What is Payment Orchestration? A Complete Guide for Businesses in 2026

A Payment orchestration is a software layer that connects your business to multiple payment service providers, acquirers, banks and other financial services through a single platform, it allows you to manage transactions across various partners and optimises success rates, reduces costs and improves the customer experience.

This guide will explain everything business owners need to know about payment orchestration: how it works, its core features, and how to select the right platform to transform your business’s payment operations.

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Why Do Merchants Need Payment Orchestration?

In today’s time, customers expect seamless checkout experiences regardless of where they are or how they choose to pay. For merchants, keeping up with these expectations using old infrastructure is becoming impossible.

The rising complexity of payments

Europe is a prime example of a fragmented payment market. Customers in the Netherlands often use iDEAL, customers from Germany may prefer SEPA direct debits or PayPal, and credit cards are dominant in the UK.

Managing these local preferences often requires integrating with different local providers. A merchant selling across the EU might end up with five or six different payment integrations just to offer the “standard” payment methods in each region. This creates a technical nightmare for maintenance and reconciliation.

Why single-PSP setups fail more often

Relying on a single PSP creates a single point of failure. If your only provider experiences downtime, you’ll face various problems that directly affect your revenue. For instance, a single global PSP might have excellent approval rates in the US but perform poorly in Italy or Spain because they lack local acquiring licenses.

Key Problems Orchestration Platforms Solve

Core Benefits of Payment Orchestration

How Payment Orchestration Works?

To understand how a POP works, it’s important to know its 2 core components.

Main Components

Example of a Transaction Flow

Key Features Of Payment Orchestration That Improves Overall Payment Performance

Smart Routing and Cascading

This is the core of orchestration. You can configure rules to route transactions based on the lowest fees and the provider with the highest approval rate for that specific transaction type. If a gateway goes down, cascading ensures the transaction automatically “falls over” to a backup provider, which potentially saves your revenue.

Tokenisation and Secure Vaulting

Payment orchestration separates customer data from the payment provider; for example, our orchestration platform separates payment data from the payment processor. By using a platform-agnostic token vault, you retain ownership of your customer’s card data. This allows you to switch providers without asking customers to re-enter their details, which is a critical feature for subscription businesses. (You can also read: What is payment tokenisation)

3DS2 and SCA Optimisation

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is mandatory for most online payments in Europe, but it can add friction during the checkout process. An orchestration platform can identify when exemptions apply (such as for low-value transactions or trusted beneficiaries) and request 3D Secure authentication only when necessary, which helps maintain high conversion rates.

Chargeback Management

The orchestration platform also provides a unified dashboard for viewing and managing disputes across all your payment providers. At Celeris, we integrate with Ethoca & Verifi early alerts and chargeback help for chargeback scoring for potential chargebacks. With our advanced dashboard, you can set up rules to automatically refund a disputed transaction before it escalates into a formal chargeback, which protects your merchant accounts by keeping the chargeback ratio lower. Wanted to know more visit how to choose the right chargeback solution.

How Orchestration Platforms Support Regulations and Compliance Requirements While Maintaining Performance.

PSD2 and SCA Explained Simply

The Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) mandates Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for most online payments in Europe. While necessary for security, it introduces steps that can lower conversion rates.

Reducing Friction and Supporting Exemptions

The Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) mandates multi-factor authentication for most online payments in Europe to enhance security.

An orchestration platform manages the 3D Secure flow centrally. It can signal to the bank when a transaction is eligible for a frictionless flow, allowing the authentication to occur without requiring customer interaction. To know more about it, you can visit 3DS Exemptions.

GDPR and Secure Data Handling

Handling European customer data requires strict compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Leading orchestration platforms are built with “privacy by design,” ensuring data is encrypted, stored within the EU where required, and processed according to compliant data processing agreements.

Supporting Local EU Payment Methods

To succeed in Europe, you need to offer more than just Visa and Mastercard. A POP allows you to easily enable local payment methods, including:

The Business Case: ROI, Costs and Key Metrics

Calculating ROI from Approval Rate Uplift

For mid-market and enterprise merchants, even a 1% increase in approval rates can mean significant revenue. For instance, if your current approval rate is 85% and orchestration increases it to 86% through local acquiring, that 1% lift translates directly to your bottom line. For a business processing €10 million annually, its €100,000 in recovered revenue.

The above data is just an example; actual outcomes depend on many factors and vary widely based on industries.

The Impact of Local Acquiring on Costs

Cross-border interchange fees are often 1% to 3% an orchestration platform allows you to use local acquirers in the customer’s region. For example, processing a French card through a French acquirer is significantly cheaper and more likely to be approved than processing it through a US-based acquirer. This can result in a significant reduction in processing fees.

Important KPIs to Monitor

A unified dashboard like celeris allows you to track key metrics across all providers:

How to Choose the Right Orchestration Partner

To understand how a POP works, it’s important to know its 2 core components.

Operational Checklist

Legal Checklist

Technical Checklist

Commercial Checklist

Why Celeris is the Best Choice for Your Business in 2026

Celeris is a leading and award-winning payment orchestration solution provider in Europe, working with 200+ merchants and large-scale businesses.

Key Features of Celeris

Whether you’re an ambitious startup or an enterprise, Celeris’s advanced features grow with your business, making it the ultimate choice for payment orchestration in 2025.

Challenges of Payment Orchestration

As all of you already know, nothing is perfect, and understanding the hurdles of payment orchestration helps you while choosing the payment orchestration provider for your business. Here are some challenges:

Complex Rule Management: Setting up efficient routing rules requires initial planning and ongoing refinement to maximise performance.

Cost of Implementation: While orchestration reduces long-term costs, some integration solutions available in the market can charge higher upfront costs.

Provider Dependencies: Despite failover mechanisms, poor performance from PSPs can still create challenges in payment flows.

Security Requirements: Handling sensitive financial data comes with the responsibility of maintaining PCI DSS compliance and robust fraud prevention mechanisms.

To avoid these challenges, partnering with a provider offering seamless onboarding and strong support is crucial.

With Celeris, you won’t face any of the challenges mentioned above, as we have built orchestration solutions that integrate easily with your existing payment flow and are available at an affordable cost compared to others. Our support team is always available to address any questions or issues that may arise. Additionally, we adhere to all necessary security measures, including PCI-DSS Level 1 Compliance and other regional security standards.

Future Trends in Payment Orchestration

Payment trends and the industry are changing rapidly. Based on research, payment orchestration is expected to surpass revenues of $ 6.1 billion by 2030, highlighting its position at the forefront of innovation. Here are some payment orchestration trends in 2025 and beyond:

AI-Driven Routing: Expect more intelligent algorithms that learn from transaction history to predict and optimise payment success in real time.

Blockchain Integration: Decentralised payment methods are becoming mainstream, and orchestration platforms will soon integrate solutions like cryptocurrencies.

Advanced Fraud Detection: Real-time fraud prevention tools powered by machine learning will become essential features of orchestration platforms.

Embedded Finance: Beyond payments, orchestration platforms will integrate lending, insurance, and financial services for complete user journeys.

Getting Started with Payment Orchestration

Three steps to get started with Celeris today:

Book a Call With Team: Discover how our orchestration solution works, ask your doubts, share your requirements, and understand top to bottom what you’ll get from us.

Integration Support: Our onboarding team will ensure a smooth and fast setup.

Optimise Payments Instantly:Go live in a week, not in months.