Whether a business operates a local online store or manages global iGaming or trading operations, choosing the right payment infrastructure can determine how well it scales and adapts to new markets.
As businesses expand internationally, they learn that what works in one market doesn't necessarily work in another. Credit cards may be the preferred choice in one region, while customers in another rely heavily on local alternatives like PIX in Brazil or UPI in India.
This naturally leads merchants to work with multiple payment processors to support different payment methods and accept transactions in different currencies, but managing individual integrations with each creates complexity. Payment orchestration platforms offer an alternative approach, and understanding the distinction between these approaches is important for merchants making this decision.
At a technical level, payment gateways handle the checkout page data transmission and tokenization between customers and merchants, securely sharing payment details with a processor to complete the transaction. The processor then communicates with the customer's bank and the merchant's bank to authorize the payment and transfer funds. Payment Service Providers (PSPs) typically encompass both gateway and processing services in one package, and while technically different, most businesses use these terms interchangeably. Therefore, for simplicity, we'll treat them the same throughout this article.
Payment orchestration platforms work entirely differently. They don't process transactions themselves and instead act as an intelligent control center that connects businesses to multiple PSPs through a single API integration. This means that by connecting to one orchestration platform, businesses gain access to hundreds of different payment processors and local payment methods like Apple Pay, PayPal, PIX, UPI, Klarna, and also gain access to advanced optimization and reporting tools.
As businesses scale globally, this distinction becomes crucial. Using a single PSP might work for smaller, domestic operations, but enterprise businesses often require the flexibility and scalability that orchestration provides.
How Businesses Process Payments
For most merchants operating in a local market, online checkouts are powered by a single gateway solution. This single company typically offers a set of core capabilities: a gateway for choosing a checkout theme and basic support for different payment methods, like Visa and Mastercard card schemes. This makes them an attractive choice for small or medium-sized businesses, particularly those that sell primarily within one region. By partnering with a single PSP, merchants can launch quickly, manage compliance requirements with less complexity, and offer familiar card payment methods.
However, as businesses grow, PSP limitations often become more apparent. Merchants realize the need for more than one PSP to support diverse customer preferences and regional differences. Common reasons for adopting multiple PSPs include:
- Local payment methods: Different PSPs support different payment methods. Supporting regional payment preferences, like Apple Pay in Europe, PIX in Brazil, and M-PESA in Africa, typically requires connecting to different PSPs.
- Multiple currencies: Global commerce requires processing in local currencies to reduce conversion costs and improve the customer experience. Not all PSPs can accommodate every currency.
- Higher approval rates: Approval rates vary significantly by region and PSPs. Using multiple PSPs allows merchants to route transactions to the provider most likely to approve them, reducing the risk of failed payments and lost sales.
Managing multiple individual PSP integrations, however, creates its own challenges. Even after lengthy integrations to each, businesses will have to manage separate dashboards and rely on different reporting formats. Payment orchestration platforms solve this by acting as a unified control layer, consolidating all transaction data and performance into a single dashboard.
Choosing Payment Orchestration to manage PSPs
Orchestration platforms serve as a strategic control center, with a unified API that simplifies integrations and creates a future-proof foundation for scaling payments. Key capabilities include:
Smart routing and cascading
Orchestration platforms support merchants to set routing rules, directing payments to different processors based on the payment region, currency, card type, or amount, and can also intelligently direct each transaction to the PSP most likely to approve it. If one provider declines the payment, the system automatically retries with another, maximizing approval rates. Above this, merchants connected to Praxis can also split traffic across different processors by setting percentage-set weighted routing rules.
Checkout optimization
By connecting businesses to more processors and payment methods, orchestration supports merchants in presenting customers with more relevant payment methods at the payment stage. This supports conversion and leads to reduced cart abandonment. Orchestration platforms like Praxis Tech also have capabilities that make user authentication for card payments more seamless.
Data security and compliance
Orchestration platforms like Praxis Tech offer built-in tokenization, PCI DSS compliance, and other information security measures that reduce the payment data-storage burden on merchants while safeguarding customer data.
Decline recovery
Failed transactions are a worry for most businesses. For merchants connected to orchestration platforms like Praxis Tech, they can enable features designed to turn declines into approved transactions. This can either be done behind the scenes, by cascading to different processors, or by prompting the customer to try again using an alternative payment method, or to try a lesser amount if the payment failed due to insufficient funds, or even to choose an open banking solution that connects the business directly to their customers’ bank accounts.
Centralized reporting
With multiple PSPs integrated into a single dashboard, merchants can analyze performance holistically. This reduces operational complexity and improves strategic decision-making. For instance, a merchant might see that one PSP has a higher approval rate compared to another, and therefore choose to route more of their customers’ payments to the better-performing PSP. Similarly, businesses can review which are the most popular payment methods their customers choose at the checkout page, and reorder them on the payment page to make it more relevant.
Faster onboarding
New PSPs or payment methods can be added with minimal development effort, accelerating expansion into new regions or customer segments. Orchestration platforms are already technically connected to processors, and therefore, the onboarding experience for merchants connecting to new PSPs is seamless.
Additionally, should a business choose to integrate with a PSP not already connected to an orchestration platform like Praxis, the platform has the expertise to integrate with the PSP in a much more streamlined way than the merchant doing this themselves.
Benefits of Orchestration for Online Businesses
Orchestration offers online merchants benefits that a single PSP alone can’t provide. This is why the debate of payment orchestration vs payment gateways is not simply a technical one but also a strategic business decision.
Some of the most impactful benefits of orchestration include:
- Increased conversions: By optimizing routing, supporting local payment methods, and presenting customers with UI enhanced payment pages, orchestration platforms help merchants reduce friction and improve checkout success. Even a small lift in approval rates translates to meaningful revenue gains at scale.
- Lower operational complexity: With orchestration, businesses can easily manage and optimize all their payment operations through a single platform. Otherwise, merchants would have to coordinate efforts across all of their different PSP platforms.
- Better visibility and reporting: Unified dashboards make it easier to track transaction performance across regions, PSPs, and payment methods. This holistic view supports data-driven decision-making and easier reporting.
- Faster PSP onboarding: Adding a new PSP or payment method in a traditional setup often requires weeks of development, if not months. Orchestration platforms reduce this timeline to days, allowing businesses to respond quickly to changing customer preferences.
- Easy optimization and testing: Merchants can test PSP performance, implement cascading logic and weighted routing, and refine checkout flows without rewriting integrations. This flexibility is critical for global businesses competing in markets with diverse customer preferences.
- Fraud screening capabilities: Businesses using an orchestration platform can benefit from advanced risk and fraud management solutions. These can include setting custom rules that screen high-risk transactions before they’re sent for processing, and can also connect merchants to powerful card screening solutions, such as those offered by Praxis Safe.
Together, these benefits create a payment ecosystem that is more resilient, efficient, and adaptable. They also highlight why payment orchestration platforms have become indispensable for businesses that operate internationally or face complex payment requirements.
Choose Praxis Tech's Orchestration Platform
When considering the advantages of payment orchestration, businesses should assess their transaction volumes, geographic reach, and long-term growth objectives. While smaller merchants may succeed with a single PSP, enterprises expanding across borders with high approval sensitivity will gain significant value from orchestration.
Praxis Tech offers a leading payment orchestration platform designed to streamline payments, improve approval rates, and empower merchants with greater control over their payment ecosystems. With a single API, businesses can connect multiple PSPs, access global payment solutions, and create seamless checkout experiences tailored to local markets.
By partnering with Praxis Tech, merchants reduce operational complexity, accelerate time-to-market with new PSPs, and gain deeper visibility into payment performance. More importantly, they position themselves to scale efficiently.
Get in touch with Praxis Tech to learn how its orchestration platform can optimize payment infrastructure, boost conversions, and support long-term business growth.
