Improving Market Efficiency Through Payment Orchestration: A UK Guide

The development of open banking and advances in card payment schemes, combined with customers looking for seamless transactions through all channels and methods, has made the ability to manage a merchant's payment stack through orchestration a clear method of increasing approval rates, decreasing costs, and maintaining control of one's payment stack.

The purpose of this guide is to provide information on what a payment orchestration platform is, its importance for UK merchant payments in 2025, and the top-rated payment orchestration platforms used by the majority of UK businesses.

UK merchant and PSP benefits

The aim of payment orchestration is to allow UK merchants the freedom to easily scale their businesses into new markets by providing a single point of access (via the payment orchestrator) to the multiple payment service providers (PSPs) and acquiring banks available in those markets. This approach creates a level of control that gives merchants the ability to grow their business in a predictable and optimised manner because they have access to a single integrated payment processing infrastructure.

Key payment orchestration benefits for UK merchants and PSPs

Increased approval rates – The ability to route payments based on a BIN, location, currency, or historical processing performance allows merchants to experience a greater percentage of authorised transactions. Additionally, smart retries enable merchants to recover soft declines without introducing friction into the transaction process.

Decreased processing costs – Merchants are able to select which payment processing entity to route their transactions to based on the fees charged by the respective entity, utilise local acquirers when it is sensible, and eliminate the need to pay a premium fee for a “single PSP.”

Enhanced resilience – If there is a failure of either a transaction processing provider or slowness in processing a transaction, the traffic is automatically routed to a different processor, and merchants' customers are unaware of the failure, therefore preventing any loss of revenue to the merchant.

Accelerated roll-out of new payment methods – The integration of e-commerce payment methods into your payment processing stack can be accomplished without the need to rebuild the entire payment stack for each method.

Reduced engineering dependency – Non-technical personnel within an organisation can manage and modify transaction routing rules, test new providers, and resolve bottlenecks without relying on engineering to deploy code.

Five of the most popular payment orchestration platforms that UK retailers will use by 2025 include:

1. Corefy

Corefy has established itself as a leading payment orchestration platform due to its 550+ ready-made integrations with all leading payment processors and acquirers within Europe and beyond. This makes it the best solution for companies that must move quickly — expanding into new regions, performing due diligence on a number of different providers, and increasing their overall performance without having to build custom integrations or rely on multiple technologies.

Strengths include:

• Ability to develop optimised routing of transactions based on 100+ different attributes, leading to maximised approval rates
• 550+ pre-existing integrations allowing merchants to scale rapidly into new regions and markets
• The ability for merchants to quickly view all performance analytics from their multiple channels (providers)
• A checkout builder which provides the merchant with the ability to deploy a payment page in a manner that allows them to be flexible in their setup
• A fully white-labelled architectural design which allows companies to either sell merchant services or develop financial products

Who is best suited for: Any global merchant or PSP who seeks to increase their market share and approval rates, as well as fast-track their new product development by utilising a single orchestration layer.

2. APEXX Global

APEXX Global is an orchestration platform headquartered in London that targets an enterprise's performance. APEXX is a comprehensive layer of orchestration, lifting approvals and optimising costs across provider channels.

Key strengths

• Real-time routing and failover are well developed
• Cost-based routing is well developed
• Proven track record for optimisation of enterprise use cases
• Designed for high-volume and regulated use cases

Who is best suited for: Business-to-business merchants (i.e., mid- to large-sized) in the UK and EU that seek both authorisation uplift and cost control from their orchestration partner.

3. BR-DGE

This is a modular-based orchestration platform (UK-based) that has a very wide connection ecosystem and is known for offering white-label solutions to PSPs.

Key strengths:

• Robust and capable routing and workflow logic
• Vast APM provider ecosystem
• Tokenised payments
• White-label POP services for payment providers

Who is best suited for: Payment service providers (PSPs), acquirers and enterprise retailers that require a payment orchestration solution specific to their customer workflows.

4. Primer.io

Its unified payments infrastructure positions Primer as a single integration for unified checkout (to enable customers to find and pay with whatever method they choose) and serves as an overlay over multiple PSPs, acquirers and payment methods so customers and merchants can have control over how their payment flows through the payment processor ecosystem.

Key strengths:

• No-code/low-code workflow automation
• Conditional routing and cascading
• Unified checkout layer
• Monitoring and reconciliation support

5. CellPoint Digital

A London-based platform with strong travel and omnichannel payments focus, CellPoint is focused on routing optimisation for complex use cases.

Key strengths:

• Advanced routing capabilities for high-volume, multi-step flows
• Exceptional omnichannel support
• Built for multi-PSP environments and provider agility
• Real-world success in airlines and global travel

Who is best suited for: Airlines, OTAs, railways and retailers with complex payment solutions and high routing requirements.

Selecting the best partner for payment orchestration

Define what you want to get out of your payment orchestration service: Determine your priorities before you begin your search for a payment orchestration partner. You need to know what you want to accomplish before you choose a partner, and a simple ROI calculator can help you quantify the expected benefits of payment orchestration in a consistent way.

Establish the payment orchestration model you are looking for: Determine the type of payment orchestration model that will work for your business and your payment gateway partners. Payment orchestration models include: 1) performance-led; 2) multi-PSP control layer; 3) vault/token-first; 4) no-code workflow automation. Choose your payment orchestration model based on your business strategy.

Evaluate the payment orchestration partners' coverage for today and over the next year: Before you select a partner, make sure the partner's payment orchestration platform connects to all of the payment service providers, acquirers and alternative payment methods you currently use and will use over the next year. Payment orchestration is most effective when the process of adding or replacing payment service providers is easy.

Validate the quality of the integrations available: You should be asking potential partners how they maintain their integrations, how often their integrations are updated, and what level of service level agreement (SLA) backs each integration. An extensive payment orchestration ecosystem is not very useful if the integrations are unreliable.

Conduct in-depth analysis of routing logic: You should be looking for advanced routing logic capabilities that go beyond the basic routing logic. This is where you will achieve remarkable improvements in your business performance (guaranteed).

Ask about smart retry logic and cascading logic options: There is going to be value in having both options available to you. Retries should be done only for recoverable failures, and you should be in complete control of how you choose to retry within the merchant or method group.

Ask for proof in real scenarios: Do not accept “We improve your approval rates.” Request to examine the actual routing tree and triggers and how decisions are made based on live data.

Understand the concept of tokenisation and what it means to be portable: Make sure you have clear documentation on where tokens reside, who owns them, and how portable they are. If tokens cannot travel with you, you will have merely replaced one form of lock-in with another.

Demand unified reporting and reconciliation: You should receive unified reporting and reconciliation for every provider you use. You should be able to see one set of reports that aggregates approval, decline, fee, settlement, refund and chargeback data for all providers. If you receive PSP-by-PSP reports, your orchestration is not yet fully formed.

Verify readiness for compliance with UK regulations: Be confident that your SCA and 3DS handling is robust, your payment methods relevant to the UK are supported (e.g., wallets, BNPL, open banking/A2A), and your reporting is consistent across all rails.

Review how much operational control you possess: The payment operations team must be able to adjust their routing rules, test new providers, and have the ability to monitor provider performance easily without a significant engineering commitment. If this is not possible, optimisation will be delayed.

Evaluate the architecture and integration reality of your prospective vendor's offering: The promise of a “single API” must actually result in a reduction of work. Review the documentation, how consistent webhook use will be, whether idempotency is supported, what the sandbox system parity is, and how quickly the rerouting of a failed payment can be completed without the need to rebuild the checkout.

Assess the total cost of your prospective vendor: Understand what your payment processing pricing drivers are, what items are included, what items are charged extra for, and additional costs such as hidden price items, custom connectors, premium support, additional environments and advanced analytics.

Evaluate the vendor to determine if it aligns with your goals for a partner: The payment orchestrator will be core to your revenue operations. Evaluate the vendor's roadmap, sprint cadence, support SLAs, onboarding process, as well as their product offerings that are synonymous with your vertical.

In short, the right payment orchestration company will help you improve your performance and control today, providing you with the flexibility to scale tomorrow. If you evaluate the outcome first, then the capabilities second, you will choose a payment platform provider that will support the future growth of your company rather than becoming another system you must work around.