Overcoming challenges in the new era of digital transactions.
The digital payments boom shows no sign of slowing in the year ahead, despite recent efforts by countries, including Australia, to protect cash payments by mandating their acceptance at essential businesses.
Global digital transaction levels are forecasted to soar from $11.55 trillion in 2024 to $16.62 trillion by 2028, according to leading market data firm Statista, which underscores the fact that consumers prize convenience and that important changes are on the cards for merchants operating across different sectors of the economy.
As a leading payment orchestrator, Yuno has had a front-row seat observing the rapid rise and diversification of digital payment methods across the world and how the global payments landscape has become increasingly fragmented. Gone are the days when Visa and Mastercard dominated the global payments scene – we now see payment methods varying drastically from country to country.
In Asia, for example, Chinese consumers now balk at the sight of a credit card, so accustomed are they to paying via QR codes like Alipay and WeChat Pay. In Brazil, meanwhile, consumers are increasingly turning to alternative payment methods (APMs) like Pix – a real-time payment system developed by the country’s Central Bank. In Europe and the US, Apple Pay and Google Pay are fast becoming the payment methods of choice, particularly among younger consumers.
Yuno Co-founder and CEO, Juan Pablo Ortega, even recently had a taste of what could represent the future of digital payments after trialing a new tiny smart chip in his nail that enabled him to make payments with just a tap of his finger.
While really exciting for consumers, all of this diversity creates challenges for merchants looking to sell their goods internationally and scale quickly across markets, particularly given the speed at which innovation and payment preferences are developing across different regions.
Key challenges for merchants
Simply staying abreast of the latest popular payment methods in each market is already a challenge, but this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pain points merchants are facing as they look to expand internationally.
Once they have decided upon a payment method they would like to incorporate – say, UPI in India, for example – they must then enter into a lengthy onboarding process with a local provider, which can take up to six months. This process is not only time-consuming but also requires significant paperwork and eats up a lot of valuable resources like employee time, weighing down the capacity of in-house tech teams who are responsible for managing the integration.
What’s more, once a merchant commits to a provider, they often face an additional challenge: knowing that they can’t trial the service before full integration. As a result, many payment providers oversell their capabilities, knowing that merchants will be hesitant to switch to a competitor after investing time and resources into the process, even if their current provider underperforms.
At Yuno, we have seen this firsthand. We’ve helped clients who initially worked with companies that promised transaction approval rates of over 90 percent, but delivered rates that were closer to 45 percent – a vast discrepancy that can dramatically impact a company’s bottom line.
Beyond the administrative hurdles and inequitable power dynamics, operating in new and less familiar markets can also bring added security risks. This is even more of an issue for merchants looking to enter some emerging-market countries, like India, Brazil and Indonesia, that have particularly high local fraud rates. Businesses must work to ensure they have stringent security measures in place that comply with local regulations to protect the security of their transactions and their customers’ data.
Payment orchestration as the solution
To address these challenges, payment orchestrators have emerged as the next evolution of payments solutions, ushering in the era of Payments 3.0. While payment orchestration was once a niche for tech-savvy specialists, today, it’s helping businesses of all sizes – from multinationals like McDonald’s and Carrefour to smaller, regional players – optimize their payment processes, boost revenues, reduce costs, and scale quickly across markets.
Payment orchestrators remove the headache of manually integrating each individual provider by offering access to hundreds of global payment methods, including regionally popular alternatives like QR codes and e-wallets, through a single integration. Merchants can manage their payment options across different geographies from a centralized dashboard, which simplifies onboarding and opens new markets at lightning speed.
Not only does this drastically simplify the process for merchants, but it also restores a healthier power dynamic back to payment provider-merchant relationships. Should an individual payment provider underperform, merchants can now easily switch their payment flows to another provider offering more reliable and efficient services.
Payment orchestrators also help merchants to protect the security of their transactions by offering cutting-edge fraud tools that comply with the strictest local standards, while providing expert advice on payment strategies based on in-depth regional knowledge, ensuring they remain compliant and secure while expanding.
Latest innovation
The growing adoption of payment orchestration has spurred innovation within the space, offering merchants even more ways to optimize their payment flows.
Tech-driven solutions, such as smart routing, are revolutionizing the industry. Smart routing automatically redirects failed payments to the next best payment pathway, improving transaction approval rates and minimizing revenue loss. This is particularly vital during peak sales periods like Black Friday and Alibaba’s Singles Day, when downtime or other disruptions of payment provider services can lead to significant lost sales.
At Yuno, we have also recently launched a new feature called Monitors, which works in tandem with smart routing by enabling merchants to set up custom alerts based on transaction acceptance rates, allowing for instant identification and resolution of payment issues.
While early payment orchestrators often focused on either optimizing incoming payments from customers or managing outgoing payments to suppliers, today, the latest innovations also enable businesses to manage the entire end-to-end payment journey on a single platform, further simplifying payment management.
As we approach 2025, the e-commerce boom continues to accelerate, with more and more consumers coming online and seeking increasingly convenient ways to shop. Payment orchestrators can help merchants stay ahead of evolving payment preferences, minimize revenue loss, and bolster security measures. They are set to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of payments and enabling merchants to leverage the most cutting-edge technologies, making sure they can thrive in an increasingly dynamic, global digital marketplace.
For a list of the sources used in this article, please contact the editor.
By Carol Grunberg
Carol is the Chief Business Officer at Yuno. Yuno has emerged as a dominant force in global payment orchestration, with a core mission to empower global commerce by enabling businesses of all sizes to accept and disburse payments anywhere in the world, fostering financial inclusion.
Yuno enables businesses to access over 300 payment methods worldwide as well as innovative features including one-click checkout and robust anti-fraud tools via a single unified, easy-to-use interface. Yuno serves a global customer base that includes McDonald’s, Avianca, inDrive, Rappi and other renowned brands across more than 80 countries.