What are Payment Orchestration Platforms?Payment orchestration platforms are a single technical structure for processing online payments from payer to payee. Also known as the payment orchestration layer, these platforms manage transaction routing and validating, securing the payment process, and other payment-related functions. The most well-known users of payment orchestration platforms are ecommerce platforms themselves, but there are a range of digital payment applications. The impetus ...
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Payment orchestration platforms are a single technical structure for processing online payments from payer to payee. Also known as the payment orchestration layer, these platforms manage transaction routing and validating, securing the payment process, and other payment-related functions. The most well-known users of payment orchestration platforms are ecommerce platforms themselves, but there are a range of digital payment applications.
The impetus behind the emergence of payment orchestration platforms is the proliferation of payment processors, gateways, and services that merchants and platforms have to work worth. Payment orchestrators centrally manage all of these different vendors within a single system, enabling ecommerce platforms and others to simply work with a single API key. Payment orchestration platforms can be gauged in part by the range and depth of payment gateways and services that each platform natively supports and centralizes for users.
Payment orchestration platforms free up IT personnel from setting up and managing individual payment gateways, processes, and services that their business must work with. This allows IT departments to focus on core business processes and needs. They also improve the end-consumer experience and can improve ROI on a per-transaction basis. This enables increased scalability and compliance with reduced overhead.
Many standalone payment orchestrated platforms focus heavily on vendor-agnosticism. By supporting payments across many different gateways, they can deliver a more robust and higher-quality experience for merchants and consumers alike. In some cases, payment gateway vendors may expand their offerings to include payment orchestration, but will inject a preference for routing payments through their own gateways. This is an aspect of the marketplace norms that is still maturing.
There are several clear use cases for payment orchestration platforms, which can spam multiple industries. The clearest use case is for platforms that serve a global paying audience. Most regions have their own regional payment gateways and processors. Payment orchestrators allow platforms to utilize these regional gateways without having to go through the whole setup process with each individual system.
Payment orchestration platforms also improve the subscription management process for vendors and consumers alike. Centralizing payment orchestration provides more robust and varied systems, evergreen API tokes, and automated retry processes. These functions facilitate easier payments and more seamless renewals for customers, while reducing error management for vendors.
Payment orchestration platforms can also outsource elements of payment security and compliance. Products in this category heavily emphasize their ability to manage PCI compliance and other regulatory requirements for businesses’ payments, because the products handle the actual processing and security of the transactions themselves.
Payment gateways and payment orchestration platforms are closely related, but deliver entirely different scales of payment support. For instance, payment gateways process payments through a particular vendor. They require setup with that particular vendor, regardless of wherever and whoever else the business has set up payment processing with in the past.
Payment orchestration goes beyond payment gateways to deliver more flexibility and scalability around payment processes. Payment orchestration platforms handle the payment processing, in addition to other payment-related services. Payment orchestration tends to also be vendor-agnostic, enabling businesses to utilize payment gateways across borders and with reduced concern for additional compliance issues, such as PCI.
When comparing payment orchestration platforms, consider these factors:
Vendor Agnostic vs. Preferred Gateways: Does each vendor also provide a payment gateway in addition to payment orchestration? If they do, consider whether they have preferred payment gateways. If they do, they may negatively impact the business’s ROI by directing transactions to their own gateway. Vendor-agnostic payment orchestration is the preferred approach.
Use Case: What needs are you specifically looking to solve for the business with this platform? Are you looking for better globalized payment processing? Optimizing payments across different gateways? Looking to offload compliance requirements related to payment processing? Consider which use cases are most relevant to you, and where each vendor’s strengths are.
Ease of Use: Consider how easy to use each product is for the main user audience. For instance, is there a low code/no code option? Is each product accessible for business users, or do IT resources still need to be involved? The former situation is the ideal dynamic for these platforms, but the latter may be the short-term reality as the market matures.