By Ruston Miles, Founder, Bluefin
A multiprocessor payments strategy is now the rule for merchants, not the exception. According to S&P Global’s 451 Research, 62% of merchants prefer to collaborate with multiple payment providers for transaction processing, indicating that flexibility is critical for optimizing costs and reaching new market segments.
In turn, the growth of multiprocessor environments necessitates strong payment orchestration. With merchants working with an average of four different payment partners, managing integrations and consolidating data lays the groundwork for businesses to improve performance across the payments stack.
However, as orchestration becomes the new buzzword in payments, its core meaning as a systems-level discipline may be obscured. To effectively reduce complexity and improve efficiency, merchants must approach orchestration with a focus on security and data control.
Orchestration without control worsens fragmentation
The widespread use of the term “orchestration” has led to its mischaracterization as primarily a business-logic or routing solution. While the ability to switch flexibly between processors or gateways is a core aspect of payments orchestration, it is only one facet.
If merchants implement orchestration platforms without first considering payment data management and security, they can unintentionally introduce risk and complexity.
Consider these examples:
- As an orchestration platform connects to the APIs of multiple payment partners, this expands the attack surface for bad actors. Without unified, end-to-end security, merchants can unintentionally put their business and customers at risk.
- Tokenization, which replaces sensitive customer data with unique tokens, is a critical data protection measure for merchants. When merchants own these tokens, they can port or reuse customer payment data across processors. In contrast, merchants that build multiprocessor routing on top of vendor-owned token vaults can worsen vendor lock-in and limit merchants’ ability to personalize customer experiences.
- Card-present environments require unique security controls, such as hardware certification and encryption domains. If merchants overlook these requirements in orchestration conversations, they can end up with separate security and data models for in-store and digital channels, amplifying risk and compliance exposure.
Payment data ownership is a priority for 71% of merchants with over $100 million in annual revenue, yet managing customer data remains among the top three growth inhibitors they see. Orchestration can deliver the control merchants are seeking, but only when implemented with an architecture-first approach.
3 orchestration priorities for payments leaders
When orchestration is oversimplified as routing and API aggregation, merchants can easily neglect foundational decisions that determine whether they’ll be able to scale their multiprocessor strategy alongside business expansion.
To streamline partnerships without sacrificing security and data ownership, it’s important to approach orchestration with systems-level discipline.
Here are three priorities to focus on:
- Take control of your security boundary
No merchant can control orchestration without first controlling encryption and tokenization.
By establishing point-to-point encryption (P2PE), you protect sensitive payment data from the moment of capture through to a secure environment, preventing exposure in transit. This reduces the risk of fraud and data breaches while ensuring compliance with PCI DSS. Separately from P2PE, tokenization ensures that even if tokens are intercepted or accessed by bad actors, the data is completely devalued.
Other security defenses, such as anti-fraud tools and role-based access control, remain important. However, establishing encryption and tokenization at the outset enables you to orchestrate payments across diverse modalities without expanding your security footprint.
- Design for portability
Payment data ownership is foundational to a strong multiprocessor strategy. If your payment data isn’t portable, switching processors or adding partners can require costly rework that undermines the very flexibility orchestration is meant to provide.
That’s why vaultless tokenization is critical. Payment tokens are created without storing the original data and do not reside in a single data vault, enabling you to reuse the same tokens across processors and partners without re-exposing sensitive data or rebuilding your payments infrastructure.
Along with reducing infrastructure costs and preventing vendor lock-in, controlling your tokens helps you route transactions intelligently across multiple processors to prevent transaction drop-off and improve authorization rates.
- Treat card-present and card-not-present as equals
Digital payments are often the focus of orchestration efforts, but ignoring in-store experiences can lead to inconsistent security postures. If you approach card-present and card-not-present (CNP) environments as separate systems with different security and data models, you limit the full potential of omnichannel orchestration.
Additionally, as fraud, AI-driven attacks, and regulatory scrutiny increasingly span both worlds, securing card-present transactions at the same level as digital payments is essential to making in-store orchestration viable at scale.
Fortunately, P2PE and vaultless tokenization offer a solution. An orchestration platform that securely bridges card-present and CNP data into a shared, decentralized token environment can support consistent customer experiences across channels.
Build for the exit you haven’t planned yet
To realize the full value of payments orchestration, control and flexibility at the infrastructure level must be a priority.
Vaultless tokenization and P2PE ensure that sensitive payment data remains portable and protected, regardless of how your processors, partnerships, or operating geographies change over time. Equally important, enhanced security and flexibility safeguard your business by ensuring compliance and strengthening customer trust.
With this foundation in place, you’re positioned to leverage orchestration for its core purpose: harnessing payment data to fuel new growth opportunities in multiprocessor environments.
About the Author
Ruston Miles founded Bluefin and also serves as the company’s chief cybersecurity advisor. Ruston brings over 20 years of payment and security experience, having architected Bluefin’s payment gateway and PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) solutions, and contributed to the innovation of the company’s tokenization solutions. He is a national speaker on cyber and payment security topics. Ruston is a PCI Professional (PCIP), Certified Payment Professional (CPP), Certified Internet Business Strategist (CIBS), and an active participant with the PCI Security Standards Council (SSC).
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