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In the ever-changing global environment, it’s incredibly important to build and maintain a merchant payment infrastructure that can withstand anything that comes its way. The overview you’re about to read focuses on the best practices of increasing payments resilience applicable to both merchants operating exclusively online and those pursuing an omnichannel strategy.
A payment infrastructure to build on is one merchants don’t have to replace as volume, currencies, or payment methods change. It sits between the checkout and the acquiring bank, routing each transaction through the payment gateway to the right payment processor and card networks, then back through the issuing bank for authorization — without locking the business into a single point of failure.
In a modern payment infrastructure, the payment gateway encrypts and forwards transaction details, the payment processor moves payment data between merchant and acquiring bank, and the acquiring bank settles funds into the merchant account. Keeping these layers modular — rather than bundled with one provider — is what lets a business swap or add a payment processor without rebuilding its checkout.
A scalable payment infrastructure also needs to reach beyond a single market: connecting to major payment networks and card networks for domestic cards, plus local payment methods, bank transfers, and instant payments for cross border payments and international payments. As transaction data and transaction fees vary by corridor, merchants building on this kind of infrastructure route each transaction to the relevant payment network automatically instead of managing every acquiring bank relationship by hand.
Payneteasy is a technology platform, not a financial institution: our White Label Payment Gateway and Orchestration Platform let merchants process payments through multiple payment providers, protect sensitive payment data in transit, and accept payments via the payment methods their customers already use — all on infrastructure built to be added to, not replaced.
One of the main goals for growing businesses is to provide top-notch customer service with seamless payment processing that complies with all security regulations. There are several ways of achieving such a resilient merchant payment infrastructure:
A multi-acquiring strategy implies a network of acquirers processing payments in different countries. This creates plenty of benefits for merchants and PSPs, such as lower costs, higher conversion rates, and improved customer experience.
Outsourcing a multi-acquiring solution is convenient because a business doesn’t have to rely on its internal engineering resources. Here are a few variations of implementing it:
Full-Stack Service Provider
You can opt for a service provider that offers both gateways and acquiring in one solution. It will route transactions through its gateway to a third-party acquirer. This solution works for businesses of virtually any scale yet has a drawback - loss of transaction pooling.
A critical challenge merchants may face with this approach is its failure to boost resilience due to the fact that it’s not the acquirer infrastructure but rather the gateway that might have availability issues.
Separate Payment Gateway and Acquirers
Before, merchants would contract acquirers and gateways separately to have more control over all parties involved. Yet, nowadays, there aren’t that many independent gateways available. Those that merchants may find when browsing for options are typically not agile enough to match the needs of a scaling digital company.
Besides, adopting such an approach would mean signing up for a single point of failure on which the whole infrastructure would depend, making an availability issue highly likely.
External Orchestration
Implementing a third-party orchestration layer enables merchants to integrate not only with multiple acquirers but also with token vaults, fraud engines, and beyond. Besides, orchestration service providers are typically working with state-of-the-art technology and offer easy setup alongside other perks.
What could be considered a downside is that the majority of orchestration players tend to be small and lacking experience in working with larger enterprises. However, as this service continues its development, the providers’ expertise will grow. Another factor to keep in mind is that outsourced orchestration typically adds extra processing costs while still creating a single point of failure.
Merchants that have sufficient engineering resources at their disposal can build an internal orchestration layer.
While an in-house multi-acquirer approach takes time, effort, and plenty of resources to implement, it has plenty of mid and long-term benefits in terms of pricing and control. This infrastructure enables real-time switching between multiple acquirers and multi-business unit connectivity to token vaults, reporting tools, authentication services, and beyond.
Besides, it reduces the single point of failure risk, as opposed to the options listed previously.
Introducing a flexible traffic routing and balancing system opens the doors to tackling any traffic type, business specifics, and security requirements.
While the traffic routing system groups different types of traffic for simplified processing, the machine learning balancing solution aggregates transaction statistics to determine the acquirers’ efficiency. The latter also has a positive impact on the transaction acceptance rate, facilitating an increase in the number of sales and revenue growth and a decrease in the weighted average commission of the banking and payment systems.
What makes a payment processor part of a modern payment infrastructure?
A payment processor that fits a modern payment infrastructure exposes one integration for multiple payment providers, so a merchant account can accept payments through several card networks and payment methods without a rebuild every time a new payment service provider is added.
Why do issuing bank and acquiring bank roles matter for scalable payment infrastructure?
The acquiring bank settles funds into the merchant's account, while the issuing bank authorizes the transaction on the customer's bank account. A scalable payment infrastructure routes each transaction to the relevant payment network automatically, so cross border transactions and instant payments clear without merchants managing every issuing bank and acquiring bank relationship by hand.
How does this reduce interchange fees and transaction fees?
Routing through multiple payment providers and local payment methods lets a merchant pick the lowest-cost relevant payment network for each transaction instead of one fixed route, which is where reductions in interchange fees and transaction fees typically come from over time.
See how this works in practice with multi-channel payment routing.
At Payneteasy, we provide the most efficient digital solutions tailored to the needs of your business. Our routing and balancing system has the capacity to help merchants build a resilient payment infrastructure. Reach out now and receive a personalized quote within one business day!
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