Back in 2018, a single line of code caused a nationwide payment blackout in the U.K. Customers doing anything from picking up groceries at Tesco to buying a new shirt from Marks & Spencer were unable to pay with credit cards, and who carries cash these days? Chaos ensued, carts were abandoned, and bridges got backed up due to customers being unable to pay their tolls by card. It’s said that retailers lost over £100 million in a matter of hours.
That was the “Visa Blackout of 2018,” and it highlights the importance of having a reliable payment processor. As payments become increasingly digital and cashless, having an end-to-end payment processing platform is key.
That brings us to Adyen (ADYEN.AS), a payments processing platform that has nearly caught up to PayPal (PYPL) in terms of total payment volume (TPV) processed.
Adyen takes a cut of the TPV processed through their platform, which is referred to as a take rate. And that number has been steadily declining over the years, as is typical for payments processing companies. The bigger your customers get, the more they can negotiate lower take r