Payments as a Growth Engine

Guest Editorial by Melinda Roylett, Managing Director, Lloyds Merchant Services

Payments are still treated as plumbing in many businesses: necessary but rarely discussed. Yet the way money actually moves, including how fast it lands, how often it fails and how familiar it feels at checkout, helps decide whether customers return, whether revenue is steady and whether owners feel confident enough to invest.

For years, those details sat in the background, handled by service providers while board discussions focused on pricing, product and promotion. Decisions about terminals, acquirers and online checkouts were often made last, once everything else was set. When payments are treated as an afterthought, the real cost of small delays is easy to miss. A pause at the till, an unfamiliar screen on a phone or a failed online attempt can be enough for someone to abandon a purchase and think twice about coming back.

Where Growth Actually Happens

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 - that short moment when intent becomes income - carries more weight than it is given credit for.

Ask a café owner where a busy day goes wrong and they will mention staff shortages, stock delays or a sudden wave of customers all wanting to order at once. Ask again, quietly, and they will talk about the point where the card machine stalls or the wallet on someone’s phone refuses to load. Customers rarely wait politely for tech to catch up. They drift away, cut orders short or decide to come back another time.

That is the first sign of payments acting as a growth engine: a smooth checkout protects the revenue a business already earns. A slow one erodes it.

Speed Brings People Through the Door, and Back Again

Research with hospitality businesses shows how much value sits in those final seconds. Three in five are investing in faster payment systems, and more than two in five say slow processing is their biggest service barrier. They are not chasing gadgets; they are trying to keep service moving.

Speed sets the rhythm. A fast payment keeps queues flowing, tables turning and staff calm. A slow one creates hesitation, which creates drop‑off. Business owners feel it in tips, in table turnover and in the number of people who look at the queue and decide it isn’t worth it.

Customer expectations reinforce this. Across hospitality, contactless is now the most requested way to pay, followed by mobile wallets, split bills and pay‑at‑table. These are habits rather than trends. People expect to settle up as quickly as they hailed a taxi or paid for their tube journey earlier that day. A business that meets that expectation feels reliable. A business that misses it feels behind.

That reliability drives growth in a simple way: it keeps people choosing the same place again.

Choice Encourages People to Spend

Growth is not only about winning each transaction, it’s about what happens inside it. In online retail, the largest increases in conversion and basket size now come from payment choice. 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.

Why? Because payment shape influences mindset. A customer might happily order lunch but pause at the idea of a higher‑ticket purchase unless the checkout offers a way to spread the cost. Flexible finance gives them permission, emotionally and practically, to follow through.

Merchants offering these tools consistently report higher average order values and stronger repeat business. Those uplifts aren’t the result of persuasion or promotions. They come from reducing friction at the exact moment customers decide whether they can afford what they want. When payment feels manageable, spend strengthens.

Cashflow Grows Confidence

Growth relies on confidence: the confidence to hire, to order more stock, to launch a new offer or open a second site. Payment systems influence that confidence more than many businesses might realise.

A smooth cycle lets owners move faster. It gives them room to say yes to an extra stock delivery before a busy weekend. It makes expansion decisions feel grounded rather than risky.

In that sense, settlement speed behaves like every day working capital. It’s not glamorous, but it underpins almost every operational decision. Faster settlement reduces reliance on overdrafts or short‑term borrowing, and that stability gives business leaders the confidence to invest.

Payments Make New Formats Possible

Modern business models depend on payments that can scale and repeat without fuss: food halls, multi‑site groups, hybrid retail concepts, seasonal pop‑ups, click‑and‑collect routes that live alongside in‑store trade.

More than half of hospitality businesses in the UK say they are planning a move into shared spaces or multi‑venue formats. Those formats thrive on pace. If one trader falls behind because of a slow terminal or a limited wallet setup, the entire space feels slower.

For retailers, the equivalent is the jump to the online space or multiple stores. If payments are clunky in the first, the pain multiplies in the second. Systems that are simple, consistent and easy to train staff on become the foundation of expansion, not an afterthought.

Payments, in this sense, are infrastructure. They determine whether a growth plan is scalable or shaky. Consistency across sites protects brand reputation and ensures customers experience the same reliability wherever they go.

Trust Closes the Sale

People don’t analyse trust consciously at checkout. They just know when something feels safe.

In flexible finance, a notable 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 shouted about. It simply means that trust, clarity and security encourage customers to complete purchases rather than drop out.

Trust acts as a multiplier: when people feel safe, they spend with confidence. For merchants, working with regulated providers also reduces reputational risk and strengthens compliance. Trust, in this way, is not just a safeguard, it’s a growth lever.

Why Payments Really Are a Growth Engine

When you trace the thread across service, spend, cashflow and trust, the picture is consistent:

• A smooth checkout protects the revenue a business already wins.

• Familiar payment options increase the value of each order.

• Faster settlement supports better decisions and less hesitation.

• Simple, repeatable systems support expansion into new spaces.

• Trusted payment partners help customers feel comfortable saying yes.

Growth isn’t always a big strategic jump. Often, it comes from the way everyday interactions work, especially the interaction that turns intent into income. Payments sit at that moment. They influence what customers feel, what they spend and how far owners believe they can go next.

And that is why payments are not plumbing. They are the engine.

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Melinda Roylett was appointed as the Managing Director of Merchant Services at Lloyds Banking Group on 30 January 2023. Melinda brings deep payments and financial technology experience, combined with a deep passion for helping small and medium sized businesses to fulfil their growth ambitions. Together with the team, Melinda is responsible for delivering part of the Business & Commercial Banking payments strategy, including developing products and propositions for card acquiring (Cardnet) payment types and enabling customers to do business with ease. Before joining Lloyds, Melinda worked in financial services companies including Square and PayPal, as well as Global Head of Small & Medium Businesses at Afterpay. Melinda also has breadth of strategic leadership experience from her time as the General Manager, UK and Ireland for Uber and was in Lloyds in 2006 as a Senior Manager in Cards and Payments.