• Nathalie Siegl, Chief Executive and Financial Officer at IXOLIT Group


• 06.04.2022 11:00 am
payment orchestration

Get Flexibility and independence through a streamlined payment stack.

Whether you operate in a niche market or sell a diverse range of products across a variety of domains, merchants all want the same thing: to fulfil their current customer needs and to reach new ones. But how can merchants do this when more and more payment methods are being introduced, the risk of fraud is increasing, and eCommerce continues to grow at an exponential rate? The difficulty of creating a payment setup that works for your business as well as your customers can feel magnified. 

The payment setup or payment stack is a mission critical part of a merchant’s infrastructure. Without payments there would be no business. There are many ways a merchant can accept payments online. However, there are not many that have the potential to grow.  

What is payment orchestration?

A payment orchestration platform or payment management platform allows for complete control over the merchant’s payment stack. It should not be confused with payment switch or payment hub as these options don't necessarily offer all of the features or the independence of a SaaS payment orchestration platform. A true payment orchestration platform works as a technical layer that sits between the merchant and the payment service provider(s) and consolidates all aspects of payments. It gives access to multiple payment methods; use of transaction routing with conversion boosting features such as cascading and failover; centralized consolidation of reconciliation and settlements; real time monitoring of transactions to avoid false positives; risk mitigation; tokenization of customer payment data; and more from just one API. An acquirer-agnostic solution–an independent provider with no financial links to another service–will connect merchants to any payment service provider or acquirer they choose and allow them to benefit from the best rates. 

How can a payment orchestration platform help merchants grow?

The number of alternative payment methods (APMs) that consumers can use to make a payment continues to grow. The market has changed but traditional methods are still in use.  For example digital wallets have not usurped cards; real-time payments, such as open banking, have not replaced bank transfers or direct debits; and it will be some time before crypto is a commonly accepted/used form of online payment. 

Merchants are discovering that when they want to enter new markets or target new audiences there is an increasing number of different payment methods available. In order to cater to potential and existing clients, merchants are no longer replacing older payment methods but simply adding additional ones to their payment mix. 

By working with a centralized payment setup, like a payment orchestration platform, merchants can–from just one API–integrate quickly with international, local and alternative payment methods. This lets the business actively target the market individually by providing payment methods consumers feel comfortable with, thereby increasing turnover. As all payments are handled from the one API and managed centrally, the merchant can keep track of all transactions no matter which payment service provider or acquirer was used to process the payment.

A payment orchestration platform should also allow for centralized risk and fraud management. By creating risk rules, merchants can give each transaction a score which will determine whether it is accepted, pushed to review, or immediately accepted. These rules give merchants robust protection across all of their payment providers and help reduce fraud and protect against chargebacks. 

What can merchants do to provide the right payment method for markets they sell in?

Knowing what payment method to provide can be tricky. With payment methods splintering off in every direction, finding the ones that are most appropriate for your business is no small task. Each country has its own preferred payment methods, and within that generations and specific target groups will show a preference to a particular payment method. For example, iDeal is popular in the Netherlands and Sofort in Germany. In order to find out what payment methods a merchant should be providing for their customers, they need to ask themselves two simple questions.

• Who is buying my products now?

• Who else do I want to buy my product?

By understanding who is buying their products, merchants can figure out the most popular payment methods that their consumers use or will feel comfortable using and make sure that they are providing them. Which brings us neatly to the second question. By pinpointing which other markets you wish to target, merchants can do the same. By having a payment mix that your consumers feel comfortable with considerably reduces the risk of shop-cart abandonment.

The idea of a “one-stop payments shop” is an attractive one for merchants. However, in practice, it can be difficult to create, especially for merchants who operate across multiple jurisdictions. With a payment orchestration platform, merchants can connect to payment service providers and acquirers and get a full overview of all the payment data, which can easily be analyzed or simply exported into a Business Intelligence software. By moving towards payment orchestration, businesses protect their payment flows and get the flexibility –such as quick integration of new payment providers and methods, the ability to route payments to the most appropriate provider and protecting themselves for downtime–they need to grow.

For more information about payment orchestration and how it can help your business visit www.IXOPAY.com