To compete in a rapidly evolving ecommerce market, merchants need to find new ways to be more cost-effective, more agile, and better able to adapt to consumer tastes and trends than ever before.
PSPs need to provide an almost infinitely configurable set of payment services. But they need to do so in a way that is manageable and cost-effective for them – one that avoids the introduction of unmanageable technical and cost overheads. The answer is service orchestration.
Service orchestration takes multiple payment products and services, from different providers, and integrates them through one interface. PSPs can then easily deploy and scale all the products and services they need while eliminating complicated RFP processes and any dependence on a single provider.
For instance, to create the optimum payment experience for a particular merchant or category of merchants, the PSP might combine fraud detection, compliance, reconciliation, currency conversion, transaction routing, and analytics – all from different providers.
Rather than being locked into a single provider for the whole range of services, the PSP can choose a different provider for each. This increases the range of services a PSP or merchant can access through a single integration, which translates as reduced complexity in a world of fragmented payments.
This modular approach to payments delivers precisely the adaptability that merchants need, if they are going to keep up with — and get ahead of — consumer trends and preferences that are changing faster than ever.
As you’d expect with something as complex and far-reaching in its impact as service orchestration, it benefits both merchants and PSPs in several ways. These are just some of the common headaches service orchestration can help to address:
lack of agility – adding new payment options is slow and leads to decreased competitiveness and missed revenue
minimal access to actionable data – it’s difficult to attain insightful data if the transactional data is spread over multiple PSPs and gateways
fraud is harder to detect due to disparate platforms and formats
single provider dependence increases the risk of payment outages significantly
savings can be missed by not routing to providers that offer favourable pricing
maintenance, IT, and development costs are much higher across disparate solutions.
And the list goes on.
One less obvious headache orchestration eliminates is the traditional RFP. In the old approach, an RFP would be prepared and dissected for any other kind of service provider. At the end of the tender process, the merchant would choose one winner.
Then, they’d be locked into using that winner for the next five or more years. But what if, in that time, the market shifts and the service provided by the winner no longer meets customer needs? What happens if requirements change? What if a new supplier appears, offering the same quality service at a lower cost?
In these cases, the merchant is stuck. In a market evolving as fast as the ecommerce sector, that can be a deadly drag on competitiveness.
With a service orchestration layer, that doesn’t happen – a provider can be added and/or replaced at the click of a button. It is easy and quick because all providers and services are available and configurable through a single connection and a single interface.
A service orchestration layer eliminates vendor lock-in, accelerates innovation by empowering the user to test, add, and design new products fearlessly, and massively frees up valuable resources across numerous teams.
Service orchestration is the answer that merchants and PSPs have been waiting for. It allows them to develop and maintain robust payment platforms. And it gives them the power to design payment services that will help merchants win over and hold onto new customer segments. As the ecommerce market evolves and accelerates towards a new normal, those players that embrace the potential of service orchestration have a head start over their competitors.
This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Cross-Border Payments and Ecommerce Report 2022–2023, which taps into the fast-growing cross-border market and provides a comprehensive overview of trends and developments that are pivotal in this space, being the ultimate source of information for ecommerce businesses interested in expanding globally.
Oliver joined PPRO’s leadership team following PPRO’s acquisition of Alpha Fintech, which he co-founded and where he served as CEO. Under Oliver’s leadership, Alpha’s acquiring-as-a-service platform accelerated the growth of Bank of New Zealand and Southeast Asian super app Grab, amongst others. He now spearheads PPRO’s new orchestration layer, which allows banks and businesses of all sizes to integrate payment, financial, and risk products from a single interface.
PPRO is a fintech company that provides digital payments infrastructure to businesses and banks so that they can scale their checkout, acquiring, and risk services through one connection. Payment platforms, acquirers, and merchants that plug into PPRO’s infrastructure are able to access payment methods, fraud screening tools, and other essential products from multiple providers. Every product can be deployed and controlled with clicks, not code. And with the company's orchestration layer directing process flows and data like clockwork, PPRO’s partners can rest easy knowing they’re delivering seamless end-to-end services to their customers.
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