves a specific problem in the financial services industry.” These smaller firms typically solve a single problem, issue, or use case in the realm of financial services technology.

Larger integrated processors, many of which acquire smaller firms and fintechs, do not fit under the definition of a fintech. Even so, Mercator’s Fintech RFP Counsel can offer value to every member of the value chain considering a fintech partnership, including issuers, acquirers, independent sales organizations (ISOs), independent software vendors (ISVs), value-added resellers (VARs), merchants, program managers, processors, networks, and vendors themselves.

Mercator’s Fintech RFP Council program

A request for proposal (RFP) is a detail driven, knowledge based process that many organizations find difficult to manage. In Iacobuzio’s words, the “RFP process is black magic—especially to smaller institutions and firms.” He added that “there are plenty of smaller banks, credit unions, and other organizations with a hole to plug on the processing side looking to do business with fintechs to plug that hole.” But finding the right partner isn’t easy.

Mercator Advisory Group can serve as a trusted advisor during the RFP process to help organizations understand who the problem solvers and fintechs are that can meet their needs. Mercator not only lays out what an organization’s choices are in terms of fintech partnerships, but circulates the RFP, writes it to an organization’s approval, vets it, then calculates top-choice finalists that would be the most effective fintech partner.  

To narrow down the list of finalists,