The interoperability effect: How connected payment systems drive growth
How easily can you change your payments setup without creating work elsewhere?
There are common changes merchants often need to make: adding new payment methods for specific markets, fixing performance issues with providers, or adapting to new commercial terms and regulatory requirements.
When those updates become harder to do, it’s usually because the setup has grown faster than the connections that support it. Nearly half (44%) of merchants say technical integration is the hardest part of their payments setup, according to our recent research.
Many already run multiple payment processors across markets - typically two to five - yet still send most of their volume through a single primary provider. Without a centralised layer orchestrating those processors, change is harder to implement than it looks.
Without interoperability, each new method, routing adjustment or provider update can cause repercussions across siloed systems, demanding complex change processes, duplicated testing and parallel upkeep. The work rarely stays in one place; it spreads across teams, systems and markets. What should be a simple change turns into a multi-step project.
Connections matter – but how they work together, matters more
Interoperability is about how well payment methods, tokens, routing and data work together across providers, markets and channels. When those elements are orchestrated through a single platform layer, changes stay focused. When they’re not, one small change request can create a complex web of dependencies, pitfalls and blockers.
In an interoperable setup, teams can add a new payment method without rebuilding routing logic, move volume between providers without breaking stored credentials, and make adjustments without creating extra reconciliation work. Everything connects through a central layer that handles the complexity.
Without that orchestration layer, updates tend to touch more systems than expected. Teams duplicate logic, manage exceptions manually and become cautious about making changes because of the follow-on work involved, not to mention the risk of unforeseen fallouts.
What interoperability changes
When payment systems are orchestrated through a central platform, the difference shows up in the work itself.
- Payment methods roll out once, not repeatedly
Adding a wallet or local method doesn’t mean recreating routing rules, reporting logic and controls for every provider. The method works consistently across markets.
- Routing updates don’t create side effects
Performance issues in one region can be addressed without breaking acceptance elsewhere or triggering manual fixes in reporting and reconciliation.
- Tokens move with the customer, not the PSP
Stored payment details and corresponding tokens remain usable across PSPs and throughout the payment journey, with the ability to use the best performing token type for each individual transaction.
Interoperability make change transparent and manageable across providers, markets and methods.
Why this matters for growth
Growth puts pressure on payments in predictable ways. New markets introduce local rails and compliance requirements. New methods arrive with different behaviours and expectations. Volume increases expose performance gaps that were easy to ignore at smaller scale.
Interoperability changes how well a payments setup absorbs that pressure. When a platform coordinates activity across providers and markets, expansion builds on what’s already in place rather than restarting the work each time. Teams can move faster without taking on additional operational overhead, and growth doesn’t require a fresh round of custom integration work at every step.
The Payments Resilience Playbook
These challenges and solutions sit at the centre of the BR-DGE Payments Resilience Playbook. Designed for enterprise payments teams, it addresses interoperability alongside redundancy, flexibility and optimisation, using real merchant scenarios to show how payments teams reduce effort, keep options open and support growth over time.
If you want a clearer view of where your setup is creating unnecessary work - and how to reduce it -the Playbook is a practical place to start.
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