Merchant acquiring economics are forcing structural consolidation between distribution models: ISOs hold merchant relationships and feet-on-the-street scale, while ISVs own the software layer that now controls payment entry points, and processors that fail to architect partnership frameworks bridging both will cede portfolio growth to those that do. For acquirers and processor infrastructure teams, the operational priority is building boarding, residual, and data-sharing rails that treat ISO and ISV channels as complementary inputs to a single merchant lifecycle, not competing go-to-market bets.