⚠ In-Store Is a Harder, More Contested MarketModerate threat

Adyen's unified-commerce expansion into physical, in-store payments is a real opportunity, but it is a fight on much harder ground than its online heartland. The in-store payments market is enormous but mature, entrenched, and fiercely contested: incumbents like Fiserv, Global Payments, Ingenico, and a host of regional players have decades-old relationships, vast installed bases of payment terminals, and deep positions with the retailers and restaurants that dominate physical commerce. Displacing them means convincing merchants to rip out working hardware and switch established operations — a slower, harder sell than winning online payments, where Adyen's advantages shine most.

The economics are tougher too. Physical payments often carry lower take rates and higher operational cost (terminals, hardware, in-person support) than online, so growth in-store can dilute the rich margins Adyen earns online. And the competition is not only entrenched but, in the case of the modern rivals, also expanding into unified commerce themselves. Adyen's single-platform advantage is genuinely powerful for a merchant that wants one provider across all channels, and its in-store business is growing well, so this is a real and winnable expansion, not a doomed one. But an investor should recognize that unified commerce takes Adyen from the online market it dominates into the physical market it must conquer — against entrenched incumbents, on lower-margin economics, with a harder sales motion — so the growth is real but hard-won, and the in-store frontier, while a genuine opportunity, is the more contested and less profitable half of the payments world, not an easy extension of Adyen's online strength — 2023 showed what contested ground does to the numbers¹.