Checklist For Choosing the Best Payment Orchestration Platform

Digital payments have skyrocketed in recent years, making a robust payment infrastructure critical for businesses. The global digital payments transaction value is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2025-2030) of 13.63% resulting in a projected total amount of US$38.07tn by 2030. With this growth comes higher customer expectations for seamless and secure checkout. A payment orchestration platform can help meet these demands by improving success rates, reducing costs, and centralizing control across payment methods and providers.

A payment orchestration platform is a software layer or hub that streamlines the integration and management of various payment channels, gateways, and service providers. These solutions help businesses improve their payment processes. By connecting all payment flows from different providers and methods into one interface, payment orchestration platforms simplify integration, enhance transaction success rates, and offer centralized control over a business’s payment infrastructure.

Modern orchestration platforms have emerged as mission-critical for companies operating globally. The market for these platforms is growing rapidly and valued around $1.2–1.5 billion in 2023 and growing ~20–25% annually.

Key functionalities and how payment orchestration platforms work include:

• API Integration and Abstraction: Payment orchestration platforms provide a single, standardized API that bridges a business and multiple payment gateways, acquirers, and payment methods. This approach simplifies the technical challenges of integrating with different service providers by offering a unified interface.
• Intelligent Routing and Switching: These platforms use algorithms that analyze factors like transaction costs, success rates, geographic location, risk profiles, and real-time performance metrics to dynamically route each transaction to the best payment provider. This strategy helps reduce costs and increase approval rates.
• Automatic Failover Protection: If a transaction is declined by one processor or a gateway goes down, the platform can automatically redirect the payment to an alternative provider. This process, often called cascade or fallback, minimizes declines and preserves sales. This redirection happens in milliseconds and is often unnoticed by customers.
• Centralized Configuration and Management: Businesses can set up and manage all their payment integrations, routing rules, and credentials through a central dashboard. This web interface allows for easy activation or deactivation of payment methods, setting routing rules, and managing credentials for various providers, with real-time changes.
• Tokenization and Vault Management: These platforms include robust tokenization services that replace sensitive payment information, like credit card numbers, with unique, non-sensitive tokens. The original sensitive data is securely stored in an encrypted vault, reducing the scope of PCI DSS compliance for businesses. New network tokenization strategies by card networks are also being leveraged – for example, Visa’s data shows using network tokens can raise approval rates by ~4.3% on average and saved $650 million in fraud in one year.
• Fraud Detection and Risk Management: They integrate advanced fraud detection systems using machine learning algorithms, rule-based approaches, and data analytics to identify fraud patterns and assess the risk of each transaction in real-time. These systems can also work with third-party fraud solutions for additional protection. AI-based fraud detection is a growing trend – major payment networks are investing heavily in AI to combat fraud (Mastercard reportedly blocked over $20 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2023–24 using AI tools).
• Reconciliation and Reporting: Payment orchestration platforms provide detailed reconciliation and reporting features by consolidating transaction data from various channels and gateways into one view. This function allows businesses to automatically match transactions, identify discrepancies, and generate reports to monitor payment performance and cash flow.
• Extensibility and Customization: Designed to be adaptable, these platforms offer tools such as Software Development Kits (SDKs), Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), webhooks, and plugin architectures. This allows businesses to adjust the platform to meet their unique needs and integrate smoothly with existing systems.

Choosing a payment orchestration platform can offer significant advantages, but there are also trade-offs:

Benefit/Trade-Off	Category	Description
Benefit	Higher authorization & conversion	By leveraging smart routing, multiple acquirers, and failover, merchants typically see more transactions approved. Even a small lift in approval rate has an impact – for example, merchants report 2–5% increases in authorization success on average with orchestration.
Benefit	Lower processing & ops cost	Orchestration gives you the freedom to route transactions in a cost-aware way. Some reports suggest cost reductions up to 15–25% are possible in certain cases.
Benefit	Flexibility & global reach	Add new payment methods/currencies quickly using pre-built connectors. Industry examples show 60–80% faster time-to-market for adding new payment methods after adopting orchestration.
Trade-Off	Added complexity	By introducing a new layer, you inevitably add some complexity to your payments architecture.
Trade-Off	Governance & monitoring	The flexibility of orchestration means you’ll have many choices to configure. Merchants need to actively govern their payment rules and continuously monitor outcomes.
Trade-Off	Vendor reliance (third-party risk)	You are outsourcing a critical piece of your infrastructure to a vendor. This introduces a dependency on that vendor’s reliability and longevity.

If you decide that a payment orchestration platform is right for your business, the next steps involve choosing the right provider and planning a smooth implementation.

When comparing payment orchestration vendors, ask potential providers the following questions:

Geographic Coverage & Local Methods

#	Question	Evidence
☐	Which countries and currencies do you fully support today? Please attach a current coverage matrix.	Coverage list / matrix (CSV or PDF), dated.
☐	For our target markets {{list countries}}, which local payment methods and wallets are supported natively?	Method catalog with country mapping.
☐	Do you support multi-currency pricing and settlement? Which settlement currencies are available? Any FX or cross-border markups?	Docs on MCP/settlement flows and fees.
☐	Are there MCC/industry restrictions or regional limitations we should know about?	Acceptable use/MCC policy.

PSP Breadth & Flexibility

#	Question	Evidence
☐	How many PSPs/gateways are available out of the box, and can you share the full list?	Current PSP catalog with feature flags (3DS2, APMs, tokens, etc.).
☐	Can we bring our own merchant accounts with specific PSPs (BYO PSP/MAI)? Any limitations per region or brand?	BYO PSP guide and supported IDs.
☐	What is your process, SLA, and cost to add a new PSP or method on request?	Change request policy with typical timelines.
☐	Do you offer a custom connector/SDK for us to build our own integrations?	Connector SDK docs and certification checklist.

Reliability (SLA / Uptime / Resiliency)

#	Question	Evidence
☐	What is your contractual uptime SLA (e.g., ≥99.9%) and service credit schedule?	SLA document from the MSA.
☐	What was your 12-month historical uptime for core APIs?	Public status page export or attestation.
☐	Describe your redundancy and failover design (regions/AZs, active-active?). RTO/RPO targets?	High-level architecture/resiliency overview.
☐	How do you handle PSP or network outages (automatic failover, idempotent retries, queueing)?	Runbooks and retry/idempotency docs.
☐	Do you have scheduled maintenance windows affecting live traffic?	Maintenance policy.

Security & Compliance

#	Question	Evidence
☐	Are you PCI DSS Level 1? Share your latest AoC (Attestation of Compliance) and scope.	PCI AoC (current year), QSA name.
☐	Where is cardholder and personal data stored and processed (regions)? GDPR/UK GDPR compliance posture and DPA?	DPA, sub-processor list, data residency map.
☐	Do you support PSD2 SCA and 3DS2 (incl. exemptions like TRA, MIT, whitelisting)?	3DS/SCA implementation guide.
☐	Detail tokenization (network tokens vs. proprietary vault), encryption (in transit/at rest), key management (HSM), RBAC/SSO, and audit logs.	Security whitepaper, access control policy.

Pricing Model

#	Question	Evidence
☐	What is your pricing structure (per-txn, % of volume, monthly flat, tiered)? Include all pass-throughs.	Rate card with tiers and definitions.
☐	Are declines, retries, 3DS, tokenization, webhooks, or FX billed? Any minimum monthly fees or commitments?	Detailed fee schedule.
☐	How do fees scale as volume doubles/halves? Are there automatic volume discounts or annual uplifts/caps?	Tiering rules and adjustment policy.
☐	Provide a worked example for our mix {{cards/APMs, auth vs. capture ratio, regions}} at {{X}} tx/month.	Pricing calculator output or pro-forma.

Token Portability

#	Question	Evidence
☐	Do we have a contractual right to export all tokens and underlying PAN mappings if we leave? Formats supported and timelines?	Contract clause on token/data portability.
☐	Who is the network token requestor (you or us)? Can network tokens be ported to another token service?	Tokenization architecture note.
☐	What fees and steps are involved in an exit/migration, and what downtime (if any) should we expect?	Migration playbook and fee table.
☐	What is your data deletion and retention policy post-termination?	Data lifecycle policy.

Analytics & Reporting Depth

#	Question	Evidence
☐	Which metrics are available out of the box (auth rate, issuer decline codes, retries, fees, chargebacks, cost per txn)?	Reporting schema or screenshots.
☐	Can we drill down by BIN, issuer, country, PSP, method, currency, and merchant account?	Dashboard demo or sandbox.
☐	How can we export data (CSV, API, webhooks, warehouse connectors)? Data latency and retention periods?	API spec, webhook docs, retention policy.
☐	Do you support automated reconciliation (settlements, fees) and payout matching?	Reconciliation guide and sample reports.

Customer Support & Account Management

#	Question	Evidence
☐	What support channels, hours, and response/resolve SLAs do you offer by tier?	Support SLA and severity matrix.
☐	Will we have a named CSM and solutions engineer? What’s included in onboarding and ongoing optimization (e.g., rule design)?	Engagement model slide / SOW.
☐	How do you share your product roadmap and accept merchant feedback?	Roadmap review cadence and NDA template.
☐	Can you provide 2–3 references of merchants similar to us (industry/region/volume)?	Reference contacts (under NDA).

Beyond these, you might have specific requirements like industry-specific features, such as marketplace split payments, which not all providers handle automatically, or shopping cart integrations, like compatibility with Shopify. Make a list of your must-haves and score each vendor.

After selecting a platform, implement it carefully and in stages to ensure a smoother rollout:

• Kickoff and Account Setup: Collaborate with the provider to set up your account and connect your existing payment service provider accounts. This may involve supplying API keys or merchant IDs for each payment gateway or processor you use. Ensure everything is linked in their test environment first.
• Start with Read-Only / Observation Mode (if possible): Some platforms let you initially “listen” to transactions without processing them. This involves duplicating transactions to the platform to observe outcomes. If available, use this to check that routing logic works as expected and to familiarize your team with the dashboards. If an official read-only mode isn’t available, you can still run parallel reporting: process transactions through your existing flow while also sending them to the orchestration platform. This helps identify any configuration adjustments needed before going live.
• Phased Go-Live (Gradual Traffic Ramp): Avoid switching all payments to the new system at once. Instead, start with a small percentage and gradually increase it. For example, begin routing 10% of transactions through the orchestration layer while keeping 90% through your existing integration. Monitor results closely, ensure no increase in errors, and check that reporting reconciles. If everything looks good, increase the percentage to 30% after a few days, then to 50%, and so on. This phased approach allows you to catch issues at lower volumes.
• A/B Test by Segment (if applicable): You can test routing strategies during rollout. For example, you might send traffic from one country through the orchestrator while keeping another country on the old flow for comparison. Alternatively, test two different routing rule sets on two traffic segments if the platform supports that. This can help refine your configuration before full deployment.
• Full Cutover and Legacy Sunsetting: Once you reach a high percentage of transactions (e.g., 90-100%) and are satisfied with performance, fully switch to the orchestration platform for all transactions. Monitor everything during this transition. It helps to have your entire team (development, operations, finance) on hand during the final cutover in case any issues arise. Afterward, plan to retire or streamline any old payment code to avoid confusion.
• Post-Integration Audit: After a month on the new system, conduct a thorough review. Are approval rates indeed higher? Is reconciliation functioning smoothly? Are there any errors or unexpected behaviors from providers? Adjust routing rules if necessary. Also, gather feedback from your team regarding the dashboard. Does it meet their needs? You may want to schedule a meeting with the vendor’s success team to review performance and ensure you’re utilizing all features.

The goal is to be data-driven and cautious, especially since payments are sensitive. Most orchestration platforms are accustomed to this process and can help you execute it. A careful rollout will foster confidence in the new system across your organization.

During and after implementation, track several key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Authorization Rate (Approval Rate): This is the percentage of payment attempts approved by issuers. A primary goal of orchestration is to improve this metric. Monitor your authorization rate before and after implementation, as well as during any A/B testing. Even a 1-2% increase is significant for revenue. Break it down by domestic versus international transactions, as improvements may be more pronounced in cross-border scenarios.
• Payment Conversion Rate: This metric measures the percentage of customers who successfully complete payments out of those who initiate checkout. Orchestration can improve this by offering more payment options, reducing cart abandonment, and smoothing out failures. Watch your cart abandonment rate or drop-off at the payment step, it should decrease if more payments are processed successfully or if more customers find their preferred method. Remember that on average about 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned across the industry so even small improvements here can yield big gains.
• Cost per Transaction: Calculate your average cost per transaction, which includes all fees paid (PSP fees, interchange, and orchestration fees) before and after implementation. Ideally, this remains neutral or decreases with smart routing. You can also measure cost as a percentage of sales. If you see a drop, quantify the savings. If it increases, ensure it’s balanced by revenue gains or identify if a specific route is unexpectedly costly and make adjustments.
• Time to Add a New Provider/Method: One operational KPI is agility. Track how long it used to take to add a new payment method or gateway versus how quickly you can do it now. For example, if it used to take three months of development work and now takes one week of configuration, that’s a significant improvement. While somewhat qualitative, keep a record of the first few enhancements you make through the platform to illustrate time-to-market gains.
• Transaction Failure Rate / Retry Success: Monitor the rate of transactions that initially fail but are successfully recovered through retries. Many platforms provide metrics for “recovered transactions” due to failover retries. This showcases the benefit of failover logic. Additionally, keep track of hard failures (transactions that ultimately fail even after retries). Ideally, this percentage should decrease after implementing orchestration.
• Chargeback and Fraud Rates: If you’ve implemented new fraud tools or 3DS through the orchestrator, check if your chargeback or fraud loss rates change. Ideally, these should decrease or remain stable. If you notice a surge in declines due to fraud rules, consider adjusting them. This KPI ensures that in trying to optimize approvals, you haven’t inadvertently increased fraud risk.
• Operational Metrics: If part of your aim is operational efficiency, measure factors like: hours spent on reconciliation weekly (should decrease), the number of platforms the team logs into (from many to one), or developer hours spent on payment maintenance. Gather feedback from finance and development teams about improvements to their workflows. While this isn’t a single number, it’s an important qualitative KPI for internal ROI.
• Uptime/Issue Frequency: Track any downtime or major issues with the new platform. Ideally, there should be none, but documenting any problems and response times will help assess the vendor’s reliability over time.

Regularly review these KPIs in the weeks and months post-launch. Many merchants hold weekly payment performance meetings to see trends and decide adjustments.

If you need more information to help make your choice, remember that bilixe is a free resource you can use. Bilixe provides a list of payment gateways, processors, ISOs, PayFacs, and merchant acquirers, including payment orchestration providers. By using bilixe’s filters and comparison tools, you can assess various providers side by side. For example, you can compare their coverage, fee structures, features, and even read reviews.

Payment orchestration platforms can be key to your business’s next growth stage, enabling higher revenues, lower costs, and global reach. However, success relies on selecting the right platform and implementing it carefully. Use this guide as a roadmap: understand the concept, determine if you need it, evaluate providers thoroughly, and execute in stages with clear metrics. If you do this, you’ll be well on your way to a more efficient and future-ready payment infrastructure.