Dive Brief:

• Payment processor Global Payments isn’t ruling out the possibility of price increases to drive revenue, should the economic climate become more challenging, CEO Cameron Bready said this week.
• “The pricing environment right now for our business is probably more favorable than it’s been in quite some time, just given actions that other competitors have taken,” Bready said Tuesday during an appearance at a Morgan Stanley investor conference.
• Bob Hau, the CFO of larger processing rival Fiserv, mentioned recent price increases the company has made during his Monday appearance at the conference. As soaring inflation led to higher costs, the atmosphere for price increase conversations with customers “shifted a bit,” and “you didn’t get immediately tossed out” when broaching increases with clients, Hau said.

Dive Insight:

A spokesperson for Brookfield, Wisconsin-based Fiserv declined to elaborate on Hau’s comments. The company, which provides payments and financial technology services, rolled out pricing changes late last year that helped support revenue growth, Morgan Stanley Managing Director James Faucette noted during Hau’s Monday appearance at the Morgan Stanley conference, which Faucette moderated. 

“We saw a price increase opportunity last year, largely in line with the rest of the world,” Fiserv CFO Bob Hau said. “I'd be hard pressed to find many industries or companies that didn't have price increases, given the rate of inflation.” 

Raising prices resulted in “a couple of points of growth” last year for Fiserv, Hau said. The company’s revenue last year rose 9% over 2021, to $17.7 billion, according to its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Faced with profit margin pressure last year, Fiserv divested business units and cut employees. 

“We look at prices regularly,” Hau said. “We’re a big proponent of value-based pricing. If we think we’re providing value for our clients, we’ll talk to them about that value, and how they’re seeing the benefit of using our solutions. And we try to get paid for that.”

Hau didn’t directly respond to Faucette’s question on whether the company has experienced customer attrition due to those increases.

During Bready’s conference appearance, he pointed to competitors pricing actions heading into 2023 and said Global Payments’ approach has been more consistent, Bready contended. 

The Atlanta-based company, which offers payment technology and services, has tried to optimize pricing across its portfolios annually, ensuring prices are fair for the value provided, Bready added.

On the pricing front, “we’ve probably been less aggressive than some of our peers,” Bready said. That means Global Payments could “lean into that a little more if we needed to,” particularly if the company noticed trends differing from expectations for the remainder of the year, he said.

Longer term, Bready said he expects a more rational competitive environment as it relates to pricing, due to capital constraints and companies’ need to demonstrate profitability.

A Global Payments spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Spokespeople for processor Fidelity National Information Services, or FIS, also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on its pricing.