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Payment Orchestration Platform: How It Works and Why So Important

Payment orchestration platform is a good solution when your business expands into a new market or region. In this post, we will give you a short introduction to what payment orchestration is, how it works, how it helps businesses grow, and what platforms are the best business players in 2023.

Content

  1. Payment orchestrators: business needs, principles of work, and main features
  2. Benefits of payment orchestration
  3. 3 Top Things to know before selecting a payment orchestration platform
  4. 2 Situations When Orchestrator Is Not A Piece of Cake
  5. 5 Best payment orchestration platforms for your business in 2023
    • Akurateco
    •  Payoneer
    •  IXOPAY
    •  Ikajo
    • Spreedly
  6. Conclusion

Payment Orchestrators: Business Needs, Principles Of Work, And Main Features

Due to the globalization of e-commerce, a gap has emerged in payment processing. Payment service providers (PSPs) appear incapable to serve merchants on a global scene. So what happens when your business expands into a new market or region and you need to start working with additional PSPs merchants?

You need to adapt to a multi-PSP strategy for payment operations and this is where payment orchestration providers appear on the scene. They allow you to continue to deliver a well-executed payment experience to merchants.

When we talk about payment orchestration, we mean a platform that integrates different payment providers and methods in a single infrastructure. The key benefit of payment orchestration is not partnering with one specific provider, but being able to choose between different payment gateways.

In fact, the main task of a payment orchestrator is to combine two different systems – the client and bank, each of which has a different data structure, data processing, and fixing error algorithms. Payment orchestration refers to integrating and managing the entire payment process including payment operations, payment authorization, transaction, routing, and settlement. This process involves connecting to different payment service providers (PSPs), acquirers, and banks on a single unified software layer.

Not all PSPs offer the same payment methods or facilitate card acquisition in all the regions where your company is going to operate. If you want to optimize processing flows and have an active failover to another provider at your fingertips the ability to actively steer and manage transaction processing over multiple providers. 

Payment orchestration enables you to optimize conversion rates, availability benchmarks, and meet regulatory requirements often entering a new region or specific country by adapting to the local payment culture. 

In some situations, businesses should also follow processing requirements that do not always allow cross-border service models through a single international PSP. When a customer places an order on your website, the payment orchestration provider offers a unified payment experience to your customers while giving access to multiple PSPs to process the actual transaction. 

Payment orchestrator ensures the efficient processing of fast, reliable, and secure transactions. It optimizes the payment process, giving you total control of the infrastructure and delivering a flawless checkout experience to your customers

working of payment gateway
Image source: FreySoft

But let’s look at the main features that the best payment orchestration platforms offer their merchants. 

  • All the payment processes are managed by a single platform, this way you will be able to access all the stages of the payment processing. The fact that the processes happen within one platform, ensures security and allows automatic reconciliation effectively. This way you save the time and effort your company would spend on performing reconciliation manually.
  • You can also activate or deactivate different providers, payment systems, and acquirers through the control panel. 
  • The integrated system allows you to automatically switch to the most performing provider at the time of the transaction. In fact, smart routing is a system that increases the chances of the transactions’ approval by automatically finding the best path for the processing of the payment, following each step from the acquirer to the issuer. Based on artificial intelligence, smart routing follows real-time network layout changes to ensure that the transaction gets approved in the most efficient way. 
  • All the transactions carried out within the platforms are Payment Services Directive (PSD2) compliant, and the dashboards are reliable and user-friendly. It means that you can easily access your payment reports and any other payment data you require.

Following the basic features above, here are the benefits of payment orchestration. 

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Benefits Of Payment Orchestration

Payment orchestration platforms serve to improve the flexibility and scalability of payment processing. However, it is important to know that these platforms offer other valuable services for financial organizations as well.

Here are a bunch of benefits customers get using a payment orchestration platform:

  • Different PSP Connections with One API Integration

Payment orchestration platforms integrate local and global PSPs by providing merchants access to previously configured provider connections after a one-time integration. Obviously, payment orchestration platforms allow connection to multiple providers. It will open new markets, expand the business, and provide a wider base of loyal customers. 

  • Increased Acceptance Rates

In a situation when the orchestrator is vendor-agnostic, the ability to connect to diverse PSPs increases acceptance rates. Orchestrator optimizes payment routine and transactions to accept. Using automated retries and cascading reduce further transaction declines.

  • Reduced time of a new payment method integration

Orchestrator makes the integration of a new payment method up to 3 times faster than with a new provider. In practice, it takes from 3 weeks to 1 month through the orchestrator and 2-3 months through a new provider.

Integration of local and global PSPs leads to better merchants adaptation. Integrating a variety of local and global PSPs offers merchants diverse payment methods and better adaptation to customer payment preferences. This makes the payment process more convenient for customers and offers higher conversion rates. Payment orchestrator makes payment processing smart and reduces issues and transaction declines. Canceling the need to retry purchases or select different payment methods improves customer experience as well.

  • Consolidated Management

Payment orchestration platforms centralize the management of merchants’ payment stack using only one dashboard. PSP no longer needs to be kept through a separate platform. Merchants get all payment data with analytics and real-time assessment in one place. This leads to a faster and more efficient process of making payment decisions.

  • Minimized Security and Compliance Responsibilities

Payment orchestrator is responsible for the merchant’s security and compliance responsibilities. PCI-compliant vaults used for building payment orchestration platforms reduce compliance scope to a minimum. Merchants become always up to date on diverse compliances across various payment methods if use payment orchestrators. Such services as tokenization and risk management enhance the protection of payment data as well. 

  • Scaling with Ease

Different PSP connections with one API integration accelerate the scaling process drastically. Your market reach and base of loyal customers become wider due to the more payment options you offer. Payment orchestration optimizes specific local payment methods, enables cross-border sales, and facilitates global expansion.

  • Minimized fees

Merchants can have lower costs of transactions by choosing payment channels with the lowest fees. Besides, as your business expands and grows, payment orchestration minimizes setup fees and eliminates additional fees for automated transaction routing.

Benefits From Using A Payment Orchestration Platform
Image source: FreySoft

Ultimately, payment orchestration makes business scaling a properly optimized, safe, and smooth process.

3 Top Things To Know Before Selecting A Payment Orchestration Platform

To get all the possible benefits of using payment orchestration platforms, you need to select the best fit for your business needs. There are a few things to consider before making a final decision.

  • The first thing is that you have to be sure the platform is completely vendor agnostic. Your vendor can offer their own payment orchestrator, but you should remember they always tend to increase their profit, not yours. Not having a vendor-agnostic platform can affect negatively your fees and acceptance rates.
  • Another key issue to avoid is to make sure the selected platform works with the services and payment methods you prefer most. You will not benefit from using a service that cannot provide you with the tools you require to achieve your business goals.
  • Last but not least, the platform that you select should serve global business directions and your international customers.
Selecting A Payment Orchestration Platform
Image source: FreySoft

So, before making a decision you need to consider the following questions. Evaluate how easy it is for your business users to use the platform or will IT need to be involved? Consider your resources and the most preferable options for the platform. Lastly, identify your end goals of using a payment orchestrator – globalization of payments, diversification of PSPs and payment methods, narrowing the scope of compliance regulations, etc. – and select vendors who can offer these services.

2 Situations When Orchestrator Is Not A Piece of Cake

Even though a payment orchestrator is a good solution for businesses that enter new markets, it may still have a bunch of disadvantages to consider.

First and foremost, you need to understand that the smooth, stable, ongoing work of the orchestrator is a must for your business. In case the orchestrator falls, you will lose all your traffic.

The second issue is connected with your partner who offers you an orchestration platform. In case this company makes a decision to go out of business, you will need to rebuild all payment methods either through a new provider or through implementing a new orchestrator. So, choose your partner wisely, because their reputation, the level of your cooperation, and the stability of your partnership do matter. 

5 Best Payment Orchestration Platforms For Your Business In 2023

Among all payment orchestration providers on the market, the top five are the most successful.

Akurateco

Akurateco is a white-label payment software provider based in Amsterdam of industry professionals with 15+ years of hands-on experience in the payment industry. They offer the following services: white-label payment gateway, 200+ payment connectors per one integration, cross-platform data sharing, and mobile application integration on iOS and Android SDK. 

According to their statistics, merchants get up to 20% higher approval rates with their smart routing and up to 30% higher conversion rates with cascading. Akurateco offers full automation of the payment flow, better traffic distribution, and data-driven decision management. The company provides a few integration options for businesses: Mobile-ready Checkout, Host-2-Host integration, Plugins to CMS, and Mobile SDK.

Infrastructure Details:

  • SLA 99.995%
  • Cloud deployment on hardware or Amazon AWS
  • PCI DSS 3.2 certification of equipment, solutions, and processes
  • 24/7 maintenance of software and hardware
  • SMS and DMS payment schemes support
  • 3DS 2.0 support
  • Dynamic currency conversion

Payoneer

Payoneer is a cross-border payments platform that offers more than 100 payment methods in 150+ currencies across 200 countries. Payoneer offers Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration,  flexible approval flows, quick reconciliation and reporting, diverse payment options, risk mitigation, enhanced operational efficiency, data protection, and reduced compliance requirements. Merchants can make mass payouts, automate reconciliation and settlements, eliminate chargebacks, and minimize fees per transaction. As for additional services, Payoneer offers tax services for recipients, diverse online reports, and messaging in different formats. The company offers three integration models: There are four possible integration models: Host-2-Host integration, iFrame, and a non-integrated option.

Infrastructure Details:

  • PCI Level 1 certification
  • AML/CTF compliance
  • US and EU licenses
  • PSD2 compliance
  • 24/7 support
  • SSL connectivity (DigiCert)

IXOPAY

IXOPAY is a payment-agnostic platform that offers clients flexibility,  diverse payment service providers and acquirers, increased conversion rates, and reduced processing fees. With IXOPAY, merchants can connect to international, local, and alternative payment methods (APMs) such as cryptocurrency, open banking, eWallets, and more. The platform has more than 100 PSPs and more than 200 payment methods that merchants can select. IXOPAY offers additional services, including risk management, fraud protection management, automated reconciliation and settlement tools, fee management engines, smart payment routing, etc. The company insists on a 15% increase in acceptance rates due to cascading and fallback features. Merchants can control and manage the whole payment process through customizable dashboards and real-time KPI reports. IXOPAY offers the following integration models: Plugins to CMS, Mobile SDK, Host-2-Host integration, server-to-server API for PCI-compliant environments, Payment.js library with Hosted Fields, and virtual terminals.

Infrastructure Details:

  • PCI DSS Level 1 compliance
  • PCI 3DS certification (1.0 and 2.0)
  • GDPR compliance
  • 24/7 support

Ikajo

Ikajo is a SaaS payment platform that serves more than 100 connectors available in 150+ currencies with one integration. The company promises up to 30% of increase in conversion rate and +20% of increase in transactions approval ratio. The company offers diverse payment methods, including credit cards, cryptocurrencies, and alternatives such as PayPal, Klarna, etc. It is an all-in-one platform with user-friendly interface, in which merchants can select a payment method, change priorities, and get real-time analytics on their transactions. Ikajo also allows automated reconciliation and tracking of all payments both incoming and outgoing from each payment method with the help of a payment calendar. Ikajo offers two types of integration: Host-2-Host integration and API rest/API soap.

Infrastructure Details:

  • PCI Level 1 certification
  • AML/CTF compliance
  • PCI 3DS certification (1.0 and 2.0)
  • Cloud development on own hardware or Amazon AWS
  • 24/7 maintenance of software and hardware
  • SMS and DMS payment schemes support
  • Dynamic currency conversion

Spreedly

The Spreedly payment orchestration platform offers leverage gateways, fraud tools, and other payment services in 100 currencies globally. They optimize payment processing from any gateway or payment service. Spreedly also provides smart routing, consulting services, performance evaluation, and comparative business analysis of competitors.

Infrastructure Details:

  • PCI DSS Level 1
  • SCA compliance
  • 3DS2, and PSD2 support
  • 120+ gateways and PSPs
  • 100+ payment services
  • Third-Party APIs
best payment orchestration platforms in 2023
Image source: FreySoft

Conclusion

From what you can see now, a payment orchestration platform can bring a lot of benefits to your business. First and foremost, it unifies and optimizes your payment processes. Besides, it improves payment automatization and makes you ready to enter the global market. Payment orchestration platforms simplify payment management and enhance customer experience. Besides, it is a good example of scalable and sustainable financial integration that improves both the client and bank experience in a situation of disturbance to financial markets. The only thing to do is to select services that fit best with your business needs.

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