Payment Gateway vs Payment Orchestration: What Is the Difference?

Most businesses start their payments journey the same way. They pick a payment gateway, integrate it, and move on. It works. Until it doesn't.

The gateway goes down during a sale. A new market requires a provider you're not connected to. Transaction fees increase and you have no leverage. A competitor offers a payment method you can't support without a multi-month integration.

At this point, most businesses accept the pain as the cost of doing business. They shouldn't. This is where payment orchestration changes the equation.

What is a payment gateway?

A payment gateway is the technology that processes a payment transaction between your customer and your bank. When a customer enters their card details at checkout, the gateway encrypts that data, sends it to the card network, receives an approval or decline, and returns the result to your store, usually within seconds.

Gateways are essential. Every online business uses one. The problem is not the gateway itself. It's what happens when you rely on a single one.

A single gateway is a single point of failure. When it goes down, your ability to take payments goes down with it. When its fees change, you have no alternative. When it doesn't support a payment method, you can't offer it.

What is payment orchestration?

Payment orchestration is a software layer that sits between your checkout and your payment providers. Instead of connecting directly to one gateway, you connect to an orchestration platform, which then connects to many gateways, wallets, BNPL providers, direct debit schemes and local payment methods.

The orchestration layer manages the routing of each transaction. With payFURL, each payment goes to the cheapest eligible provider, based on the rates you enter. If a decline is temporary, the payment can be retried once through a backup provider you nominate. If a new provider becomes available, you can activate it without new code.

You integrate once. Then you have access to everything.

Does your business need payment orchestration?

The honest answer: not every business does, yet. If you process a small volume of domestic transactions through a single channel, a gateway may be all you need today.

But if any of these apply to you, orchestration is worth a serious look:

• ✓You sell across multiple countries and need different payment methods per market.
• ✓Your transaction fees are a meaningful cost line and you want to control them.
• ✓You've experienced a provider outage that cost you sales.
• ✓Your development team is spending months on payment integrations instead of product.
• ✓You want to add BNPL, wallets or local payment methods without new integrations.

payFURL connects you to 70+ connections through a single integration. Smart routing, automatic failover, centralised reporting. PCI DSS v4.0.1 certified.