Why payment orchestration matters: insights from IXOPAY
CP
Claudia Pincovski
07 Jul 2025 / 5 Min Read
The Paypers has sat down with Adam Vissing, VP of Sales and Business Development at IXOPAY, to explore how payment orchestration has evolved and reshaped global commerce for enterprise merchants.
In a rapidly evolving payments landscape, orchestration has emerged as a foundational layer for global merchants navigating scale, complexity, and competition. What began as a response to the growing fragmentation in payments has become a non-negotiable requirement for Tier 1 merchants. Since entering the market in 2016, IXOPAY has focused on delivering orchestration built specifically for large, globally active businesses. Its platform supports complex needs, high volumes, and multi-regional operations, enabling merchants to manage payment operations with more agility, resilience, and visibility.
Adoption varies depending on maturity and priorities
Enterprise merchants approach orchestration with different goals, depending on their growth phase and operational focus. For scale-ups expanding into new markets, connectivity and routing capabilities are key priorities. In contrast, mature businesses often seek automation, cost optimisation, and back-office efficiencies, particularly through features like automated reconciliation and tokenisation.
Despite varying use cases, most enterprise users consistently implement core functionalities such as transaction tokenisation, smart routing, and post-processing tools that simplify financial operations.
A gateway for banks, PSPs, and financial institutions
IXOPAY’s platform also powers a wide range of financial institutions, including acquiring banks, payment facilitators, and ISOs, through white-label solutions. These institutions often face challenges with outdated gateway technologies and look to orchestration to modernise their client offering.
By integrating with IXOPAY, these entities can reduce merchant onboarding times and offer a more flexible, modular experience. The platform facilitates quick integration of new merchants, reduces go-live timelines, and positions incumbents to compete with next-generation PSPs.
Beyond ecommerce: orchestration goes omnichannel
Initially focused on ecommerce, orchestration now increasingly supports omnichannel payment strategies. Enterprises with retail operations demand flexible setups that unify online and in-store payments. IXOPAY responds to these demands by integrating with terminal gateways, enabling unified transaction initiation across various POS providers through a single API. Common use cases include handling complex retail flows such as buy online, return in store (BORIS) and operating in multiple geographies with varied POS acquirers.
A neutral infrastructure approach
In a market where many orchestration platforms are operated by acquirers or PSPs, neutrality has become a key differentiator. Merchants today need full control over their payment stack, including the freedom to choose their providers and route transactions without platform-driven bias.
IXOPAY’s role is to provide infrastructure that empowers merchants rather than locking them into specific partners or conditions. True orchestration enables full visibility, open connectivity, and transparent decision-making without conflicts of interest.
The future: AI, agentic payments, and orchestration as default
Emerging technologies are already shaping the future of orchestration. AI is being applied beyond fraud prevention: supporting use cases in routing optimisation, developer experience, and payments analytics. Meanwhile, the rise of agent-based payments and autonomous transaction models is accelerating the relevance of tokenisation technologies that provide the underlying credentials for these agents.
Over the next five years, orchestration is expected to become the industry standard for global enterprises. As payment infrastructures evolve, merchants will increasingly unbundle their stacks, choose providers independently, and expect orchestration to serve as the control layer for managing cost, performance, and compliance across markets.
Key takeaways
Orchestration has shifted from optional to essential for global merchants;
Enterprise-grade platforms like IXOPAY support high-volume, multi-regional operations;
Adoption patterns vary, but core capabilities like tokenisation and smart routing are widely used;
Acquirers and financial institutions benefit from orchestration by modernising their offerings and accelerating merchant onboarding;
Omnichannel use cases are gaining ground, with unified APIs simplifying in-store and online integration;
AI and agentic models are already influencing orchestration strategy;
By 2030, orchestration will likely be the default model for international payment processing.
This conversation reflects just part of the ongoing shift in enterprise payments infrastructure. To hear more about the changes in the industry and gain deeper insights from Adam Vissing, listen to the full discussion.
About Adam Vissing
As VP Sales and Business Development for the leading payment orchestration platform IXOPAY, Adam supports global clients in designing and implementing scalable payment infrastructures.
The Paypers is the Netherlands-based leading independent source of news and intelligence for professional in the global payment community.
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