If you’re a Milwaukee Bucks fan, you’ve probably heard of Fiserv. After all, it’s the company with the naming rights to the house that Giannis built.

For everyone else, Fiserv is a Wisconsin-based credit card processing firm. The company faced the same dilemma as so many other organizations sitting on lucrative legacy businesses. Either evolve or face commoditization and the death spiral of price competition. The folks at Fiserv might put it more gently, but they no doubt understood what their long-term risks were.

Fiserv has taken steps to address its challenges. Last year it launched Carat, an omnichannel ecosystem for large enterprises that facilitates transactions across various devices and channels (online, in-store, etc.). The platform powers 15 billion eCommerce and 1 billion global omnichannel transactions annually, according to Fiserv.

What was still missing was a hyperlocal element. This would allow the brands using Carat to connect the dots between physical and digital locations. And then serve up content, including promotions, to consumers based on the consumer’s location and the actions the brand wants to incentivize.

It’s notable that a traditional payment processor like Fiserv is so taking such an interest in localized commerce. This could presage a future where integrations between fintech companies and local commerce platforms are more common.

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Enter Radius8

So back in March of this year, Fiserv plugged the hyperlocal gap by acquiring Radius8 for roughly $14 million.

Radius8 was (and still is under Fiserv) a localization marketing firm that can, for example, serve up content to a consumer based on who they are and where they are located. And it does so in an omnichannel manner, connecting online and offline locations. Radius8 operated roughly in the same realm as SweetIQ (now part of Uberall), Rio SEO, and others.

There is some overlap with Yext as well. But Yext is also a close partner, said Radius8’s CEO and co-founder, Sandeep Bhanote. Yext powers Radius8’s store locator, for example. Bhanote added that Radius8 also competed to some degree with retailers who try to build similar capabilities in-house.

The Radius8 acquisition allows Fiserv to “own more of the shopping funnel,” said Bhanote, who now holds the title of GM/VP, Radius8 at Fiserv.

“The reason why this acquisition made sense for Fiserv is that they want to own more of the buying journey. And so with that digital shopping journey, it’s, ‘Yes we can process your transactions securely’,” Bhanote explained in a recent interview with Localogy Insider. “And ‘Yes, we can deliver different types of transactions’. Now with Radius8, we can influence the buying journey and deliver a more hyper-localized and personalized buying experience based on their proximity to that store.”

Adding Dimensions

So now, as part of Fiserv, Radius8 can combine its location marketing capabilities with its parent company’s insights into consumer purchase behavior.

“When retailers are doing personalization, it is at a single-dimension level. They only know about the person that’s coming to their website,” Bhanote said.

“Fiserv knows that this person has purchased products at 15 other locations, for example. And here’s a broader picture of what makes this customer different. So as fintechs like Fiserv have broader viewpoints on their customers and the types of things that they like to buy, being able to deliver a more personalized shopping experience, for example, will be a lot more real.”

We’ll be surprised if we don’t see other interesting pairings between the payments and martech worlds in the coming months.

Going Crypto

In another apparent effort to diversify and modernize its business, Fiserv announced this week that it has formed a partnership with the digital asset exchange Bakkt. The deal basically introduces the ability to transact on Carat with cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.

According to the partnership announcement, “A future integration of Bakkt into the Carat omnichannel ecosystem from Fiserv will allow businesses to pursue new options for B2B and B2C payouts, loyalty programs, and transactions, all with crypto assets accessible via a digital asset wallet.”