Payments · Merchant targeting and positioning
2024–2026
Building a qualified merchant-acquisition proposition around activation and retained payments economics.
Several related products were competing for similar payment terms while speaking to different decision-makers, making category identity and audience segmentation essential.
Commercial impact
Commercial acquisition mechanism: penetrate general merchant acceptance segments, qualify eligible businesses, activate signed merchants and grow net retained processor margin and platform MRR. Separate merchant volume from actual payment-platform earnings.
Relationship
Merchant payments · Related product portfolio
Period
2024–2026
At a glance / UnityPay
A lead is not an active merchant
Give general merchant services an explicit buyer, product scope, onboarding path and commercial qualification standard.
Merchant audience matrix, separate product proposition, channel/landing briefs and qualification logic.
Generic demand acquisition risks collecting unqualified merchant interest when product relevance and activation requirements differ.
Market and commercial strategy
The buyer. The economics. The competitive move.
01
Who the business needed to win
General merchants by business vertical, payment volume, acceptance method, card mix, underwriting profile and settlement needs.
02
How commercial value is created
Sales-qualified merchant → approved account → live transaction processing → retained net margin, platform MRR and merchant retention—not gross processing volume.
03
Competitive and market strategy
Separate UnityPay from patient-payment and unrelated fintech propositions, and penetrate merchant categories with tailored terminal, online and settlement advantages.
04
My commercial and operating remit
Merchant segmentation, category and product messaging, landing and GTM channel direction, qualification models and portfolio brand differentiation.
01 / Role and authority
The responsibility behind the decisions.
Worked on ICP/merchant audience segmentation, brand and product positioning, landing and channel visibility, lead-generation direction and distinction from adjacent healthcare payments. Nilon and other products had separate scopes.
02 / Strategic and operating work
What the situation required. What changed in the work.
Define merchant buyer needs
Organized positioning around merchant acceptance, terminal/virtual-terminal options, settlement, transaction experiences and related operational questions.
A clearer value proposition and targeting framework for general merchant audiences.
Separate related product routes
Distinguished UnityPay’s general merchant-service proposition from healthcare-specific payment and patient-management offers.
Cleaner categories and acquisition language across an overlapping product portfolio.
Track beyond enquiry volume
Framed lead progression around qualification, signed merchants, activation and processing economics rather than assuming leads or gross payment volume are ARR.
A stronger basis for evaluating channel and merchant acquisition quality.
Working through the constraint
The operating decisions behind the change.
- 01
Worked on merchant ICP selection and specific product advantages spanning payment acceptance, hardware, virtual terminals, settlement and processing.
- 02
Distinguished UnityPay’s positioning from CERTIFY Pay and integrated patient payments.
- 03
Shaped route-to-market, landing communication and lead-generation priorities around eligible merchants.
- 04
Connected enquiry definition with signed/approved merchant and processing stages for meaningful commercial measurement.
What matters commercially
Commercial performance model.
The commercial operating measures used to evaluate this kind of assignment, from buyer qualification to retention and business value.
01
Merchant-qualified enquiries
Business type, volume, processor fit and underwriting readiness
02
Approved-to-active merchants
Sign-up → deployment → initial transactions
03
Recurring payment economics
Platform MRR and retained net processing revenue
Next iteration
Reconnect inquiry records with underwriting and processor-level activation before assigning unit economics to marketing.
05 / What the case teaches
What this changed in the business.
Merchant growth is not a lead-count story until the merchant is approved, active, processing and generating retained revenue.
Related work.
CERTIFY Pay
Framing an independent healthcare payments offer around the operational cost of switching.
Nilon
Keeping a fintech innovation brand distinct from payment merchant services.
Exploring a similar market, customer or operating challenge?
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