How payment routing works
A merchant or PSP with more than one acquiring connection sets rules that pick a route from the payment's attributes. Static rules are fixed in advance: cards issued in one country go to the acquirer there. Smart, or intelligent, routing adjusts the choice from live data, such as each acquirer's recent approval rate for that card range.
- The card's BIN: issuing country, brand, debit or credit
- Currency and amount
- Each route's cost and recent approval rate
- Provider health: timeouts and error rates
- The payment brands on a co-badged card
Payment routing and co-badged cards in the EU
A co-badged card carries two or more payment brands, often a domestic scheme and an international one. The Interchange Fee Regulation (Article 8) requires routing principles for such cards to be non-discriminatory. A payee may set its point-of-sale equipment to give priority to one brand, but may not prevent the payer from overriding that choice.
Why payment routing matters
A domestic payment sent through a local acquirer is usually approved more often, and costs less, than the same payment sent across a border. Routing is also what makes failover possible: a second route takes the payment when the first is down.
Where Payment routing shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- Card acquiringCard acceptance on the phone, in store and online, through the acquirer you choose.
- CheckoutA hosted checkout for cards, wallets, bank payments and crypto, routed to the best provider.
- Analytics & monitoringProduct analytics, attribution, engagement and crash reports, on a tracking plan you control.
Platforms that need it
Where it is written
The laws and standards this page's facts come from.
General information, not legal advice: what applies to you depends on your services and your market.