Merchant surveys that explain why merchants stall or leave.

A merchant survey is a business survey of the companies that accept payments through a provider, asking why they adopt, expand, stall or leave. Run as a diagnostic, a merchant survey ranks those reasons across onboarding, settlement, fraud, support and pricing, so the fixes with the most impact come first. Nextyn runs merchant surveys as interviews and surveys with new, active and departed merchants, drawing on a network of 10,000+ merchants.

A Nextyn merchant survey delivers three outputs: a ranked list of adoption and churn drivers, a diagnosis across five areas of the merchant experience and a prioritized fix list. Each output comes from primary interviews and surveys with merchants, not from support tickets or scores alone:

• Ranked drivers: why merchants stall, stop growing or leave, ordered by impact
• Five-area diagnosis: onboarding, settlement, fraud, support and pricing
• Prioritized fix list: the changes to make first, targeted at the highest-revenue drop-off points

Nextyn interviews the three merchant groups that explain adoption and churn: new merchants who never went live, active merchants who have not expanded and merchants who have left. Each survey draws its sample from these groups, matched to the merchant segments and markets in scope:

• New merchants stalled between sign-up and first transaction, and their developers
• Active merchants, by size, industry and sales channel
• Merchants who have left, where they can be reached
• Finance and operations leads who own the payments relationship

Nextyn runs merchant surveys in the United Kingdom, across Europe and in North America, among other markets. Markets are agreed at scoping, and every question is asked the same way in each market, so results compare directly across countries and merchant segments. Recent Nextyn work includes an in-person survey of 300 SME merchants across 11 categories in the UK and a 13,000+ respondent multilingual merchant survey across 28 countries.

Nextyn recommends commissioning a merchant survey when activation, volume or retention falls short of plan and internal data cannot say why. At that stage the merchants' own reasons point the fix at the cause, instead of at whatever is easiest to see in dashboards and tickets. Other triggers include a pricing change, a new onboarding flow and a rise in merchants leaving for a named competitor. Nextyn sends a research plan within 48 hours of the brief.

A Nextyn merchant survey project runs in four steps, from brief to read-out, and nothing is commissioned until the client approves the plan. The client sees the sample, method and price before any fieldwork, and reads every interview with the Nextyn team at the end.

1. Submit the brief: the merchant groups, the markets and the adoption or churn question to settle.
2. Receive a plan within 48 hours: which merchants Nextyn will interview or survey, how, and what the work costs.
3. Approve the plan: fieldwork starts only after sign-off.
4. Review the read-out: every interview read together, showing where merchants agree, where they conflict and what is still open.

Nextyn sends a merchant survey plan within 48 hours of receiving the brief, stating which merchants will be interviewed or surveyed, how, and what the work costs. The plan sets the fieldwork length for the merchant groups and markets in scope, and nothing is commissioned until the plan is approved. As a reference point, Nextyn delivered an in-person survey of 300 SME merchants across 11 categories in the UK in under two months.

Nextyn's merchant survey explains why merchants stall, stop growing or leave, while NPS scores and support tickets only show that something is wrong. Internal data counts the problem, and the merchant survey names its cause in the merchants' own words and ranks the fixes by impact.