
Payment processors and payment gateways handle different parts of every card transaction. Here’s how to tell them apart, how they work together, and why a payment orchestration layer makes managing both easier.

U.S. merchants paid $187.2 billion in card processing fees in 2024. Here are proven strategies to lower credit card processing fees, from interchange-plus pricing and chargeback reduction to multi-provider routing that cuts costs by 30-40%.

Payment infrastructure built for domestic markets breaks during international expansion. The failure patterns are predictable: single-market architecture, point-to-point integration complexity, and regulatory requirements that surface too late. Understanding these failure modes is the first step to building payment infrastructure that scales internationally.