How to make the best out of payment orchestration with the right payment partner

What issues arise when payment companies work on a dated platform?

Even when working on a modern payment platform, expanding a business globally comes with many challenges. However, on a dated platform, these challenges could mean the end of your expansion. Issues such as high costs, extended timelines for integrations, insufficient insights, and difficulties complying with new rules and regulations may arise, not to mention the need for innovations like pay-by-link, split payments, or one-click payments. Therefore, working with the right PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) provider that can help with payment orchestration is crucial, especially for large merchants operating in multiple domains and countries.

Why is payment orchestration so popular at the moment? 

All companies want to lower costs and increase conversion rates. At the same time, the competition from big players like Amazon, Alibaba etc. has increased. Thus, one needs to be prepared not only locally but also internationally. Complying with all the new rules and regulations is an additional barrier for companies to overcome while staying competitive. Even the largest companies are now looking at PaaS providers like us for help. For example, we developed a flexible 3DS solution on the gateway level, so merchants do not need to use the acquirers’ 3DS, saving them money and providing better conversion. 

There is also a risk factor involved; as seen with the Wirecard meltdown, working with only one acquirer presents a continuity risk. Moreover, no single acquirer has the best success rates and costs for all countries. Thus, from an optimisation perspective, payment orchestration is the way to go. 

You mention optimisation; is that related to transaction routing? And how does it help? 

Yes, transaction routing is an integral part of optimising payments, as are cascading, retries, and second chance functionalities. The goal is to route transactions to the acquirer that has the highest acceptance rate. For example, local cards should be processed by local acquirers, while specific BIN ranges might work better with a particular acquirer. Having such a rule-based routing engine allows you to tweak transaction flows and continually improve your success rate. Our merchants saw an increase between 5% and 15% in their success rate after switching to our platform.

How can merchants know how to set up these rules without knowing all the acquirers’ performance?

As an actively involved payment orchestration partner, we not only help merchants select the right acquirers, but we also support them with our real-time acquirer health dashboard. All the information needed for improving transaction routing can be found there. Moreover, we have developed machine learning technology to enhance transaction routing further.

How do you see the future of WLPayments? 

I see a bright future for WLPayments: payment companies, banks, and ISOs now realise that they need the best platform to stay relevant to their clients. Maintaining in-house technologies is a huge challenge, and businesses no longer want to run that risk. That is why WLPayments can add immense value to these companies and ensure that their customers get the highest quality solution. 

Any tips for companies looking to replace their payment platform? 

The obvious one is, of course, to contact us. Aside from this, I think that to understand what kind of technology they require, companies involved in payment services should analyse their existing and potential customers. Full-blown payment orchestration is not always necessary, but it can yield good results in the long-term if one chooses the right partner. At WLPayments, we believe in carefully guiding our partners through this process and figuring out what kind of payment orchestration best fits their requirements. The aim is to make this journey as smooth as possible while also yielding the best results for our customers. Therefore, our motto: we grow when our customers grow!

This editorial was first published in our Cross-Border Payments and Ecommerce Report 2020–2021, which assesses the change of pace that occurred in 2020 and provides a comprehensive overview of the major trends driving growth in this space, being the ultimate source of information for players interested in selling across borders. 

About Sunil Jhamb

Sunil Jhamb is the CEO & Founder of WLPayments, a trusted white-label global payments platform. With over 20 years’ experience in consulting and sales, Sunil is an authority on international payments. Before this, Sunil founded Newgen Payments and worked at GlobalCollect as the director of global planning and strategy – developing corporate strategies and driving revenue opportunities globally. 

About WLPayments

WLPayments offers a white-label payment gateway platform with secure plug-and-play fintech solutions for ISOs, PSPs, acquirers, banks, and online merchants. Our advanced orchestration of payments is integrated into a single-layered architecture with many innovative features, such as Intelligent Transaction Routing, Automated Reconciliation, and Smart Retries.