A PYMNTS Intelligence survey of 110 US companies found that nearly 9 in 10 have failover or backup routing in place. Yet only 47% achieve transaction approval rates above 97% in a typical month. The gap between having payment orchestration solutions and getting results from them comes down to how you choose and implement them.
This article provides an evaluation framework for CTOs comparing payment orchestration platforms. The goal is to move past feature checklists and vendor marketing toward a structured assessment that accounts for architecture, total cost of ownership, and how each platform fits your existing payment infrastructure.
What payment orchestration solutions actually do
A payment orchestration solution sits between your application and multiple payment processors. Instead of building and maintaining separate integrations for each provider, you integrate once with the orchestration layer. The platform handles translation between your API calls and each processor’s specific requirements.
The core capabilities:
- Unified API: One integration gives you access to multiple processors. When you need to add a new provider, it’s a configuration change rather than a development project.
- Transaction routing: Rules determine which processor handles each transaction based on card type, geography, amount, or custom logic.
- Failover: When a processor is down or declining at abnormal rates, transactions automatically route to backups.
- Token vaulting: Card credentials stored once, usable across any connected processor. When you add a new provider, existing customers don’t need to re-enter their cards.
The value proposition for engineering teams is straightforward: every sprint spent on payment infrastructure is a sprint not spent on your core product.
Architecture differences that matter
Not all payment orchestration solutions are built the same way. The architectural approach determines what problems you can solve and what constraints you’ll inherit.
Pure orchestration platforms (Spreedly, Primer, IXOPAY, Gr4vy) provide a routing and abstraction layer without processing payments themselves. Your transactions flow through the platform to your chosen processors. The platform earns revenue from orchestration fees, not from where your transactions route.
Full-stack providers with orchestration (Adyen, Stripe, Checkout.com) bundle orchestration capabilities with their own acquiring infrastructure. Stripe’s Adaptive Acceptance and Adyen’s smart routing optimize transactions within each provider’s own ecosystem. They lift approval rates on Stripe or Adyen rails; they won’t route a declining transaction to a competing processor.
Open source options (Hyperswitch) let you self-host the entire orchestration layer. You get full control over routing logic and data, but you also own the maintenance and infrastructure costs.
The architectural question to answer: Do you need processor independence, or are you optimizing within a single provider’s ecosystem? If your business requires routing between Stripe, Adyen, and regional processors based on geography and cost, a pure orchestration platform makes sense. If you’re already on Stripe and want better approval rates without adding providers, Stripe’s native optimization features may be enough.
The seven criteria for evaluating platforms
Based on the Yuno enterprise buyer’s guide and patterns from enterprise evaluations, these seven criteria surface the differences that matter:
1. Provider neutrality
Does the vendor own acquiring infrastructure? Do they earn revenue from routing decisions? Platforms that also process payments have inherent conflicts. They may optimize for their own rails even when another processor would perform better for your transaction mix.
2. Routing intelligence
Real-time optimization matters more than rule count. Look for: granular rule configuration, no-code updates for operations teams, automatic retry logic for soft declines, and the ability to test routing changes without deploying code.
3. Connector coverage depth
Total PSP count is a vanity metric. What matters is depth in your target markets. A platform with 150 connectors but shallow coverage in Latin America won’t help you expand there. Check whether connectors include local payment methods (PIX in Brazil, iDEAL in Netherlands) or just card processing.
4. Time-to-market
How long to add a new processor? Direct integrations take 2-5 months per PSP. Through an orchestration platform, adding a new provider should take days to weeks. Ask for specific timelines from reference customers, not marketing estimates.
5. Operational visibility
Consolidated reporting across all providers is baseline. Look for: real-time alerting, multi-PSP performance comparison, and the ability to identify why specific transaction types fail with specific processors.
6. Compliance posture
Table stakes certifications: PCI DSS Level 1 Service Provider, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II. For EU operations, verify GDPR compliance. The value of orchestration for compliance is scope reduction: if card data flows through the platform’s tokenization rather than your systems, you qualify for SAQ A (31 requirements) instead of SAQ D (328 requirements).
7. Token portability
Can you take your stored credentials if you leave? Some platforms lock tokens to their vault. Others (like Spreedly) let you export or use tokens across providers. Token portability is your exit strategy. Without it, switching platforms means forcing every customer to re-enter their card.
Pricing models and total cost of ownership
Payment orchestration solutions typically charge in one of three ways:
Per-transaction fees: $0.01-$0.10 per transaction, or 2-8 basis points (0.02%-0.08%) of volume. This is on top of your processor fees. For $100M in annual volume at 5 basis points, that’s $50,000 in orchestration costs.
Platform fees: Monthly or annual subscription, sometimes with volume tiers. Common for enterprise contracts where predictable costs matter more than pure usage-based pricing.
All-in-one pricing: Some platforms bundle orchestration with acquiring, quoting a single per-transaction rate. Simpler to model, but harder to compare against pure orchestration alternatives.
The TCO comparison against internal builds:
Internal orchestration development costs $2M+ in initial investment, according to estimates based on Gartner’s TCO methodology. More significant: maintenance consumes 50-70% of total ownership cost for enterprise software. PSP APIs change, new payment methods emerge, compliance requirements update. Your internal team handles all of it, or it doesn’t get done.
Platform pricing looks expensive in isolation. In context, it’s usually cheaper than a dedicated payment infrastructure team, and it frees engineering capacity for your actual product.
Build vs. buy: when internal development makes sense
Building payment orchestration internally makes sense in exactly one scenario: payments are your core product. If you’re a payment processor, a PSP, or a fintech whose primary value is payment infrastructure, owning that infrastructure is defensible.
For everyone else, the math doesn’t work:
- Development timeline: 18+ months for internal build vs. 1-3 weeks for platform integration
- Maintenance burden: ongoing maintenance, not the initial build, dominates total cost over time
- Opportunity cost: Engineers maintaining payment integrations are engineers not building your product
The hybrid approach some teams consider: build routing logic internally, use a platform for token vaulting and compliance. This splits the difference but doubles integration complexity. You’re maintaining custom code and a vendor relationship.
The decision framework is simple. If you’re spending more than one engineer’s full-time capacity on payment infrastructure maintenance, you’ve already exceeded what most orchestration platforms cost. That engineer should be building features your customers pay for.
Vendor landscape: pure orchestration vs. full-stack
The market splits into distinct categories. Understanding where each vendor fits helps you shortlist appropriately.
Pure orchestration (processor-agnostic)
| Vendor | Differentiator | PSP connectors | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spreedly | Token vaulting, API-first approach | 120+ | Technical teams wanting granular control |
| Primer | No-code workflow builder | 50+ | Mid-market, operations-led payment teams |
| IXOPAY | Modular architecture, white-label options | 100+ | PSPs and enterprise merchants |
| Gr4vy | Data sovereignty, dedicated cloud instances | 60+ | Compliance-focused enterprises |
| Hyperswitch | Open source, self-hosted | 50+ | Engineering teams wanting full ownership |
Full-stack with orchestration features
| Vendor | Note |
|---|---|
| Adyen | Smart routing optimizes within Adyen’s ecosystem |
| Stripe | Adaptive Acceptance improves performance on Stripe rails |
| Checkout.com | Intelligent Acceptance engine for authorization optimization |
The full-stack providers offer legitimate orchestration capabilities. The constraint is ecosystem lock-in: their optimization works on their own rails, not across competing processors. For a multi-PSP strategy built on redundancy or cost, that independence is the deciding factor.
Spreedly’s platform data shows 7.9% of failed transactions recovered when retried on a second gateway. That recovery rate requires having a second gateway to fail over to, which full-stack orchestration doesn’t provide.
How Orchestra compares
Orchestra is designed for SaaS and platform companies that embed payment capabilities into their own products. The architecture reflects that focus.
Library plus API architecture: a JavaScript library captures cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other payment methods client-side, so cardholder data never touches the customer’s servers. A REST API handles everything after capture (charges on stored tokens, refunds, recurring billing) against any connected gateway. One integration point instead of a library per PSP, connecting to 130+ payment providers, gateways, and payment methods (how the Library and API work together).
Multi-tenant payment configuration: Platform customers can have their own processor relationships, payment methods, and routing rules without custom development per customer. This matters for SaaS companies whose customers have diverse payment requirements.
Pricing: the sandbox is free, open, and needs no credit card, and the free production tier covers up to 100 live charge requests per month. Paid usage starts at $350/month plus $0.03 per request, with no minimum contract (pricing).
Compliance offloading: Orchestra handles PCI compliance through tokenization and vaulting, reducing merchant scope to SAQ A. For teams without dedicated compliance resources, this removes a significant operational burden.
Routing optimization and failover are handled at the platform level, applying consistent logic regardless of which processor handles the transaction.
Orchestra fits teams that need multi-processor strategy flexibility without the engineering investment of building it themselves. If your evaluation criteria prioritize developer experience and platform/SaaS use cases over enterprise features like dedicated cloud instances or open-source deployment, it’s worth including in your shortlist.
For teams evaluating whether to switch to payment orchestration, the decision often comes down to how much engineering capacity you’re currently spending on payment infrastructure, and what you’d rather be building with that time.
Frequently asked questions
What is a payment orchestration solution?
A payment orchestration solution provides a single integration point to multiple payment processors, handling routing, failover, and compliance through one API rather than separate integrations per provider. You integrate once; the platform manages connections to all your processors.
How much does payment orchestration cost?
Transaction fees typically range from $0.01-$0.10 or 2-8 basis points per transaction, depending on volume and vendor. Internal builds cost $2M+ upfront with 50-70% of total cost going to ongoing maintenance, based on Gartner’s enterprise software TCO methodology.
What’s the difference between payment orchestration and a payment gateway?
A payment gateway connects to one processor and handles the transaction flow with that provider. Payment orchestration sits above multiple gateways, routing transactions dynamically across providers and enabling failover when a processor is down or underperforming.
How long does it take to integrate a payment orchestration solution?
Platform integration takes 1-3 weeks for initial setup. Adding new processors through the platform takes days rather than the months required for direct integrations. Internal builds require 18+ months of development time before the first production transaction.
Should we build payment orchestration in-house?
Building makes sense only if payments are your core product. For most companies, internal builds cost $2M+ and take 18+ months, with maintenance consuming 50-70% of total ownership cost. If you’re spending more than one engineer’s full-time capacity on payment infrastructure, a platform is likely more cost-effective.
What authorization rate improvement can I expect?
Vendors report 2-4% immediate improvement after implementation, with larger gains over time as routing rules are optimized. The more meaningful metric: Spreedly’s platform data shows 7.9% of failed transactions can be recovered when retried on a second gateway. The improvement depends on your current state and how many processors you route across.
