WHAT IS PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION?
The Complete Guide to Global Payment Orchestration
Everything you need to know!
In this comprehensive guide we introduce you to Payment Orchestration and Hyper-Localization and highlight the benefits and opportunities for your businesses and your customers.
Choosing the right Global Payment Orchestration Platform is a critical and complicated decision. Factors including security, scalability, support, geographic reach, local acquiring, alternative payment methods, integrations with other payment systems, and many more, need to be accounted for.
Selecting a Payment Orchestration Platform that will ultimately accommodate your business's current and future needs requires time and attention to get right – as is true with all critical decisions.
The good news is that this comprehensive guide to Global Payment Orchestration will clarify your path forward.
Your Guide to Global Payment Orchestration
Here, we'll cover the foundations of Global Payment Orchestration, including:
We'll explore more complex topics including how you can empower and incentivize the local payment experience and choose the right Payment Orchestration Platform, too.
We'll also cover why MassPay is your ideal partner—and the ideal platform—for Global Payment Orchestration.
We built our Global Payment Orchestration Platform with a powerful combination of technology, partnerships, and expertise, ensuring you have the ability to easily manage your global eCommerce and payments operations.
It's secure, reliable, and scalable—all qualities you need in a successful payment orchestration solution.
But first, let's share some knowledge...
UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION
Let’s start with an overview of Payment Orchestration.
Payment Orchestration involves managing multiple payment methods and providers through a single interface. This orchestration supports the use of multiple payment processors, payment types, currencies and languages in your eCommerce and payment processes so you can make the most well informed, data-driven decisions for your business that increase conversions, authorization rates, customer satisfaction and profitability.
A single interface reduces errors, facilitates smoother transactions, improves customer experiences, and aids in maintaining compliance with local payment regulations — just some of the benefits we'll explore later in this guide.
Payment orchestration is a core component of conducting business on an international scale. For any company operating in multiple countries or regions, global payment orchestration helps it manage different currencies, languages, and payment regulations all while increasing approval rates, conversion rates, improving profitability, and minimizing fraud and other security threat vectors.
COMPONENTS OF GLOBAL PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION
Next, we'll explore three critical components of Global Payment Orchestration in greater detail: Payment Processing, Hyper-Localization, and Payment vs. Payout orchestration.
payment processing
So, what is payment processing? And more importantly, what is its role within Global Payment Orchestration?
Simply put, payment processing refers to the tasks that must take place for a customer's payment to be accepted and approved.
This includes:
Transaction Authorization
The initial step in payment processing involves authorizing the transaction. The payment processor communicates with the customer's bank or credit card company to verify the validity of the payment method and confirm there are sufficient funds or credit to cover the purchase.
Payment Capture
Once the transaction is authorized, the payment needs to be captured. This means the funds are held and marked for transfer from the customer's account. This is typically done automatically after authorization, but some systems allow for manual capture, which can be useful for businesses that have a delay between an order being placed and being fulfilled.
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Payment processors are responsible for detecting and preventing fraudulent transactions. This involves using sophisticated algorithms and security measures to identify suspicious activity. If a transaction is flagged as potentially fraudulent, the payment processor might decline it or require additional verification.
Settlement
After the payment is captured, the funds need to be transferred from the customer's account to the merchant's account. This is known as settlement. The payment processor facilitates this transfer, which typically takes a few business days.
Reporting and Reconciliation
Payment processors provide businesses with reports detailing their transactions. These reports are used for accounting and reconciliation purposes. They can help businesses track sales, identify trends, and monitor for any discrepancies or issues. This task also involves dealing with chargebacks and refunds when necessary.
In Global Payment Orchestration, payment processing is critical to managing multiple payment methods and providers.
When utilizing various payment providers and methods to meet varying geographies and other market factors, businesses can optimize their acceptance rates, improve conversion rates, and reduce payment processing fees—actions which result in a critical outcome: making you more money.
These payment processing practices may involve traditional payment methods, such as credit and debit cards. But, increasingly, they can also involve newer alternative payment methods including e-wallets, digital currencies and buy now, pay later (BNPL) services.
Effective payment processing also helps businesses comply with local regulations when conducting international transactions.
It’s obvious, but remember, different countries have different payment regulations. Fortunately, payment orchestration can help businesses navigate these regulations and ensure compliance with local laws—compliance with local regulations can't be overlooked in an increasingly globalized economy.
Hyper-Localization
We can't overstate the importance of localization in global commerce. For example, localizing your payment experience involves ensuring customers can pay quickly, easily, and in their native language and currency.
We refer to these requirements as Hyper-Localization. You can learn more about it here: Hyper-Localization: The Secret to eCommerce Success
As for why this is so important, creating the most approachable and user-friendly processes leads to a better overall customer experience and improved conversion rates. In fact, Hyper-Localization is a decisive step toward increasing conversion rates by reducing abandoned carts, improving authorization rates, increasing customer loyalty, and ultimately profitability.
Successful Hyper-Localization is successful Payment Orchestration and it includes:
- Presenting product information in local or preferred languages.
- Presenting prices in local or preferred currencies (including conversion rates where appropriate).
- Presenting checkout processes in local or preferred languages.
- Presenting preferred local and alternative payment methods.
- Routing transactions to the right processors, by country and by currency, to ensure increased acceptance rates and the most cost effective transactions possible.
Returning to the topic of compliance, Hyper-Localization also helps businesses stay compliant with local payment regulations. Again, every country has different payment regulations. By localizing your payment experience, you can be confident you comply with these laws and avoid any potential fines or penalties.
Within the scope of Global Payment Orchestration, Hyper-Localization is a crucial responsibility of both the merchant and the merchant's Payment Orchestration Platform provider. A good Payment Orchestration Platform partner helps companies localize payments for customers in any country or region. This gets you to market quickly, complete with comprehensive localized payment experiences, without jumping through unnecessary hoops.
PAYMENT V. PAYOUT ORCHESTRATION
Now we'll focus on the primary difference between Payment and Payout Orchestration.
Often, these terms are used interchangeably. However, there is an important and distinct difference.
The main difference between Payment and Payout Orchestration comes down to the party receiving the money.
Payment Orchestration helps businesses accept payments from customers quickly, securely, and compliantly, while Payout orchestration simplifies sending funds to suppliers, contractors or employees in their preferred currencies.
The importance of choosing a reliable payment orchestration provider for complex global payments environments can’t be understated.
Doing this on your own is beyond the scope of all but the largest global organizations – many of whom still choose to partner and “buy” v. “build” their solutions. By doing so, businesses streamline the entire process — from payment acceptance to payouts — and create a smooth experience for all parties involved.
This smooth experience facilitates the development and maintenance of critical processor relationships around the world while ensuring compliance with local regulatory requirements.
A Payment Orchestration Primer (TL;DR)
With a clear understanding of Payment Orchestration, let's summarize its key benefits.
Streamlined Payment Processes
First and foremost, Payment Orchestration streamlines the process of accepting payments from customers in multiple countries and currencies. Payment Orchestration makes it much easier for businesses to offer and manage different payment methods, providers, and regulations simultaneously.
TOKEN PORTABILITY
It's your business. They're your customers. You must be able to take your data and your tokens with you should you need to make a change to benefit your business. This is a critical feature and long-term business success factor that should not be overlooked.
Scalability and Flexibility
With Payment Orchestration, businesses can instantly scale their operations globally—allowing them to increase revenue and open up new growth opportunities. Moreover, it gives companies the flexibility to switch between payment methods and providers as needed to optimize authorizations, minimize costs, address compliance requirements and improve conversion rates … all of which lead to making more money.
Improved User Experience
Payment Orchestration helps create a much better customer experience—the above mentioned flexibility and hyper-localization aspects play a big part in doing so. By offering hyper-localized experiences familiar to customers in different countries, businesses make completing payments more straightforward and convenient for them.
Reduced Costs and Increased Revenue
Payment Orchestration also increases authorization rates because transactions are presented to the most appropriate (often the most local) processor. This results in better authorization percentages and ultimately improved conversion rates. The combination of local language, local currencies, presenting the transaction to the right PSP, and ensuring the experience meets the customer's expectations contribute to these better conversion rates. And with better conversion rates comes more revenue!
Further, Payment Orchestration also improves margins and keeps rates low because there are fewer chargebacks and denied transactions.
Enhanced Security and Fraud Prevention
With security at the forefront of Payment Orchestration, businesses significantly reduce the risk of fraud and data breaches—payment orchestrators use multiple layers of encryption and authentication, in addition to global and locally recognized best practices, to protect customer information.
Payment Orchestration understands and meets the security and fraud prevention requirements of every partner in the ecosystem. This way, you can be confident everything is accounted fo—no stones are left unturned.
Insights and Analytics
Finally, Payment Orchestration gives businesses real-time insights into their global payments and the effectiveness of their decisions.
Are the right processors receiving the proper transactions? What are their authorization rates? How are these authorization rates impacting conversions and ultimately revenue? Are customers buying more, or more frequently, because of a hyper-local approach.
Payment Orchestration helps businesses identify areas that need improvement and make well-informed decisions about their payment operations. If a payment processor isn’t meeting a business’ needs, it should be able to immediately transition to an alternative solution.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT GLOBAL PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION PLATFORM
We've covered a lot already! Now, it's time to get into the finer details of how to choose the right payment orchestration platform for your needs. Above all, know this if you’re currently with a payment orchestration platform that isn’t meeting your needs, you’re not stuck with a single processor or a single option.
In fact, the whole concept of a payment orchestration platform is built on proof and flexibility. If you're not seeing the results you want and you’re eager to pursue a different platform, you have all of your data and tokens—you can take it wherever you like.
With MassPay, you have multiple options and can see, in real-time, which options are working best for your business and double down on them. If you want to do this all yourself, you can. If you want to do it WITH MassPay? We can do that, too. If you want us to do it for you, we can also do that. It is up to you to determine what best meets your needs. We're here to help.
When you’re exploring options, we recommend keeping these five things in mind:
Flexibility and Customization
Without flexibility and the ability to customize the experience, businesses won't be able to meet their customers' needs. The payment orchestration platform they choose should offer a truly global reach, fully customizable workflows and provide them with an API to integrate the processes with their existing tools and platforms.
TOKEN INDEPENDENCE
You should also receive token independence - the ability to take your tokens with you, should you want to pursue another solution or alternative. A Payment Orchestration Platform must make this easy for any business – and businesses should take advantage of this capability.
Payment Methods Supported
Ensuring the platform supports all global, local, and alternative payment methods your business and your customers need is essential. This means businesses should look for a platform offering an expansive selection of traditional and alternative payment options.
Security
The security protocols and processes a payment orchestrator uses are fundamental—businesses must ensure they're secure enough to protect customer data from potential fraudsters. Look for a provider that uses encryption technology (including tokenization) and other measures to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Encryption isn't your only vital security concern, however. The processes and platforms supporting the orchestration of this amount of data must also be carefully designed, executed, and continuously optimized to keep ahead of the ever-increasing number of threat actors and vectors. This includes having the right fraud detection systems in place that can detect potential threats and prevent them from causing harm.
Integration Capabilities
Since payment orchestration is meant to be integrated into existing systems and platforms, be sure your chosen platform can be easily integrated with your current technologies. Look for a provider that offers an open REST API that makes integration easy and efficient.
Reporting and Analytics
Access to detailed reports on customers' purchasing behavior is precious for businesses that want an in-depth look at their customers and to optimize their payment operations.
Choose a platform that offers comprehensive reporting tools as well as data access via the API that you can use to integrate reporting, monitoring and analytics with your current platforms and processes. Then, you can track transactions, view KPIs, analyze trends, and more within the course of your daily operation.
Here's the good news: we'll make your decision easy and tell you why choosing MassPay for Global Payment Orchestration is the way to go.
CHOOSE MASSPAY FOR GLOBAL PAYMENT ORCHESTRATION
We know choosing the right payment orchestration platform is essential for businesses wanting to simplify their payment operations.
With MassPay, you get everything you need:
- The choice of collaborating directly with MassPay, handling payment orchestration yourself, or having us handle it for you—you’re not stuck with any option
- Flexible and customizable workflows
- A comprehensive selection of global, local, and alternative payment methods
- Intelligent routing optimizes authorization requests by transaction to improve acceptance and conversion
- Token independence
- Industry-leading security protocols
- Seamless integrations with existing systems and platforms
- Powerful reporting and analytics tools
- Unparalleled customer support
Our Global Payment Orchestration platform augments our existing global payout orchestration platform and capabilities, making it even easier for businesses to make cross-border payments.
So why wait? Get started now with MassPay and take control of your global payments!
Book a Demo or Schedule a Briefing today.