How payment orchestration can set payment providers apart – when it’s done well.
By Emily Beeby
Engagement Manager
Consumers are increasingly demanding, and rightly so. They expect to pay quickly, securely, and in a way that suits them, whether they’re using a digital wallet in a mobile app, scanning a QR code in-store, or entering card details at home. Anything less can lead to abandonment.
Research shows that more than 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned, with extra costs, limited payment options, forced account creation, and lack of trust as top contributors.
This acts as a timely a reminder that the checkout isn’t just a transaction moment, it’s a customer experience moment.
Merchants are feeling the pressure
Merchants know that poor checkout experiences translate to lost revenue and declining loyalty. As competition intensifies and acquisition costs rise, conversion and retention have never been more important.
In this context, payments are now a significant strategic lever, and merchants are increasingly benchmarking their payments providers not just on uptime and cost, but on their ability to help drive better customer experience outcomes.
For example, Amazon’s “one-click” checkout transformed expectations around speed and simplicity, while platforms like Shopify have built merchant trust by continually improving their Shop Pay flow to minimise steps and maximise conversion. Merchants are also evolving, and expecting their providers to help them compete.
That pressure becomes an opportunity for payment providers
This demand from merchants creates both challenge and opportunity for payment providers. The challenge? Expectations are high and continue to rise. The opportunity? Providers that can meet those expectations and help merchants deliver seamless, localised, and high-converting experiences can win loyalty, grow share of wallet, and differentiate in an increasingly commoditised market.
But to do this, providers must think beyond processing. They need to become experience enablers. And the most effective way to do that is through payment orchestration, but only when it’s insight-led and designed with impact in mind.
What is payment orchestration?
At its core, payment orchestration is a control layer that connects merchants to multiple gateways, acquirers, fraud tools, and payment methods. It allows transactions to be routed dynamically based on a variety of conditions e.g. payment type, geography, issuer behaviour, and more.
Done well, orchestration makes it easy to test new methods, retry failed payments, and scale into new markets with minimal friction. It removes technical barriers, helps merchants avoid being locked into a single provider, and increases flexibility.
Providers like Stripe and Adyen are investing heavily in their orchestration capabilities, not just to improve performance metrics like authorisation rates, but to enable their merchants to build better customer journeys.
It’s a complex space but two clear themes consistently stand out
In our work with product and strategy teams across leading payment providers, two strategic themes stand out as the biggest levers for value creation through orchestration:
1. Localisation that aligns with customer preferences
Consumers want to pay using what’s familiar to them. In India, that might be UPI. In Brazil, Pix. In Germany, PayPal. In China, Alipay or WeChat Pay. Providers who can seamlessly enable these options without a heavy lift for the merchant are in high demand.
But localisation extends beyond payment methods. Language, checkout layout, platform-specific flows (app vs. browser), and even trust signals (like logos or security badges) influence whether a customer completes a purchase.
Adyen is often cited as a leader here, helping merchants support local preferences in over 150 currencies and dozens of local methods, all via a single integration. Their success shows the power of making localisation easy to implement, and easy to scale.
2. Reducing false declines and failed transactions
One of the most frustrating experiences for a customer is having a legitimate transaction declined. And one of the most frustrating experiences for a merchant is not knowing why.
False declines are common and can be costly. Studies suggest they result in over $400 billion in lost global sales annually. But orchestration can help by enabling:
- Smart routing: Send a transaction through the gateway or acquirer most likely to approve it based on issuer, time of day, transaction amount or currency.
- Retry logic: Automatically retry a failed transaction via a secondary route or fallback option.
- Intelligent authentication: Dynamically apply 3DS or biometric checks only when required, reducing friction for low-risk transactions.
Companies like Checkout.com are building real-time optimisation engines that use machine learning to determine the best route for each transaction, reducing declines and increasing authorisation rates for merchants.
Orchestration also unlocks faster testing and iteration
Beyond operational efficiency, orchestration can be a powerful enabler of innovation. The best providers use it to support real-time testing and experimentation.
Some orchestration platforms now allow A/B testing of payment methods, flows, and features, enabling merchants to trial a new method with a subset of users and compare conversion outcomes. Others are offering dashboard-level insights that help merchants identify friction points and adapt their UX.
This type of agility has helped platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce support their merchants in moving faster, adapting to regional trends, and continuously improving checkout experiences.
But to do any of this well, you need to understand your customers
Every decision, from which payment methods to add, to which decline scenarios to fix, depends on understanding what really matters to customers in each market and segment.
Yet too often, orchestration strategies are built in a vacuum. Features are prioritised based on anecdote or trend, rather than data. More often than not this leads to bloated products, complex integrations, and a lack of significant impact.
This is where customer insight becomes a critical differentiator.
Insight helps providers focus on what really matters
By embedding insight at every stage of orchestration planning and execution, payment providers can make smarter, faster decisions and deliver greater value to merchants. For example:
- Discovery: Use qualitative and quantitative research to understand what drives checkout friction in each market, before you build.
- Prioritisation: Identify which local payment methods are most likely to improve conversion, based on actual consumer behaviour.
- Performance analysis: Track how different segments respond to changes in checkout flow or authentication prompts.
- Product refinement: Use merchant and consumer feedback to evolve orchestration features over time, focusing on what moves the needle.
Whether through user research, data analytics, or market segmentation, insight ensures that orchestration is not just technically sound, but commercially effective.
Payment orchestration is a powerful lever for payment providers. It enables local relevance, reduces transaction friction, and creates space for experimentation and growth.
But to deliver lasting impact, orchestration needs to be more than infrastructure. It must be insight-led and shaped by a clear understanding of merchant needs, consumer preferences, and market dynamics.
Providers that invest in customer intelligence and use it to inform and evolve their orchestration capabilities will not only help their merchants succeed. They’ll elevate their own position in a fiercely competitive space.