New Vontier Research: Payment Friction Is Costing Convenience Retailers

Key Terms

forecourt technical

The forecourt is the open area immediately in front of a retail site—most commonly at a fuel station—where customers park, fill up, and access convenience services. Like the front porch of a house, it’s the first physical touchpoint that shapes customer flow, safety, and chances for impulse purchases, so its layout, cleanliness and equipment directly affect revenue, operating costs and regulatory risk that investors care about.

unified payment stack financial

A unified payment stack is a single, integrated system that handles every step of accepting and moving electronic money—taking payments, checking for fraud, sending funds to the right place, finalizing transactions, and producing records for accounting and reporting. For investors it signals potential cost savings, faster rollouts and clearer revenue streams because one platform replaces multiple vendors, making operations simpler and giving better data to measure growth and risk, like a single kitchen that cooks, plates and cleans instead of several separate rooms.

payment processors financial

Payment processors are companies and systems that move money between a buyer’s bank or card and a seller’s account when a purchase is made, handling authorization, routing and settlement behind the scenes. They matter to investors because their revenue scales with transaction volume and they face risks and opportunities tied to consumer spending, fees, fraud control and regulation—so changes in usage, security breaches or rules can directly affect growth and profitability.

contactless technical

Contactless describes products or services that operate without physical touch, typically using wireless signals, sensors, or short-range radio like tap-to-pay cards, mobile wallets, or hands-free sensors. For investors, contactless adoption is a sign of shifting consumer behavior and cost or efficiency changes—like a store replacing a turnstile with an automatic gate, it can increase convenience, speed transactions, reduce labor or hygiene concerns, and influence revenue, margins and competitive position.

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New national research shows unified payment environments drive faster feature rollouts, smoother upgrades and stronger customer engagement across the forecourt

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Vontier (NYSE: VNT) today released new national research, surveying over 600 U.S. convenience store operators and fuel retailers, highlighting a widening performance gap between operators running a unified payment stack and those managing fragmented, multi‑solution ecosystems.

Fragmentation is a hidden tax, Vontier research finds. Retailers with unified payment stacks see smoother upgrades, lower staff burdens and significantly faster rollout cycles for new loyalty and payment features.

As the forecourt becomes a critical battleground for customer loyalty, Vontier's research reveals that payment architecture is now a direct lever for speed of new feature deployment and growth – not just a back-office concern.

Unified Operators Are Pulling Ahead

The data is clear. Operators running more unified payment ecosystems are:

• More likely to describe upgrades as smooth and cost-effective (63% vs. 38%)
• More likely to execute on new payment and loyalty initiatives within six months of a decision being made (47% vs. 26%)
• Less likely to cite staff time for testing and configuration as a cost of certification and compliance (47% vs. 55%)
• More likely to say servicing and software updates are easy (43% vs. 10%)

Improving the customer experience was the most common motivation for investing in a unified payment architecture – cited by almost half (49%) of retailers – with improved system reliability and cost/time reduction in operations reported as the second and third most popular motivations.

The Opportunity Is Significant

Today, 56% of retailers rely on multiple payment processors and 68% operate two or more payment systems across devices. As a result, adding a new solution or update can require managing four to five separate vendor certifications (29% of respondents).

The result: 68% of fuel retailers take at least six months to deploy new payment or loyalty capabilities, and those with multiple providers wait even longer (73%). Nearly two-thirds (64%) reported they were very to extremely confident that consolidating vendors and technologies would meaningfully reduce certification cycles and related costs.

For operators running loyalty programs – one of the most powerful drivers of repeat visits and basket size – the cost of delay is especially high. Retailers with loyalty schemes are nearly three times more likely to report certification-related launch delays (32% vs. 12%).

"Convenience retail is built on delivering elevated consumer experiences and unified payment systems can support these expectations by driving faster feature rollouts, smoother upgrades and stronger customer engagement," said Mark Morelli, President and CEO of Vontier. "When certification cycles stretch into months, operators aren't just delayed – they're missing opportunities to capture visits, build loyalty and grow revenue. Reducing fragmentation in the environment is how retailers get back to moving at the pace their customers expect."

Vontier: Built to Eliminate Complexity at Every Touchpoint

Vontier's convenience retail and mobility technologies, notably Invenco’s payment and forecourt solutions, are purpose-built to solve these challenges. By unifying payments, streamlining certification pathways and connecting loyalty across consumer touchpoints, operators are able to:

• Launch new payment and loyalty features faster with fewer certification hurdles
• Reduce multi-vendor coordination and downtime risk
• Deliver the contactless, mobile-first and loyalty-integrated experiences consumers increasingly expect
• Free up internal teams and site staff from configuration and testing burdens

With 42% of retailers citing easier customer enrollment as a top loyalty driver for consolidation, Vontier's integrated approach and Invenco’s suite of solutions address the initiatives operators are most eager to accelerate.

About Vontier

Vontier (NYSE: VNT) is a global industrial technology company uniting productivity, automation and multi-energy technologies to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving, more connected mobility ecosystem. Leveraging leading market positions, decades of domain expertise and unparalleled portfolio breadth, Vontier powers the way the world moves – delivering smart, safe and sustainable solutions to our customers and the planet. Vontier has a culture of continuous improvement and innovation worldwide. Additional information about Vontier is available on the Company’s website at www.vontier.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260519876276/en/

Media Contact:
Antenna Group for Vontier
vontier@antennagroup.com

Investor Contact:
Ryan Edelman, VP of Investor Relations
ryan.edelman@vontier.com

Source: Vontier Corporation