Formulating A Post-Verification Merchant Activation Strategy in Payment Fintech Using VFT and AHP

Indonesia’s expanding digital payment ecosystem continues to face the challenge of merchant inactivity following verification, limiting the returns on merchant acquisition investments. At PT Gerbang Pembayaran, the verified-to-active merchant conversion rate declined to 22.08% in 2024. This study aimed to identify barriers to merchant activation and formulate a prioritized strategy for facilitating initial transactions. An exploratory sequential mixed-methods design was employed, integrating semi-structured interviews with ten purposively selected verified but inactive merchants, thematic analysis guided by the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework, Value-Focused Thinking (VFT), and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Merchant needs were translated into strategic objectives and alternatives, which were subsequently evaluated by experts based on effectiveness, cost, and implementation time. The findings identified five major themes: operational challenges, merchant aspirations, adoption barriers, financial sensitivity, and support needs. These themes revealed three dimensions of unmet merchant needs: operational guidance, financial confidence, and customer readiness. Merchant-Centric Dashboard Improvement emerged as the highest-priority strategy, substantially outperforming financial intervention and customer readiness support. All pairwise comparison matrices yielded consistency ratios below the acceptable threshold of 0.10, indicating consistent expert judgments. The findings suggest that personalized interfaces, guided onboarding, and proactive reminders may address operational friction more directly than isolated financial incentives. The study concludes that payment platforms should manage post-verification merchant activation as a distinct phase of the merchant journey and prioritize structured guidance to facilitate initial transactions. Future research should evaluate post-implementation outcomes and validate the proposed framework across broader payment gateway contexts.