June 2026
PYMNTS Data Books

The Orchestration Advantage: Why Five Payment Capabilities Separate Leaders From Laggards

Most companies now use payment orchestration, but only the most complete systems are producing clear gains. PYMNTS Intelligence finds that companies with all five key orchestration capabilities are far more likely to lift approval rates, raise transaction completion and fix payment problems faster than companies with only part of the stack.

Header image for the June 2026 Payments Orchestration Data Book. PYMNTS Intelligence reports that five orchestration capabilities separate payments leaders from firms stuck with slower systems.

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    Payment orchestration has become widespread, but the returns are uneven. PYMNTS Intelligence finds that companies achieve the strongest performance gains when five capabilities operate together: automated routing, frequent routing updates, failover, token control and the ability to add new payment rails without major reintegration. Partial deployment often adds complexity without producing better outcomes.

    The Payment Orchestration Divide

    Five Capabilities

    Sixty-nine percent of companies with all five payment orchestration capabilities achieve approval rates above 97%. Companies with the full orchestration stack are far more likely to achieve high payment approval rates than those with only one or two capabilities, with just 32% reaching that threshold. The data suggests that orchestration delivers the most value as an integrated system, not isolated upgrades.

    Completion Gap

    Seventy-eight percent of companies with the full payment orchestration stack report transaction completion gains of 2% or more. The completion-rate divide is the clearest sign that maturity pays. Only 7% of companies with one or two capabilities and 10% of those with three or four capabilities report gains of at least 2%. The gains emerge only when all five capabilities work together.

    Partial Penalty

    Fifty-two percent of companies with three or four payment orchestration capabilities say payment issues drive at least 5% of customer complaints. Companies in the middle tier perform worse than less mature companies on some customer experience measures. They report higher checkout abandonment and more payment-related complaints, showing how partial orchestration can introduce complexity without delivering the automation needed to manage it.

    Token Lock

    Ninety-three percent of companies lack full control over payment tokens and credentials. Just 7% of companies have full token control. Most share control with PSPs or depend on provider-managed credentials. As a result, switching providers often requires costly implementation work, data migration, compliance reviews and technical integration efforts.

    Rail Friction

    Adding a new payment method remains difficult for most companies, with 72% requiring significant or full reintegration to do so. Just 18% say introducing, testing and optimizing a new option is somewhat easy or very easy. Even though it creates some of the biggest operational frictions, readiness to support a new payment rail is the least common priority among payment orchestration enhancements.

    Methodology

    This Data Book is based on “The Orchestration Advantage: How Routing Architecture Shapes Payments Performance,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Spreedly collaboration. The report is based on a survey of 110 U.S.-based companies with annual revenue of $10 million or more conducted March 16–31, 2026. The study examines how companies structure payment orchestration and how those strategies affect authorization rates, routing efficiency, operational flexibility, resilience and checkout completion.

    About

    Spreedly’s open payments platform enables access to the global consumer, processing more than $50B GMV annually in more than 100 countries. Built to overcome the challenges of commerce in a cashless world, we empower our merchants through an open, secure and inclusive payment ecosystem, unlocking choice among PSPs, fraud tools and other innovative payment services.

    PYMNTS INTELLIGENCE

    PYMNTS Intelligence is a leading global data and analytics platform that uses proprietary data and methods to provide actionable insights on what’s now and what’s next in payments, commerce and the digital economy. Its team of data scientists includes leading economists, econometricians, survey experts, financial analysts and marketing scientists with deep experience in the application of data to the issues that define the future of the digital transformation of the global economy. This multilingual team has conducted original data collection and analysis in more than three dozen global markets for some of the world’s leading publicly traded and privately held firms.

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