Santander tackles UK merchant

Heralding an intensification of competition in the UKs payments industry Spanish banking group Santander and US payments processor Elavon have formed an alliance with the unequivocal objective to become one of the leading players in the UK merchant acquiring market.Underscoring this objective Steve Pateman, Santanders head of corporate and commercial banking, commented: Santander aims to become the best commercial bank in the UK.Santander operates three retail banking units in the UK Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley which will be rebranded as Santander during 2010 and Santander Corporate Banking.For Elavon, a wholly owned subsidiary of the US sixth-largest commercial bank US Bancorp, entry into the UK payments market expands on existing operations serving a total of over 1 million merchants in the US, Europe, Canada and Puerto Rico Elavons payment solutions include credit and debit card processing, electronic cheque services, gift cards, dynamic currency conversion, multi-currency support and cross-border acquiring.Santanders move into the UKs merchant acquiring market comes at a time when small to medium-sized merchants are willing and eager to consider an alternative service supplier, indicates a recent study by research and advisory firm East & Partners (E&P).According to E&P, based on a survey of 505 merchants with annual turnovers of from £2 million ($3.3 million) to £50 million, one in five will look to change their current acquirer during the next six months with the primary reason cited as being dissatisfaction with service