Inovio Blog

How a Gateway-Agnostic Approach in Payments Streamlines Merchant Onboarding

Written by Dave Galens | Aug 13, 2025 9:00:00 AM

Traditionally, merchants were tied to a particular services provider or gateway. However, they can now choose several payment service providers, acquiring banks, and gateways, using the one that best meets their needs at any given time. 

Learn how this revolutionary approach can benefit your business.

The gateway-agnostic mindset

When you disentangle your business from a restrictive relationship with one payment gateway or provider, you no longer need to be bound by their contractual obligations or technical constraints. Instead, you can invest in the services of a payment orchestration platform that acts as a central hub for all of your funding options. 

At last, you will have agency over how you send and receive money, which can streamline your efficiency while sparking higher consumer satisfaction rates. But just how can this gateway-agnostic approach benefit your onboarding as well as other aspects of your company?

More choice and flexibility

With this approach, you have numerous providers from which to choose. Also, you are not locked into one vendor.

You benefit when you are able to pick the payment provider that best addresses your unique business needs and customer base. A gateway-agnostic approach enables you to tailor your selection of providers. It uses criteria such as processing fees, availability of alternative payment vehicles, multiple currency options, and optimal approval rates according to location.

Another advantage is that you will see a marked reduction in declined payments. This is because your access to multiple providers lets the system choose the one that is most likely to succeed. The result is higher profits for you and less frustration for buyers.

Additionally, multiple access means that you are not tied to the fate of a single vendor at any given time. As a result, you can pivot away if any one company experiences price hikes, changes in terms, or disruptions.

Faster onboarding

Onboarding is smoother with a gateway-agnostic approach. This is because of simplified integration and reduced development overhead.

You might be wondering if having relationships with multiple payment providers and banks will lead to errors and confusion. Without your payment orchestrator platform’s APIs or SDKs, it probably would. However, the centralized hub allows you to configure and interact with several providers at the same time, confusion-free.

You also benefit on the nuts-and-bolts side because your developers don’t need to do as much heavy lifting. If you opt to switch payment providers or add to your current stable, there is no need to rebuild your payment stack. That enables you to allocate precious developer resources toward launching new products or expanding your operations.

Affordability and cost savings

Intelligent payment routing and cascading direct transactions to the best provider, re-routing them if necessary. This added efficiency saves you money and time.

When you are locked into one provider who declines a particular payment for any number of reasons, you might lose the sale and its accompanying revenue. However, a gateway-agnostic strategy helps you to set up a set of rules and criteria ahead of time that dictate the flow of the money to the provider who is best equipped to facilitate success.

While this does cut back on declines, payment rejections can still occur in spite of your advanced planning. For times like that, your system can engage in cascading. This process reroutes failed transactions to a backup provider. This gives you one more chance to save the sale and maintain your positive relationship with the customer.

Enhanced customer experience

The wider array of options and the ability to incorporate local payment methods into international transactions boost satisfaction rates.

When you collaborate with several gateways and service providers, you can expand the breadth and depth of the payment options you offer. Customers will appreciate your willingness to accept their funds via credit and debit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers, and recurring billing. Consequently, you will see fewer abandoned shopping carts and more returning buyers.

For businesses operating in the global marketplace, international payment processing from multiple sources allows for localized payments. Since buyers tend to prefer to settle their bills with their own local payment methods, you will see higher sales and the potential for growth when you use a gateway-agnostic approach.

Enhanced control and security

Integrating with several providers brings benefits to your company long after initial onboarding has been completed. For instance, your payment orchestrator will make it possible for you to combine data from all of your funding streams. This will enable you to create reports and gain valuable insights about your performance that take all sources into consideration.

Finally, your centralized data and systems can be shielded more effectively from fraud and other types of security breaches. This can happen because you have the ability to incorporate a varied set of security tools, each with its own strengths. Capitalize on this diversity to provide maximum assurance that your company will not be the next victim of cybercrime.

A gateway-agnostic approach furnishes you with the power of choice, flexibility, and control over a diversified ecosystem during onboarding and beyond. Liberate yourself from the constraints of a single payment provider today, and you will be reaping the benefits for the long term.