Mastering Payments: The Role and Impact of Payment Orchestration in the Digital Era

By the term “orchestration,” the first thing that comes to mind is the systematical or automated coordination and management of different components to achieve a particular goal.

So, if you think of payment orchestration, it will mean coordinating and managing different payment services, payment methods, payment service providers, payment gateways, payment processors, and payment networks in a systematic and automated way to process payments smoothly, efficiently, and securely.

The landscape of digital payments and online commerce is ever-changing with the evolution of new payment methods and technologies. Customers increasingly favor diverse payment options, including digital wallets, bank transfers, and buy now, pay later services. Merchants, mindful of potential technical downtime risks from relying on a single payment provider, seek to avoid losing their digital customer base. Global expansion considerations further emphasize merchants’ importance in understanding and aligning with diverse payment regulations and regional customer preferences.

Payment Orchestration emerges as a comprehensive solution addressing various challenges. These platforms must adapt to emerging trends by integrating new payment services, possessing the capability to accept diverse payment methods, processing payments seamlessly across alternative channels in case of disruptions, and supporting regional payment methods while ensuring compliance with local regulations.

Orchestration platforms, instead of being merely Payment Orchestrators, play a pivotal role in aiding merchants. These platforms optimize payment processing costs through efficient transaction routing, enhance user experiences by minimizing payment hiccups, address crucial security and compliance features, provide valuable data and analytics for businesses to refine their payment strategies, reduce development and maintenance efforts to meet market demands, enable scalable growth by handling increased transaction volumes, expanding into new markets, and ultimately ensuring competitiveness in the dynamic business landscape.

Many providers provide such an orchestration platform. Some of them are Zai, Paydock, Corefy, Stripe Connect, Adyen, Ingenico ePayments, Worldline Payment Orchestration, Zooz, Akurateco, and IxoPay.

Selecting the Right Payment Orchestration Platform for Your Business Integration

If you want to integrate your business platform with any payment orchestration platform, you should make the selection based on the below criteria:

• Assess the target market, payment methods (credit card, digital wallet, alternative payment methods), and payment channels (online, in-store, mobile) that are supported by the orchestration platform
• Assess whether your security and compliance needs are met, along with the scalability and flexibility of the platform to adapt to new market trends. Check the platform’s roadmap for enhancements.
• Seamless Integration for e-commerce, point of sale, accounting software, and so on
• If your business is international, check whether payments are supported in multiple currencies and comply with the country’s regulations
• Determine the pricing model – fixed fee or percentage of transaction volume. Considerations should be based on your business model and expected growth in transaction volume
• Data analytics and reports provided by the orchestration platform, based on which decisions can be taken on optimizing your business payment strategy
• Reputation, Uptime, Reliability, and Customer support provided by the platform
• Feedback from other merchants or industry, and the contract terms of the provider, cancellation policies, fees, and exit strategy

Trial periods and pilot programs should be utilized to test the features and functionality of the provider in the real world. Scalability and performance testing need to be conducted before making the final decision.

Critical Considerations for Scaling Your Business as a Payment Orchestration Provider

If you want to scale your business and become a payment orchestration provider, the below points need to be addressed:

• Extensive market research to understand the orchestration landscape, market demand, and competition. Meet the regulatory compliance of the target market. Comply with the Payment industry standards.
• Acquire a robust and scalable orchestration platform to connect to multiple payment gateways, acquirers, and processors and offer different payment methods and dynamic and smart payment transaction routing.
• Ensure seamless communication with your platform and payment service providers- acquirers, gateways, and processors. Ensure efficient merchant onboarding process with proper KYC (Know Your Customer) and KYB (Know Your Business) procedures, risk assessment, and due diligence.
• Provide tools, reports, and dashboards so merchants can review, manage, and strategize their business. Implement stringent security measures to protect payment data. Stay updated and take action on evolving security threats and best practices.
• Provide comprehensive APIs and documentation for easy integration with the platform. Provide advanced reporting and analytics tools and a responsive and knowledgeable customer support team
• Establish partnerships with banks, payment networks, acquirers, and payment technology providers, determine your platform’s unique features and benefits, and ensure the scalability and performance of the platform to handle high transaction volume.
• Check for the uptime and availability of the platform and conduct regular compliance audits. Upgrade and adapt the platform to meet evolving merchant and market demands and have a strong marketing and sales strategy to attract merchants.
• Determine the pricing model – subscription-based, transaction volume-based, or transaction fees-based. Consider merchant types and sizes and derive a tiered pricing plan to address varied merchants.

Addressing these elements positions your platform for success in a competitive market, attracting merchants and ensuring long-term viability.

Conclusion

Whether your business wants to integrate with any payment orchestration platform or you want to scale your business and offer merchants a payment orchestration platform, Cigniti can help you in both situations by providing testing services for your implementation and enhancements. Cigniti, with its deep payment domain knowledge and testing expertise, can provide consultancy and help you scale your business and meet market demands.

Need help? Contact our Payment Testing experts to learn more about the role and impact of Payment Orchestration in the digital era.