Payments are no longer just operational infrastructure. According to Lloyds’ Ross Taylor, they are becoming a primary source of commercial insight, customer trust and scalable growth for UK merchants.
In most boardrooms, payments are still discussed last.
Pricing, product lines and marketing campaigns dominate strategic conversations. Terminals, acquirers and checkout flows are often treated as operational details — necessary, but not transformative. Yet the moment a customer pays is where intent becomes income, and increasingly, where competitive advantage is won or lost.
Across the UK retail and hospitality sectors, expectations at checkout have shifted rapidly. Customers now expect speed, flexibility and security as standard. Merchants face rising fraud pressures, growing demand for digital wallets and account-to-account options, and tighter regulatory scrutiny. At the same time, payment data is emerging as one of the clearest real-time signals of customer behaviour — revealing hesitation, abandonment, loyalty and revenue stability long before they appear in traditional reports.
Ross Taylor, Managing Director and Head of Payments and Liquidity Sales at Lloyds Banking Group, argues businesses are underestimating the commercial power of this final moment in the customer journey. From embedded finance and flexible checkout to PCI compliance and fraud resilience, Taylor sees payments not as a cost centre, but as a strategic growth lever.
As part of Payment Expert’s Executive Ledger series, Taylor discusses why payments data is becoming board-level intelligence, how checkout experience influences brand trust and loyalty, and what will separate businesses that use payments as a competitive advantage from those that simply process transactions.
Read the full interview below.
Payments are often described as infrastructure rather than strategy. Why do you believe they remain an under-recognised growth engine for businesses?
Payments are still treated as background operations by many businesses. In reality, they offer one of the clearest views of customer behaviour. A single till can often reveal as much as a month of board reports. Every tap, pause or abandoned attempt shows how customers are engaging with a business, and where friction exists.
When used properly, payments data becomes a powerful signal of intent. It shows how money moves, how quickly it arrives, where transactions fail, and how smooth the checkout experience feels. That, in turn, helps businesses understand whether customers are returning, how stable revenue is, and how confident they can be about investing for growth.
The clearest sign of payments driving growth is a seamless checkout: fast, reliable and protective of revenue already earned. A poor experience creates hesitation, lost sales and fewer customers returning.
From your perspective at Lloyds Banking Group, where are businesses most underestimating the commercial value of their payments data?
For years, payments have sat in the background. Service providers handled them while board discussions focused on pricing, product and promotion. Decisions about terminals, acquirers and online checkouts came last, once everything else was settled.
When payments are an afterthought, the cost of small delays is easy to miss. A pause at the till, an unfamiliar screen or a failed online attempt can be enough for someone to abandon a purchase and not come back.
Every business wants more customers, more repeat visits and more stable revenue. Most look for those gains in marketing, pricing, menu changes or new product lines. But the point where someone actually pays, when intent becomes income, carries more weight than many businesses give it credit for.
Customer expectations around payments have shifted rapidly. What do customers now see as “standard” that would have been considered innovative just a few years ago?
Whether they’re paying for a taxi or settling up a bill at a restaurant, customers now expect a simple, frictionless experience, and the ability to pay in the way that suits them. Recent Lloyds research showed that for 91% of retail businesses, adapting to changing customer behaviour is now an important strategic priority.
When a business meets these expectations, it feels smooth and reliable. When it doesn’t, it quickly feels behind. Meeting these expectations consistently is what drives growth, keeping customers coming back and choosing the same business again.
How much does payment experience now influence brand perception and customer loyalty?
People don’t consciously analyse their behaviour at checkout, but they quickly notice when a payment system feels safe and reliable — and when it doesn’t.
For example, in flexible finance, a significant share of consumers say they feel more comfortable when the provider is a bank. Businesses say the same: the majority prefer adopting these tools when they come from regulated institutions. That doesn’t need to be overstated. It simply means that trust, clarity and security encourage customers to complete purchases rather than drop out.
When people feel safe, they spend with confidence. For merchants, working with regulated providers reduces reputational risk and strengthens compliance. Trust, therefore, is not just a safeguard but a genuine driver of growth.
In what ways can payment design actively shape customer behaviour?
When you look across service, spend, cash flow and trust together, clear patterns emerge in customer behaviour and how businesses can influence those decisions.
Offering familiar payment options at checkout can increase the value of each order. Faster settlement reduces hesitation and helps customers make more confident purchasing decisions. And when payments are delivered through reliable, well-integrated systems, customers are more comfortable completing the transaction.
Are you seeing evidence that certain payment choices increase conversion, basket size or repeat usage?
Our recent research with retail and hospitality businesses shows how much value sits in the final moments of the checkout process, and the importance businesses place on getting it right.
In retail, 77% cite speed at checkout as important to day-to-day operations and 80% say accepting all major cards and digital wallets is important to business operations. In hospitality, three in five are investing in faster payment systems, and more than two in five cite slow processing as their biggest service barrier. In addition, eight in 10 say payment technology is now essential to their future growth.
Many merchants still treat payments as a cost centre. What practical steps can businesses take to start using payments more strategically?
Payments become strategic when they are viewed as a vehicle for growth, not just a cost. As part of a business’s core, they can determine whether a growth plan is scalable or fragile.
Modern business models depend on payments that can scale reliably and consistently. For example, a business expanding into multiple locations needs a consistent payment experience across every site, protecting reputation and giving customers the same level of reliability wherever they go.
In fact, more than half of hospitality businesses in the UK say they are planning a move into shared spaces or multi-venue formats – environments that depend on speed and consistency. If one trader falls behind because of a slow terminal or a limited wallet setup, the entire space feels slower and less efficient.
For retailers, the equivalent is the jump to the online space or multiple stores. If payments are clunky in one channel, that friction only increases as the business grows. With 84% of retailers expecting more from payment providers than they did two years ago, it is the systems that are simple, consistent and easy to train staff on that will become the foundation of business growth.
How is embedded finance changing the relationship between banks, merchants and end customers?
Most embedded finance and point of sale (POS) finance users prefer retailers who offer flexible options, and many say it influences how much they feel able to spend. They reflect how customers want to manage their spending in practice.
Payment choice has a clear influence on customer mindset. A customer may be comfortable with everyday purchases but hesitate on higher-value items unless the checkout offers a way to spread the cost. Flexible finance gives customers both the confidence and the practical means to follow through.
Merchants offering embedded finance tools consistently report higher average order values and stronger repeat business. Those uplifts come from reducing friction at the exact moment customers decide whether they can afford what they want. It removes a practical barrier. When payment feels manageable, spending follows.
What role does real-time data and analytics play in helping businesses make better commercial decisions?
Payment data patterns often show the earliest signal that a business is gaining momentum, or needs some attention. Businesses that review the signals regularly tend to move first and gain the advantage, shifting from assumptions to evidence based on real customer behaviour.
The real value of payment data lies in how quickly it can be used. Rather than relying on long forecasting cycles or complex dashboards, the most effective businesses focus on regular, simple reviews, making small adjustments guided by what payment patterns show.
When transactions spike at certain times, businesses can adapt staffing to match demand. When payment attempts fall away on a specific page or at a certain step, clarity can be added to the journey. When one location consistently settles earlier than others, it highlights training or device differences worth copying.
These are practical improvements and not major transformations. They help staff anticipate busy moments and make the checkout easier for customers. They protect revenue by keeping transactions moving and reducing abandoned baskets. Because these signals reflect real spending under real pressures, they often provide a clearer and faster view of performance than many other data sources.
Fraud and security remain critical concerns. How do you balance frictionless customer journeys with robust protection?
According to the latest data from UK Finance, criminals stole £629.3 million in the first half of 2025 alone, a 3% increase on the same period in 2024. Fraud is constantly evolving, which means security needs to be embedded in the payment experience. Layering POS security with robust controls and trusted providers helps protect both revenue and reputation.
By integrating solutions from expert providers, businesses can deploy advanced fraud detection systems to protect customer data while also ensuring compliance with payment security standards like PCI DSS. At Lloyds, PCI DSS compliance support is included as part of the service and operates within a regulated acquiring framework, allowing merchants to trade with confidence and reduce the operational burden on complex or multi-site businesses.
Lloyds Merchant Services draws on more than 35 years of acquiring experience, ensuring that payment acceptance remains stable as regulatory requirements change and volumes increase.
With account-to-account payments and digital wallets gaining traction, how should businesses think about offering the right mix of payment options?
Customers increasingly expect to pay their way whether by card, wallet, account-to-account, QR code or pay-at-table. According to our recent research, 80% of retailers say accepting all major cards and digital wallets is important to daily operations.
These methods aren’t replacing cards or cash. They’re expanding the mix. As regulation builds confidence and adoption increases, merchants will need to balance cost, conversion and customer expectation more closely than ever. Payment choice is becoming a commercial decision.
Looking ahead, what will separate businesses that use payments as a competitive advantage from those that simply process transactions?
Payments are evolving faster than most businesses realise, and those that move with that change will have a clear advantage.
However, as technology moves forward, regulation will play a vital role in keeping innovation safe, fair and inclusive. We expect closer alignment between banks, fintechs and regulators to ensure new solutions protect customers while driving progress.
The businesses that lead will be those that innovate with purpose and treat payments as a core part of their growth strategy, not a function to be managed. That means clear standards, strong partnerships and real collaboration across the industry.
The Executive Ledger is Payment Expert’s new leadership series spotlighting senior payment executives across the global banking sector. The series explores how systemic institutions are responding to regulatory reform, real-time infrastructure demands, fraud risk, and intensifying competition in the payments market.
If you are a senior payments leader within the banking industry and would like to take part, please contact Editor Rachael Kennedy at [email protected]
