TRANSACT

Why TRANSACT matters for B2B marketing leaders

Three days at Mandalay Bay. The Director Demand Gen at a Series B payments orchestration vendor described the spring calendar trade: “MRC Vegas in March is fraud-buyer-only. TRANSACT in April is the broader US payments industry. If our category is processor or ISO partnership, TRANSACT is the show. If it is fraud, MRC is the show. If it is both, we exhibit at both and run the sequences differently.” The 838-row publicly-sourceable list for Vegas TRANSACT is the ETA’s flagship US payments industry show. Almost every attendee is either a payments-industry buyer (mid-market merchant, processor, ISO, ATM operator, fintech embedded-payments leader) or a payments-industry vendor.

If your ICP is a VP Payments at a US mid-market merchant, a Senior Director Acquiring at a major processor, a VP Card Programs at a community bank or credit union, a Head of Embedded Payments at a fintech, or a senior product leader at a major ISO or ATM operator, TRANSACT concentrates more of those titles in three days than any other US payments-industry show outside Money20/20.

Vendelux and Bizzabo will list it as an 838-row Vegas payments conference. They will not tell you that the issuing track on day one is where the community-bank conversations happen, that the merchant acquiring track on day two is where the ISO partnership conversations happen, or that the ETA’s evening receptions are where the actual processor and ISO deals start.

Who attends TRANSACT

The 838-row publicly-sourceable list breaks into clusters that map cleanly to a B2B SaaS sourcing program:

• US processor and acquirer senior product (Fiserv, FIS, Global Payments, Worldpay US, JPMorgan Payments, Elavon, Heartland): roughly 14-18% of the room. The highest-use cluster for payments-orchestration, tokenization, and fraud-on-payment vendors.
• US ISO senior leadership: 12-16%. The merchant-acquiring distribution channel that gates mid-market merchant deployments.
• Mid-market US merchant senior payments: 10-14%. The buyers below the Tier-1 cluster that shows up at MAG.
• Community bank Heads of Card and Payments: 8-12%. The same buying class that shows up at Payments Magnified, with crossover.
• Embedded-payments and BaaS senior product (Marqeta US, Galileo, Stripe, Adyen US, Highnote, Lithic): 6-10%.
• ATM operators and ISO networks: 5-8%.
• Vendor and consulting attendance: high. Filter aggressively at sourcing.

For a Series A or Series B payments orchestration, fraud, tokenization, embedded-payments, or merchant-onboarding vendor with a US motion, the working list at TRANSACT is closer to 200-330 named contacts across 110-180 named accounts. The 348 enriched contacts in the 2025 sample reflect a typical ICP overlay.

The five-stage pipeline applied to TRANSACT

TRANSACT rewards a partnership-channel-aware sequencing motion alongside the direct sales motion. Processors, acquirers, and ISOs gate or accelerate mid-market merchant deployments, and the sourcing program needs to account for that.

Source. Pull the published roster five weeks out. Cross-reference against your US payments TAL: the major processors and acquirers, the top 50 US ISOs, the mid-market merchant cluster, the community-bank and credit-union cluster, plus the embedded-payments fintechs. The 838-row publicly-sourceable list ICP-matched against a typical US payments TAL produces 200-330 working contacts.

Enrich. Score on three axes: seniority (VP and above for processors and acquirers; Head-of and above for community banks and credit unions), partnership-channel signal (which processor or ISO the merchant runs), and active-vendor signal (recent payments-orchestration RFPs, public statements about processor switches, recent senior payments hires). Apollo coverage on US payments senior contacts runs around 85-92%.

Sequence. Three cadences. Processor and acquirer senior product: a 4-touch sequence anchored to a partnership-channel angle and a peer-processor reference. ISO senior leadership: a 3-touch sequence anchored to a merchant-distribution-economics framing. Mid-market merchant senior payments: a 4-touch sequence with concrete payments-economics framing (interchange savings, fraud-loss reduction, chargeback recovery).

Capture. Mandalay Bay’s exhibit hall has around 80-130 sponsor booths plus a sponsor lounge plus reserved meeting rooms. Use a mobile capture flow that maps every scan and voice note to your Salesforce or HubSpot Campaign Member the same business day. TRANSACT produces 180-330 booth scans across two days for a typical 10x10 sponsor footprint, plus 15-30 pre-booked private meetings.

Attribute. Tag every Campaign Member with the TRANSACT campaign and a buyer-type custom field (Processor, Acquirer, ISO, Mid-Market Merchant, Community Bank/CU, Embedded Payments). Run a Salesforce report 48 hours after floor close that segments sourced pipeline by buyer type. US payments deals close on 6-15 month cycles depending on buyer type; plan the attribution review at 60, 180, and 365 days.

Booth and meeting strategy for TRANSACT

For B2B SaaS vendors selling payments orchestration, fraud, tokenization, embedded payments, or merchant onboarding into US payments-industry buyers:

• Booth size: 10x10 is the standard. 20x20 placements near a major processor’s sponsor area are higher-yield for partnership-channel-driven products.
• Location: Pay for placement near the issuing track room or the merchant acquiring track entry. The lounge sponsorships near the morning coffee zone are where senior processor and acquirer leaders spend their breaks.
• Staffing: 2 AEs per shift, 1 product or solutions engineer who can answer processor-and-ISO-level integration questions, 1 senior leader (CRO, VP Sales, or Founder) at the booth during peak hours. US payments-industry buyers expect to talk to people who understand the processor stack and the ISO distribution model.
• Side meetings: The Mandalay Bay restaurants and the Strip steakhouses are the unofficial sponsor dinner spots. Book an 8-10 person dinner Tuesday or Wednesday night with your top processor, ISO, and mid-market merchant targets. Border Grill, CUT, or one of the on-property restaurants.

Recommended exhibitor tier: a 10x10 booth plus a track sponsorship plus a sponsor dinner typically runs 40-75K all-in for the three-day program, before staffing and travel.

How Luminik runs the TRANSACT motion

TRANSACT is a US payments-industry buying show. The five-stage pipeline (source, enrich, sequence, capture, attribute) runs identically to the payments motion documented in our Money20/20 case study, with the US-payments-industry partnership-channel calibration above.

We run the same five-stage motion as documented in our case studies. See the Fintech industry playbook for the underlying motion and the for-marketing-leaders page for the budget-defense framing.

Run on the Salesforce, Apollo, and HubSpot accounts you already pay for.

FAQ

How many attendees does TRANSACT actually have?

Our publicly-sourceable list for the 2025 program at Mandalay Bay is 838 rows. ICP density for B2B SaaS vendors selling payments orchestration, fraud, embedded payments, or merchant onboarding into US payments-industry buyers runs around 16% of the room (Payments industry default), with the US payments-industry concentration on this list skewing higher.

When should I start sourcing for TRANSACT?

Five weeks out. The published attendee directory typically goes live around then. By T-minus three weeks, US processor and acquirer senior calendars are full.

What is the typical exhibitor cost?

A 10x10 booth with track sponsorship runs around 25-45K base. All-in costs including a sponsor dinner, staffing, and travel run 40-75K for the three-day program.

How does TRANSACT compare to MRC Vegas and Money20/20 USA?

MRC Vegas (March) is fraud-buyer-only: 380 rows on the publicly-sourceable list, US merchant fraud heavy. TRANSACT (April) is the broader US payments industry: 838 rows on the publicly-sourceable list, processor-acquirer-ISO heavy. Money20/20 (October) is broad fintech: 11K+ floor attendees, global payments and banking. For a vendor with a processor, ISO, or partnership-channel motion, TRANSACT produces denser US payments-industry conversations per dollar.

Should I run partnership-anchored sequences for processors?

Yes. Processors, acquirers, and major ISOs gate or accelerate mid-market merchant deployments. A partnership-anchored sequence (integration availability, joint customer reference, certified-marketplace presence) outperforms a direct-sales sequence for processor-and-ISO contacts.

How do mid-market merchants buy differently from Tier-1 merchants?

Mid-market US merchants buy through their processor or ISO partnership channels more often than Tier-1 merchants, who buy direct. The sequence for a mid-market merchant should reference their processor relationship; the sequence for a Tier-1 merchant should reference peer-Tier-1-merchant proof points.

How do I write TRANSACT attribution back to Salesforce?

Tag every Campaign Member with the TRANSACT campaign and a buyer-type custom field. Run reports at 48 hours, 60, 180, and 365 days. US payments deals close on 6-15 month cycles depending on buyer type; the attribution model needs to track first-touch through close.