At this week’s ETA Payment Facilitation Committee meeting, we’ll take a deep dive into Visa’s new Commercial Enhanced Data Program (CEDP), a fundamental shift now in active enforcement. CEDP retires the Level 2, Level 3, and Large Ticket programs and replaces them with a unified, data-driven framework designed to reward accuracy, consistency, and completeness of enhanced data on commercial and small-business card transactions.

When my career first began in Acquiring, we simply sold electronic payments to merchants who were otherwise just focused on cash and checks.  It was a reasonably easy business.  But, as an industry, we’ve never really stood still for long. 

Acquirers will need to pivot from purely “processing” to “platform + value-added services (fraud, data, embedded payments)” if they want to maintain margins.  We have a lot to consider in this past moving industry and economy.

The acquiring industry has long focused on payments, yet its data holds untapped potential for trade intelligence. By integrating SKU-level information, country-of-origin data, and tariff schedules, acquirers could offer merchants tools to model “landed cost” scenarios.  This would show how tariffs affect profit margins or pricing strategies. Think of it as a new kind of risk dashboard, where payment analytics meet supply-chain foresight.