PSP, acquiring bank, orchestrator: understanding their roles and differences

Why understanding these roles is crucial for your e-commerce business

In the world of online payments, the terms PSP, acquiring bank and payment orchestrator come up often. Yet, they are still not well understood. Knowing who does what is essential to optimize your costs, secure your transactions, and improve your conversion rate.
In short: The PSP is the interface for payment methods, the acquiring bank receives the funds following technical calls sent by the PSP, and the orchestrator gives you the freedom to manage and optimize everything.

The PSP: the technical gateway to payments

The PSP (Payment Service Provider) is the technical gateway that allows you to accept various payment methods: credit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers, BNPL solutions, and more.
It manages the connection between your e-commerce site and payment networks, integrating services such as fraud detection, transaction reconciliation, bank settlements, or refund management.

There are two main types of PSPs:

1. Processor PSPs: they have a purely technical role. They allow you to accept payments but do not process the bank transaction themselves, requiring you to have an acquiring contract with a bank. Players like Verifone or Worldline can operate on this model. 
2. Collector PSPs (or "full service"): thanks to their status as anpayment institution (as provided for by PSD2 in Europe), they can collect funds on behalf of a third party, which purely technical PSPs cannot do.

They therefore combine two roles :

• Technical service provider (PSP) : they manage the connection between your site and payment methods.
• Collector / acquirer : they collect the funds, then transfer them to your merchant account once the transaction is finalized.

This "all-in-one" approach simplifies management, but can be more expensive and less flexible than separating the technical and acquiring components.

3. Thanks to their status (like PSD2 in Europe), they act as both a technical service provider and an acquiring bank. They offer you an all-in-one solution that simplifies management, though it may be more expensive. This is the case for Payplug or HiPay.

While the PSP is an essential link, it has a limitation: it often remains tied to its own partners. In the event of an outage or insufficient performance in a market, you are entirely dependent on them.

The acquiring bank: banking processing of payments

The acquiring bank (or acquirer) is the institution that receives the transaction initiated by your PSP and transmits it to card networks like Visa or Mastercard. The issuing bank (the buyer's bank) validates or declines the transaction and, once the payment is accepted, transfers the funds to your merchant account.

Important note: A single bank can be both an acquiring bank and an issuing bank. For example, if a customer uses a BNP Paribas card to pay on the website of a merchant who also has an acquiring contract with BNP Paribas, that bank handles both sides of the transaction.

In short, the PSP handles the technical side, while the acquirer handles the banking side.
Major acquirers in Europe include BNP Paribas or Crédit Mutuel.

The payment orchestrator: the conductor of your transactions

Thepayment orchestrator sits upstream of the PSP and the acquiring bank. Its role is to provide you with a centralized view and strategic control over all your payment partners.

With a single integration, you can connect multiple PSPs and acquiring banks, route each transaction to the best-performing provider based on the country, card type, or amount, and set up automatic backups in the event of an outage.

But the orchestrator doesn't stop there. It helps you:

• Simplify adding new payment methods: it handles the technical integration of each payment method's API and manages eligibility rules (for example, for sensitive products like alcohol, tobacco, etc.).
• Optimize financial management: it unifies all payment flows into a single accounting ledger, simplifying transaction tracking and chargebacks. A chargeback is the financial consequence of a dispute where the consumer has been refunded.
• Track your performance in a unified reporting dashboard, quickly test new payment methods, and optimize your costs without technical overhead.

An orchestrator, like Purse, is generally funded by a fixed cost per transaction, with the goal of reducing this cost over time through optimizations.

Quick comparison

Player: PSP

Main role: Provides the technology to accept payments

Examples: Adyen, Stripe

Player: Acquiring bank

Primary role: Processes transactions and credits your account

Examples: BNP Paribas, Crédit Mutuel

Actor: Orchestrator

Primary role: Centralizes, routes, and optimizes everything

Examples: Purse

Why the orchestrator is becoming essential

Merchants relying on a single PSP face risks: service interruptions, geographical limitations, higher costs in certain markets…
By integrating a payment orchestrator, you gain flexibility, resilience and performance. You adapt your payment strategy to every purchasing context, reduce transaction failures, and improve your conversion — all while maintaining the freedom to change or add providers at any time.

In conclusion

Every player in the payment chain plays a key role:

• The PSP sets up the technical connection.
• The acquiring bank handles the banking processing.
• Theorchestrator gives you total control.

With Purse, you orchestrate your payments to offer the right payment method, to the right customer, at the right time.

Take back control of your payments today.

Sources

• Stripe, What is a payment processor?, 2024
• Adyen, Acquiring explained, 2024
• Checkout.com, What is payment orchestration?, 2023