Digital payments as critical infrastructure, Adyen supports global transformation

Gabriele Bellezze, Country Manager of Adyen Italia

The latest Observatory of the Polytechnic of Milan photographs a historic structural change, with electronic payments at 45% and cash falling to 38%, an overtaking that transforms digital into a truly critical infrastructure for the country. How does the role of a player like Adyen change when the priority for companies is no longer just enabling the service, but ensuring resilience, operational continuity and impeccable risk governance?

“When digital becomes prevalent, payments are no longer “just” a service: they become critical infrastructure, essential for the operational continuity of any company. In this context, Adyen’s role evolves from a simple transaction enabler to a technological-financial partner that helps companies design and manage a reliable infrastructure, capable of supporting volumes, peaks and complexity without impacting customers and operations.

This means acting on three priorities: strengthening resilience and operational continuity by reducing fragmentation and dependencies thanks to a single platform; improve governance with a single point of control and full visibility on flows, also useful for standardizing processes and decisions; finally, adopt more advanced risk management, integrated into payments and driven by data, so as to protect the business without introducing unnecessary friction. In summary, the goal is not just to make checkout work, but to ensure robust, secure and governable payments as the business grows and evolves.”

The data also shows extraordinary growth in contactless and NFC via smartphones and wearables, reaching 323 billion euros, a clear sign of how consumers are looking for an increasingly seamless experience. Has the real competitive challenge among merchants now shifted from card acceptance to optimizing authorization rates and overall checkout quality?

“In a context in which payment must be immediate and frictionless, the competition is shifting clearly: accepting the card is now a prerequisite, while the difference is made by the authorization rates, the intelligent management of payment attempts and the overall quality of the checkout. If the customer pays with a tap from a smartphone or wearable, the tolerance for slowdowns is practically zero; every “non-readable” block or refusal translates into abandonment and loss of conversion.

And this is where an approach like Adyen’s becomes strategic. With a single integrated platform and full-stack setup we can preserve data quality throughout payment processing and use signals from our network to improve the checkout experience. Concretely, we help merchants understand which methods to highlight and work on performance with authorization and routing optimization tools, which dynamically select the best path for each transaction, balancing conversion and cost.”

The so-called innovative payments have recorded a leap of 45%, reaching almost 85 billion euros, highlighting a strong push for diversification which however risks increasing management disorder, so from Adyen’s point of view, how can a single platform help merchants integrate these new methods without fragmenting the user experience or burdening the operational complexity between reconciliations and reporting?

“From our point of view, a single platform serves precisely to avoid this “clutter”: merchants can add and manage different payment methods while maintaining a consistent experience for the user and, above all, centralized flow management. In practice, it means a single point of control for configurations, data management and operations, with an integrated foundation that reduces fragmentation and simplifies activities such as reconciliations and reporting. It is the same logic with which Adyen aims to reduce the fragmentation of money flows, providing more visibility, more efficient processes. standardized and fewer “disconnected” systems to govern.”

Another rapidly accelerating trend is that of instant payments, now preferred by 70% of users, a boom in account-to-account channels.

“Instant payments and account-to-account channels are becoming a new mainstream “circuit” and we can also see it from the Observatory data, with a now very high preference on the part of users. For merchants, the challenge is to adopt them without introducing friction, but at the same time with high standards of security and compliance, because the more immediate the payment, the more crucial it is to govern risk, controls and processes rigorously.

From our point of view, the answer is not to add yet another stand-alone solution, but to work on a single platform, which reduces fragmentation and allows the different rails to be coherently orchestrated, preserving simplicity for the customer and robust controls for the company. The evolution towards “Intelligent Money Movement” also fits into this logic: the ability to manage collections, liquidity availability and outgoing payments in a single operating environment, improving visibility and control of flows. Thus merchants can integrate new payment channels directly from the account and, at the same time, maintain governance, security and a fast and linear customer experience.”

Speaking of security, with the increase in digital volumes this becomes a fundamental factor for the success of the business. How is Adyen positioned in this new phase of the market, in particular regarding the ability to balance fraud prevention and the reduction of false positives so as not to penalize legitimate transactions?

“Adyen positions itself as a platform that addresses security not as a downstream control, but as end-to-end payment optimization with the goal of reducing fraud without making security a drag on conversion. To do this, we work on the same infrastructure that manages the entire flow and can therefore use payment path information and data to better distinguish between truly risky behavior and legitimate transactions.

In concrete terms, the approach is based on integrated tools that collaborate with each other. With the Adyen Uplift suite, Protect offers advanced fraud detection capabilities, while Authenticate helps businesses meet local compliance requirements without creating unnecessary checkout barriers. When the two modules work together, risk intelligence indicates in which cases to activate authentication on transactions that show risk signals, but have a high probability of being real, reducing false positives. Added to this is Dynamic Identification, which correlates signals over time and between merchants to recognize patterns that traditional controls struggle to intercept, protecting margins without adding friction to other customers.”

Looking to the near future, from 10 July 2027 the EU Regulation will come into force with the single ceiling of 10,000 euros for cash payments, a deadline that fits perfectly in the direction traced by the Polytechnic Observatory. How will this regulation further accelerate the adoption of innovative payments and how will it change the approach of large commercial merchants?

“The introduction of the single EU ceiling of 10,000 euros for cash payments should be seen as a further step towards the normalization of digital: it does not “eliminate” cash, but makes the moments in which consumers and merchants choose electronic instruments more frequent and natural, especially for high-value purchases. This can also accelerate the adoption of innovative payments because, when cards and wallets become the simplest and most immediate choice, the expectation of rapid and consistent experiences across all touchpoints grows.

For large merchants, consequently, the approach tends to change from “adding a method” to designing an infrastructure, ensuring less fragmentation between providers and more operational standardization. Here a single platform helps to integrate new methods and new circuits, maintaining the customer experience coherent and governing complexity and compliance in a centralized way. In other words, the competitive leverage becomes the ability to manage payments and flows in a reliable and scalable way, with a single point of control and with data that can be used to optimize conversion, costs and internal processes.”

To conclude, all these global and local trends find a perfect synthesis in your new partnership with a giant like Lavazza, which you will allow to unify international payments between B2B, B2C and retail e-commerce. What are the specific challenges of such an ambitious project and how will Adyen’s technology concretely support the growth and unification of the digital ecosystem of a brand that is a symbol of Made in Italy in the world?

“The challenges of such an ambitious project lie above all in keeping together local complexity and global governance. For a brand like Lavazza it means coordinating an ecosystem of heterogeneous channels – from B2B e-commerce to B2C/D2C and, gradually, retail – on markets with different payment habits, operational constraints and risk profiles, without increasing fragmentation through new providers, integrations and processes.

Added to this are very concrete needs such as reducing the laboriousness of managing different payment methods, strengthening security and ensuring operational continuity during a gradual rollout across multiple markets and channels, without impacting the customer experience or internal teams.

Adyen technology supports Lavazza precisely on these points, offering a unique platform that enables a single point of control while adapting to local needs, making management more streamlined globally and reducing complexity. In parallel, the solid and scalable architecture of the platform allows you to optimize investments and build “future-proof” foundations for international growth: first by consolidating operations and security, then by introducing innovation in the payment experience, so as to transform every purchase into a moment that strengthens the relationship with customers. The progressive rollout (with B2C and B2B activations staggered between 2026 and 2027) goes exactly in this direction: step by step, Lavazza can unify payments in international markets while maintaining consistency, control and scalability.”