Services Offered

Strategy Development and Business Planning: First Annapolis supports acquirers and processors in developing successful business strategies and tactical plans. We help our clients better understand the competitive forces that they may be facing in the future and how to develop a strategy to leverage their strengths and be more competitive. Our assistance in this area includes providing market assessments, competitive analyses, primary and secondary research, financial business casing, opportunity assessments, business plan development, and implementation support. These services are designed to leverage our industry experience and analytical expertise to help companies in the merchant acquiring industry create and deploy winning strategies and tactics. Our extensive work and close contact with the major companies in the industry allow First Annapolis to stay on the cutting edge of industry events and trends.

Company Performance Enhancement: First Annapolis has worked with a significant number of the leading acquirers and processors in the industry and has developed a database of acquirer performance benchmarks. These include financial, operational, and back-office metrics. Our experience with clients has helped us understand best practices, system features, and products utilized throughout the industry. Our ability to help clients leverage this knowledge to enhance their capabilities results in significantly improved financial and business performance.

Sales and Marketing Strategies: First Annapolis helps acquirers understand the merchant marketplace and its current trends, including identifying sales opportunities, optimizing pricing, and evaluating sales performance. We assist clients in developing a deeper knowledge of segments of their portfolios that may be priced non-competitively and segments where they may be leaving money on the table. We evaluate various sales strategies and tactics and help clients choose those that will optimize future revenues.

Portfolio Evaluation: We assist acquirers by conducting thorough segmentations of their portfolios’ performance, by identifying underperforming segments (i.e., under-priced, high attrition, decreasing margins, high chargeback rates, high losses, etc.), and by developing plans to improve segment performance.

Customized Market Research: Conducting customized market and competitive research has become one of our most popular client requests. We can help design research efforts, often through surveys and interviews, conduct the research, compile and evaluate the results, and support the implement the findings via new business strategies and tactics. Helping our clients better understand their competitive situation enables them to become long-term players in the industry.

Risk Management: Acquirers are increasingly concerned about how to protect themselves from fraud and credit losses. As smart cards begin to proliferate worldwide, the industry anticipates the threat of fraud to increase in the U.S. We help our clients understand and quantify their risk exposure and develop strategies to guard against the “big event” that can put an acquirer out of business. Due to our deep industry experience and outstanding client feedback, we have been selected as one of Visa’s preferred providers for conducting risk management audits for acquirers.

Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Advisory Support: First Annapolis leverages its deep knowledge of the acquiring industry to provide specialized M&A support to acquirers, ISOs, processors, terminal management companies, and other payments-related companies divesting or acquiring merchant portfolios, businesses, and related assets. We can manage the full portfolio divestiture process or provide targeted due diligence, negotiation, or fairness opinion support. In order to help clients maximize value in transaction situations, First Annapolis leverages proprietary analytical tools, experience with complex transactions, and strong relationships with key buyers and sellers. We have assisted buyers and sellers on more than fifty M&A and joint venture transactions over the last ten years.

Business and Portfolio Valuation: First Annapolis is quite experienced in valuing merchant acquiring portfolios, businesses, and other related assets. Clients frequently require valuation work in cases of contemplating a sale, evaluating bids, buying out shareholders, and estimating damages in legal matters. We utilize discounted cash flow analysis along with historic comparable valuations to perform accurate valuations.

Clients Served

First Annapolis works with bank and non-bank acquirers, independent sales organizations (ISOs), third-party processors, card associations, card networks, POS terminal manufacturers and management companies, and other third-party vendors – both in the U.S. and internationally. Over the years, we have worked with the majority of the leading U.S. companies in the industry, and we believe we offer a deeper knowledge of the merchant acquiring and transaction processing industries than any other consulting firm.