Market Guide for Digital Commerce

Payment Vendors
2 December 2022- ID G00760776- 42 min read
By Dayna Radbill, Akif Khan

Payment is a critical part of a customer’s digital commerce experience.

Application leaders responsible for digital commerce payments should use
this Market Guide to understand this complex and rapidly evolving
market, as well as the related vendor landscape.
Overview
Key Findings
 While the accelerated shift to digital powered by the COVID-19 pandemic has
softened, digital commerce continues to grow as a critical channel for B2C and B2B
businesses across all vertical industries.
 Vendors differ significantly in six core aspects of their digital commerce payment
products, often making it difficult for organizations to discern the appropriate solution
for their business.
 Fraud risk and evolving fraudster tactics continuously put pressure on merchants to
adopt new and improved fraud management technologies to stop bad transactions,
while enabling an effortless experience for good ones.
 As merchants expand their commerce endeavors, they are often forced to use the
services of multiple payment vendors, which results in complexity and
cost inefficiency.

Recommendations
Application leaders responsible for digital commerce payment technologies should:

 Treat payments as strategic, and create opportunities to increase revenue and profit by
managing the payment experience and increasing acceptance rates.
 Refine their global payment strategies by identifying the markets in which their
organizations do the most business, and the salient payment methods and services
required for those markets.
 Ensure that their payment strategy and the vendors selected can support these
markets, methods and services, as well as any expansion plans for the next three to
five years.
 Reduce losses without deterring good customers by managing fraud detection,
chargeback management and return processes.
  Reduce overhead and costs by outsourcing payment services and consolidating
payment vendors, where possible. Most payment pricing is volume-based, so it makes
financial sense to send as many transactions — and, therefore, as much money —
through as few vendors as is practical.

Market Definition
Digital commerce payments are electronic payments, often made with real-time
authorization, that are used to support digital commerce transactions. Digital commerce
payment vendors combine a payment gateway, payment processing, acquiring services,
payment security and fraud detection (see Navigating the Digital Commerce Payment
Market).
Payment gateways initiate payments at the request of merchants and return the responses to
those merchants. They offer preexisting connections and certified integrations with key
payment acquirers and processors, and many have integrations with other providers in the
greater digital commerce ecosystem. All digital commerce payment vendors offer a SaaS
payment gateway at a minimum. Many are full-stack providers that include processing and
acquiring capabilities, alternative payment methods, fraud detection, payment data
tokenization, and other related or ancillary services.
Market Description
There are six key areas of focus and differentiation for vendors in the digital commerce
payment market (see Figure 1):

 Primary architecture: All vendors within this Market Guide will fall into one of three
primary architectural models:
o Full stack — Inclusive of the payment gateway for buyer-facing payment
acceptance capabilities, which is dedicated to the vendor’s back-end
processing, acquiring licenses and financial settlement.
o Multiprocessor-agnostic — One consolidated, front end for buyer-facing
payment acceptance capabilities connecting to the processor/acquirer back
ends of the merchant customer’s choosing, with the merchant contracting
directly with the processors/acquirers.
o Multiprocessor merchant of record (MoR) or seller of record (SoR) — One
consolidated front end for buyer-facing payment acceptance capabilities under
a multiprocessor architecture. The vendor acts as an MoR or SoR, where the
merchant customer does not contract directly with the processors/acquirers on
the back end.
 Merchant size: Most vendors have a customer distribution that is heavily weighted
toward either the small and midsize business (SMB)/midmarket sector or larger
midmarket and enterprise, often international, merchants. As the targeted merchant
size and complexity increase, the sophistication of the offering is also growing.
Enterprise-centric solutions commonly include support for more-rigid SLAs and
processing redundancy; more transparent, but complex pricing; and more
sophisticated conversion optimization tools. The focus of this Market Guide is
solutions that are commonly used by enterprise merchants
 Channel: Although many vendors support multiple channels, they often have stronger
footprints in specific channels, due to their historical presence. For example, some
vendors have a more significant market share in the physical world — point of sale
 (POS), face-to-face and card-present transaction processing. Others have a bigger
footprint in digital commerce, card-not-present processing.
 Geography: Although no one vendor yet offers every digital payment acceptance in
every country, a handful of global vendors come close. Many vendors remain
concentrated in a single region or country, and have weaknesses in other locales. The
focus of this research is vendors with multiregional and global product offerings.
 Payment method: Payment method support usually correlates with geographical
coverage, as payment preferences are affected by culture, economy, regulatory, and
other national or regional factors. All the providers included in this Market Guide
offer at least major credit card acceptance services. Some may specialize in offering a
broad range of alternative and local payment methods.
 Product suite: Merchants may desire best-in-class, specialized point solutions or
comprehensive one-stop-shop vendors that can address a wide breadth of payment
ecosystem business needs. The best payment solutions are inherently composable,
allowing merchants to select business capabilities without committing to the entire
suite.

Figure 1: Six Key Differentiation Vectors of Digital Commerce Payment Vendors

A Note About Payment Orchestration

The term “payment orchestration” has become increasingly popular for vendors with a
multiprocessor architecture (both agnostic and MoR/SoR). All the vendors included in this
Market Guide with a primary architecture of multiprocessor classify their offerings as such,
although no market standard definition exists for the term, and different vendors use it to
denote different technical capabilities. Due to this nonspecificity of usage in the market,
Gartner does not consider this to be a separate category.
The value proposition to merchants lies not in the “orchestration” distinction, but in the
improvements that can be realized by the merchant. The dominant benefits are improvements
in authorization and conversion rates, but may also include savings in interchange rates,
reductions in overhead, lowered implementation and maintenance costs, and more. It is
important for merchants to evaluate vendors on the true total cost of ownership (TCO)
benefit, inclusive of increased revenue opportunities that an effective global payment strategy
unlocks.
Market Direction
The digital commerce payment market is complex and dynamic. Although some aspects of
the market are mature, such as wholesale processing, hosted payment pages and tokenization,
the market continues to evolve. Global retail e-commerce grew at a rate of 16.8% year over
year in 2021, to a total of $4.921 trillion, representing 19.6% of all retail sales
worldwide.1 Those numbers do not include B2B, however, which is one of the fastest-
growing areas of digital commerce.
Gartner estimates that leading digital commerce payment providers’ revenue grew at an
average rate of 22% year over year in 2021. This was less than their reported transaction
volume growth rate, which averaged nearly 30% year over year and implies continued price
compression accompanying the rapid scaling.2
Digital wallet adoption continues to rise around the world, and has surpassed conventional
credit and debit cards in usage globally. It is important to note, however, that many digital
wallet transactions are funded by traditional debit and credit cards, which means that growth
of digital wallets does not always imply a reduction in card share of volumes.
B2B merchants have moved quickly toward digital commerce and are increasingly embracing
the need for a more consumerlike, truly omnichannel digital buying experience. For many
B2B buyers and sellers, this leverages traditional invoicing processes; however, more and
more Gartner B2B clients are seeing demand for online, self-serve payment methods as well.
In many cases, the ability to pay at the time of purchase attracts smaller merchants that may
not qualify for traditional, credit-based invoicing. It may also be used for smaller
supplementary orders, such as additional parts or purchases made with purchasing cards.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) continues to prove popular with consumers. However, many
BNPL providers, other digital wallets and digital-first payment fintech companies
experienced significant valuation reductions during 2022. While these solutions continue to
see adoption that outpaces the general market, many have softened their financial projections
and saw adjustments that reflect that.3,4,5,6,7,8
Although popular BNPL solutions focus on the B2C market, the rise in B2B digital
commerce is recognized by such vendors as TreviPay, TilliT and Hokodo, which offer BNPL
for businesses integrated with B2B-optimized check-out experiences.
Merchants continue to explore ways to increase the bottom line — whether by increasing
sales and acceptance rates, or by reducing costs. For more on this, see Quick Answer: What
Payment Acceptance Strategies Can Improve Digital Commerce Profitability?. In countries
that maintain high interchange rates tied to rich consumer rewards programs, the battle
continues between merchants and the major card brands. In the U.S., a bipartisan and
bicameral bill was recently introduced to force increased competition for credit card routing,
similar to what was enacted in 2010. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois sponsored both, but the
new proposed legislation does not include explicit caps like the 2010 bill did for debit cards,
so the potential impact to merchant prices is less predictable.9
Open-banking and real-time payment (RTP) initiatives continue to be rolled out in many
markets around the world.10,11,12 Both hold similar promise for low-cost, rapid settlement
and little, if any, chargeback risk, making them potentially ideal from a merchant acceptance
point of view. From a consumer point of view, however, this has the potential to make them
more risky than debit cards or direct debits that do offer consumer protections. In Gartner’s
discussions with merchants and vendors, there is recognition of this and a desire to offer other
forms of consumer protection before broadly introducing the payment methods to customers.
Gartner refers to this category of payment methods as “bank transfers” in the Alternative and
Local Payment Methods section below. Local examples of such payment mechanisms have
existed for years — notably iDEAL in the Netherlands. However, the wider implementation
of open banking policies and regulation, and the rapid rollout of RTP networks around the
world, have introduced the prospect of greater adoption of bank transfers to make digital
commerce payments.
The trend by platforms, marketplaces and verticalized software vendors to incorporate
payments into their offerings and pricing has also continued to expand. This is commonly
referred to as “embedded payments” and is enabled by adopting payments as a packaged
service (PaaPS) from digital commerce payment vendors. PaaPS is a service that enables
nonpayment B2B organizations to offer payment processing to their merchant customers, or
“submerchants,” which enables them to accept payments from their end-buyer customers.
Also known as marketplace payment offerings, PaaPS products include three key components
that are above and beyond normal merchant payment processing:

 Automated onboarding of submerchants via APIs

 Automated funds distribution to submerchants, without requiring the merchant to
handle any funds
 Detailed reporting to support all of the above for both the platform or marketplace and
the submerchants.

Pioneered by digital wallets, other payment companies and gig economy

businesses, PaaPS transactions have become an attractive revenue opportunity for any
business that is well-positioned to connect buyers and sellers. Established payment vendors
such as Stripe and Braintree (part of PayPal) have offered this functionality for years and
power the payment capabilities of software businesses such as
Shopify, Mindbody, Uber and Lyft. The market now includes payment vendors focused
wholly on PaaPS, such as Finix and Infinicept, which were not profiled in this research.
Similar vendor Payrix was acquired by FIS and now powers Worldpay for
Platforms from FIS.13 For more information, see Hype Cycle for Digital Commerce, 2022 for
more information.
One challenging consequence of this trend has been increasingly reported by Gartner
merchants. Many of the most innovative customer experiences are debuted by vendors that
offer their products exclusively with embedded payments. This forces merchants to choose
between implementing the latest technology for their customers or adhering to their payment
consolidation strategies.
Market Analysis
Gartner clients continue to seek opportunities to consolidate their digital commerce payment
vendors, where possible, although few merchants with a global, large-enterprise presence are
yet consolidating down to a single solution. However, it is increasingly important to them to
have a common payment strategy and architecture for all customer channels. As digital
payment vendors become more adept at supporting both online and physical channels,
merchants are likely to turn increasingly to their existing vendor first to fulfill their channel
expansion aspirations. Whether merchants opt for a full stack or a multiprocessor
architecture, having a single payment gateway vendor across channels enables common
tokenization strategies that connect in-store and online customer activity. This data linkage is
important for popular buy online; pickup in store (BOPIS); or buy online, return in store
(BORIS) and other multichannel purchase flows, as well as for creating a complete picture of
an individual customer’s preferences and behaviors.
A significant factor in a merchant’s digital commerce payment vendor selection is the
existence of productized integrations from the commerce, subscription, billing or other
platforms of choice to the merchant’s preferred payment vendor. A productized integration
often relieves the merchant of much of the implementation and maintenance burden, but it
may also limit flexibility and options for adding new features or supporting custom fields.
As aspects of the payment value chain become mature and even commoditized, vendors seek
additional ways to maintain relevance and protect margins. They may look to achieve this by
introducing adjacent technologies or services, such as:

 Fraud detection
 Electronic billing
 Subscription management
 Vertical solutions
 Issuing
 Payouts

Alternative and Local Payment Methods

As credit cards’ share of digital commerce spend has dropped below 50% globally,
alternative and local payment methods are critical to customer experience and sales
conversion. Preferred payment methods vary dramatically by geography, driven by the
unique cultural, technological, economic and social behaviors of people in different countries
and regions. Not all merchants should support all alternative and local payment methods (for
more guidance, see How to Improve Customer Experiences in Digital Commerce Payments).
There are six main categories of alternative payment methods:
1. Direct debits or “pull” transactions from bank accounts. Consumers provide bank
account details to the merchant and the merchant initiates the transactions to
withdraw funds from the consumers’ bank accounts. Direct debits are named
differently in different countries and regions — for example, as automatic clearing
house (ACH) payments in the U.S., electronic funds transfer (EFT) payments in
Canada and Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments in the European Union
(EU). Direct debits often carry regulatory mandates for enrollment that may be
time-consuming and create a cumbersome customer experience. As a result, they
are most commonly used for regular recurring transactions and rarely used for one-
off commerce purchases.
2. Bank transfers or “push” transactions from bank accounts. Consumers are
redirected from a merchant’s website to interface directly with their bank and enter
their online banking credentials, thereby authorizing their bank to send funds to the
merchant. This form of payment includes branded payments, such as iDEAL in the
Netherlands, giropay in Germany and SOFORT in parts of Europe. This category
includes open banking scenarios such as those encouraged by the PSD2 open-
banking initiative in the EU and other open banking efforts around the world. It
 also includes RTP networks such as instant payments from The Clearing House
(TCH) in the U.S. and FedNow Service launching 2023.14 Many of the digital
commerce payment vendors profiled in this report are adding connectivity to RTP
networks or aggregators, which provide consolidated access to the open banking
networks. This allows merchants to continue to leverage their connectivity to their
payment vendors of choice in order to add these payment methods, rather than
building out separate direct connections.15,16
3. Digital wallets. Consumers are redirected from the merchant’s website to a digital
wallet provider, where they are authenticated by methods such as username and
password, biometric device authentication, or an out-of-band one-time password.
The consumer’s payment credentials, such as credit or debit card number, or bank
account details, are stored securely by the digital wallet provider. In many cases,
the consumer can also store a balance with the digital wallet provider and make
payments from this stored balance. Examples
are Alipay, PayPal, Venmo and WeChat Pay. This category includes closed-loop
wallets used within a defined merchant or merchants, such as
the Starbucks or Walmart mobile payment applications. It also includes passive
enrollment wallets such as Shop Pay, Bolt, Stripe’s Link check-out
and Worldpay from FIS’s GoCart. The OEM wallet is a special case that provides
a consumer experience layer similar to other digital wallets; however, the wallet
provider does not handle or store the funds. Examples of OEM wallets are Apple
Pay, Google Pay and Click to Pay, which is built on EMVCo’s Secure Remote
Commerce specification, and adopted by the global card brands.17
4. BNPL. This is a special category of digital wallet that enables the consumer to
receive goods while paying for them over time. It includes both deferred and
installment options, although they are most widely known for installments. These
wallets essentially extend credit to the consumer, and include brands such
as Afterpay, Affirm, Klarna and PayPal. They may also be offered directly by the
merchant, as is common in countries such as Germany.
5. Offline payments. Sometimes referred to as quasi-cash, these payment transactions
are initiated through an online interaction with a merchant, but paid by the
consumer at a later time in a separate transaction that is often face to face. This
includes payment methods such as boleto bancário in Brazil and Western
Union payments.
6. Digital and cryptocurrencies. This category includes cryptocurrencies and
stablecoins, which are digital currencies built into a blockchain ledger, such as
Bitcoin, Ethereum and Diem. It also includes central bank issued digital currencies
(CBDC), which are digital forms of central bank money that represent a claim on
central bank cash accounts (see Define and Map Cryptocurrencies, Digital
Currencies and NFTs to Future-Proof Your Digital Transformation). While
digitally native cryptocurrencies are most commonly seen in digital commerce
today, stablecoins and CBDCs are more fit for purpose for the commerce payment
use case.
Representative Vendors
The vendors listed in this Market Guide do not imply an exhaustive list. This section is
intended to provide more understanding of the market and its offerings.
Market Introduction
Table 1 and Figure 2 summarize the vendors profiled in this Market Guide. Refer to
the Acronym Key and Glossary Terms for descriptions of each term. All representative
vendors have a multitenant SaaS payment gateway, in-house tokenization, and mobile
commerce including SDKs and responsive pages. (See Note 1 for additional information
regarding attributes that are common to all vendors in this Market Guide.)
Table 1: Representative Vendors in the Digital Commerce Payment Market
Enlarge Table

Vendor Product Name Website

ACI Worldwide ACI Secure eCommerce ACI Worldwide

Adyen Adyen Payments Adyen

APEXX Global APEXX Payment Orchestration APEXX Global

Layer

BlueSnap BlueSnap Payment BlueSnap

Orchestration Platform

CellPoint Digital Velocity CellPoint Digital

Checkout.com Checkout.com Payment Checkout.com

Processing

Computop Computop Paygate Computop

Cybersource Cybersource Payment Gateway Cybersource

Fiserv Carat Fiserv

Global Payments Global Payments Global Payments

J.P. Morgan J.P. Morgan Merchant Services J.P. Morgan Merchant Services

PayPal PayPal Braintree PayPal

 Vendor Product Name Website

Rapyd Rapyd Collect Rapyd

Spreedly Spreedly Spreedly

Stripe Stripe Payments Stripe

TokenEx TokenEx Data Protection TokenEx

Platform

Very Good Very Good Security Payment Very Good Security

Security Optimization

Worldpay From Access Worldpay Worldpay From FIS (Access

FIS Worldpay)

Worldpay From Worldwide Payment Gateway Worldpay From FIS (Worldwide

FIS Payment Gateway)

Source: Gartner (December 2022)

Figure 2: Vendor Feature Functionality
Vendor Profiles
ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide
Profile: ACI Worldwide is a publicly traded company that was founded in 1975. It provides
payment infrastructure to financial institutions and fintechs. In addition, its agnostic,
multiprocessor gateway serves Tier 1 and Tier 2 merchants in North America; Latin America
(LATAM); Europe, the Middle East and Africa (MEA); and the Asia/Pacific (APAC) region.
ACI is not an acquirer.
ACI Secure e-commerce platform comes with an integrated fraud management solution,
which is also sold on a stand-alone basis, and includes patented incremental learning
capabilities and optional chargeback guarantee. In addition, ACI supports native connectivity
to third-party fraud solutions. Its fraud solutions are complemented by optional, third-party
managed services.
The verticals that ACI mainly serves with its gateway product are payment intermediaries,
retail, digital entertainment, travel and telecom. Notable clients include Tesco Mobile, Pilot
Flying J, ICA Banken, Co-op and Aegean Airlines.
ACI is PCI SSC P2PE-certified. It lists its primary differentiators as its orchestration
capabilities to improve conversion rates and its vast footprint of connections to acquirers,
alternative payment methods and other complementary third parties. Although ACI does not
have a PaaPS offering, it can support it via third-party integrations.
Payment acceptance products: ACI Secure eCommerce
HQ location: Miami
Other locations: 34 countries
Primary gateway model supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.95%
PaaPS: Via third-party integrations
Payouts: Yes, to cards, bank accounts and digital wallets via productized integration to a third
party
Adyen
Adyen
Profile: Adyen is a publicly traded company founded in 2006. Its enterprise merchants are
based in North America, LATAM, Europe and the APAC region. All of Adyen’s software is
developed and owned by Adyen. Hardware is built by external vendors. Both Card Not
Present and Card Present transactions flow through a single platform, supporting tokenization
of payments for use across channels.
In Adyen’s most recent earnings call, it reiterated its commitment to its single-platform, full-
stack technology and direct-to-network connectivity, and increased investment into, and
adoption of, its unified commerce solutions. Adyen supports a number of private label and
gift card providers, in addition to cards and alternative and local payment methods.
The vendor’s proprietary fraud detection tools include automated chargeback defense, but
Adyen does not offer managed fraud or chargeback guarantees.
With direct local acquiring in 45 countries, Adyen has a large global-acquiring, local and
alternative payment method footprint.
Payment acceptance products: Adyen Payments
HQ location: Amsterdam
Other locations: 23 offices
Primary gateway model supported: Full Stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.9%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards and bank accounts
APEXX Global
APEXX Global
Profile: APEXX Global is a privately held company founded in 2016. Its enterprise customer
base is located in Europe.
The APEXX core product is its multiprocessor-agnostic gateway, with transaction-level
routing to transmit payment data to the merchant’s providers of choice. Routing can be
configured dynamically to increase acceptance rates and/or reduce processing costs. A single
API supports connectivity to third-party services, both for processing
and nonprocessing functions.
APEXX Global’s strongest verticals are airlines, travel, fashion retail, health and beauty, and
digital media. Notable customers include Ryanair, TUI Group, ASOS, Avon and ESW.
APEXX Global cites its routing engine, which combines end-user tooling with dynamic
routing rules, among its most differentiated features.
Payment acceptance products: APEXX Payment Orchestration Layer
HQ location: London
Other locations: New York
Gateway models supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.95%
PaaPS: No
Payouts: Yes, to cards only
BlueSnap
BlueSnap
Profile: BlueSnap is a privately owned company founded in 2002. Its primary architecture is
multiprocessor MoR or SoR that offers intelligent routing at the individual transaction level
across multiple acquirer processors with a single contract, a single integration for both front
end and back end, and a unified payout. BlueSnap’s enterprise presence is in North America,
Europe and the MEA region.
Fraud detection is supported through a partnership with Kount. It offers Full-Service Dispute
Management to complement its chargeback management technology. The core payment
solution is also complemented by a billing engine and accounts receivable automation
platform, formerly known as Armatic, which was acquired by BlueSnap in 2019.
BlueSnap’s primary verticals are software, retail, manufacturing and logistics. Notable clients
include Monday.com, Edible, Outbrain, Benevity and Veracross. BlueSnap cites both its
instant access to global scale and orchestration capabilities via a single contract as its most
differentiated features.
Payment acceptance products: BlueSnap Payment Orchestration Platform
HQ location: Waltham, Massachusetts
Other locations: Herzliya, Israel; London; Dublin
Primary gateway model supported: Multiprocessor MoR or SoR
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.999%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to bank accounts
CellPoint
CellPoint Digital
Profile: CellPoint Digital is a privately funded company founded in 2007. It focuses on
enterprise merchants with broad, global footprints that seek to exploit a complex,
multiprocessor architecture to strategic advantage. Its solution simplifies both front-end and
back-end implementations with common interfaces and tools. Its enterprise customer base is
located in North America, LATAM and Europe, and in the MEA and APAC regions.
As a multiprocessor-agnostic platform, CellPoint Digital does not hold its own acquiring
licenses. Rather, it helps merchants to optimize their connectivity to processor/acquirers and
other endpoints such as local and alternative payment methods and other value-added
services, such as fraud and 3DSecure. CellPoint Digital does not support physical POS
processing.
CellPoint Digital’s strongest verticals are airlines, travel, gaming, retail and marketplaces.
Notable customers include Virgin Atlantic, Southwest Airlines, Avianca, Radisson Hotel
Group and MTCGAME. CellPoint Digital cites its best-in-class routing, analytics and its
global payment connectivity among its most differentiating features.
Payment acceptance products: Velocity
HQ location: London
Other locations: Copenhagen; Dubai; Pune, India; Miami; Dallas; Singapore
Gateway models supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.999%
PaaPS: No
Payouts: Yes, via partnerships
Checkout.com
Checkout.com
Profile: Checkout.com is a private company founded in 2012. Primarily sold as a dedicated
gateway and acquiring solution, Checkout.com holds local acquiring licenses in eight
countries. It also offers a directed gateway option that allows for failover or rule-based access
to other acquirers at the transaction level. Additional acquiring relationships must be
established directly between acquirers and merchants, and are not managed under a
Checkout.com master agreement.
Most of Checkout.com’s enterprise merchant volumes are in North America, Europe, and the
MEA and APAC regions, largely in the digital, retail goods, fintech, food and beverage, and
crypto vertical industries. Notable clients include Wise, Grab, Sony, SHEIN and Pizza Hut.
In its primary differentiators, Checkout.com includes the granularity of its data and its
dedicated customer support.
Payment acceptance products: Checkout.com Payment Processing
HQ location: London
Other locations: New York; San Francisco; Chicago; Denver; Paris; Amsterdam; Barcelona;
Dubai; Berlin; Tallinn, Estonia; Hong Kong; Porto, Portugal; Shanghai; Singapore;
Mauritius, East Africa; Perth and Melbourne, Australia; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Tel Aviv,
Israel
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards, bank accounts and digital wallets
Computop
Computop
Profile: Computop is a privately owned company founded in 1997. It offers an agnostic,
multiprocessor gateway solution for cards and alternative and local payment methods. Its
customers are located predominantly in Europe. Computop also offers its products as a white-
labeled solution set for banks and fintechs. The vendor is not an acquirer; therefore, it does
not manage settlement and currency services.
Computop includes its leading market position in Germany and its climate-neutral status and
network tokenization solution (terminals and PCI SSC P2PE certification) among its most
differentiating features. Computop’s Paygate gateway supports Level 2 and 3 data for B2B
transactions. The platform supports B2B and B2C merchants and serves mainly the retail,
digital, financial services, manufacturing and mobility industries. Notable customers include
Sixt, Toll Collect, Otto Group, About You and MediaMarktSaturn.
Pricing is transaction-fee-based. As an agnostic gateway, interchange fees are not included,
but levied by the acquirer of choice.
Payment acceptance products: Computop Paygate
HQ location: Bamberg, Germany
Other locations: Hamburg, Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt (all Germany); London; New York;
Shanghai
Primary gateway model supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.5%
PaaPS: Via third party
Payouts: Yes, to cards, bank accounts and digital wallets
Cybersource
Cybersource
Profile: Cybersource is publicly traded as a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa since its
acquisition in 2010. Cybersource is an agnostic gateway with extensive global reach, due in
large part to its Visa ownership and its leverage of a direct connection to VisaNet via Visa
Platform Connect (VPC), which enables streamlined global acquirer and processor
connectivity, and provides marketplaces and other platforms with access to that acquirer
network.
Cybersource is the largest merchant direct gateway profiled in this research and serves
enterprise merchants in all geographical regions.
The vendor cites its newly reengineered, microservices-based, modular platform and related
services offerings among its most differentiated features. It uses AI and machine learning to
optimize payment routing and approvals. Key verticals it serves are retail, everyday spend,
business services, transit and travel. Notable clients include Harley Davidson, Little Caesar’s,
Sally Beauty and Accor Hotels. An in-house fraud detection product, called Decision
Manager, is also sold stand-alone and is sometimes integrated into other vendors’ digital
commerce payment solutions.
Payment acceptance products: Cybersource Payment Gateway
HQ location: Foster City, California
Other locations: San Francisco; Bellevue, Washington; Lehi, Utah; Austin, Texas; Miami;
Reading, U.K.; Paris; Sao Paulo; Singapore
Primary gateway model supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards, digital wallets and bank accounts
Fiserv
Fiserv
Profile: Fiserv is a publicly traded company. Carat, the enterprise merchant payment
acceptance arm of Fiserv processing more than 20 billion digital commerce transactions in
2021, is one of the largest providers in the world. Fiserv’s enterprise merchants are located
primarily in North America, Europe and LATAM, and the APAC region.
Key verticals that Fiserv serves are retail, restaurant/QSR, travel and entertainment, grocery,
and petroleum. Notable clients include Microsoft, Lyft, The Home Depot, Disney and State
Farm. Fiserv’s extensive global footprint, with local acquiring licenses in 50 countries, is
used by direct merchants and by many other payment vendors in the ecosystem. Fiserv counts
its scale and global reach, depth of insights and data, emerging flow offerings such as payouts
and EBT, and omnichannel and IoT experience enablement among its most differentiating
features. Its debit routing offerings leverage machine learning and benefit from the vendor’s
ownership of Star and Accel.
Payment acceptance products: Carat
HQ location: Brookfield, Wisconsin
Other locations: Across the U.S. and in more than 50 countries globally, including the
EMEA, APAC and LATAM regions
Primary gateway model supported: Full Stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.9
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards, bank accounts and digital wallets
Global Payments
Global Payments
Profile: Global Payments is a publicly traded company founded in 1967. Processing $900
billion in payment volumes in 2021, Global Payments serves its enterprise merchants across
North America, Europe and the APAC region. Worldwide payment processing is supported
by 57 domestic acquiring licenses.
Global Payments supports POS payments and is PCI SSC-validated for P2PE. Its primary
verticals are retail, digital and technology, financial services and insurance, hospitality, and
B2B services. Notable customers include PayPal, Google, Uber and Mary Kay. Global
Payments cites its domestic acquiring and local payment method reach, as well as its local in-
country expertise, among its most differentiating features.
Global Payments uses machine learning and automatic retries to power its authorization
optimization capabilities. The vendor supports complex fraud detection and management via
its integration to Cybersource.
Payment acceptance products: Global Payments
HQ location: Atlanta
Other locations: Global Payments has local offices in 38 countries, across North America,
LATAM, and the Caribbean, Europe, Middle East and Asia/Pacific regions.
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.999%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards, digital wallets and bank accounts
J.P. Morgan Merchant Services
J.P. Morgan Merchant Services
Profile: J.P. Morgan Merchant Services has been a wholly owned subsidiary of JPMorgan
Chase since 2008, and was formerly a joint venture with First Data known as Paymentech.
J.P. Morgan Merchant Services offers domestic acquiring in 29 countries. Its enterprise
customers are domiciled in North America, LATAM, Europe and the APAC region.
J.P. Morgan Merchant Services offers acquiring of Chase-issued Visa cards on an in-house,
closed-loop acquiring platform called ChaseNet. Chase is the issuer, acquirer and network for
ChaseNet transactions. As a result, it can offer more economical and predictable fixed-rate
pricing for these transactions, which can be materially cost-effective for merchants, given that
Chase is the largest U.S. Visa issuer. Chase transactions running through ChaseNet can also
lead to increased authorization approval rates due to real-time visibility of both sides of these
transactions.
In September 2022, J.P. Morgan announced its intent to acquire Renovite, a cloud-native
payments technology firm, to modernize infrastructure and create greater flexibility for the
firm’s merchant acquiring capabilities globally.17
J.P. Morgan Merchant Services fraud detection, called Safetech Fraud Tools, is powered by
Kount.
Payment Acceptance Products: J.P. Morgan Merchant Services
HQ Location: Plano, Texas
Other Locations: Toronto; Dublin; various other regional and international offices
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99%
PaaPS: No, but offered separately via its WePay subsidiary, not profiled here
Payouts: Yes, to cards, bank accounts and digital wallets
PayPal
PayPal
Profile: PayPal is a publicly traded company founded in 1998. Well-known globally for its
consumer-facing digital wallet of the same name, PayPal also offers a full stack enterprise
payment gateway called Braintree. PayPal also owns Venmo. PayPal’s enterprise merchant
service offerings are sold mostly in North America, Europe and the APAC region. PayPal has
domestic acquiring licenses in 47 countries.
PayPal cites its two-sided network with more than 400 million active consumers — and the
improved authorization rates and data intelligence that it enables — as its greatest
differentiator. Key verticals for PayPal’s merchant gateway are retail, travel, delivery/ride
share, digital, and food and beverage. Notable clients include Uber, Grubhub and Spotify.
The PayPal Braintree gateway has an integrated proprietary fraud detection tool that is
included with the commerce payment services. It also offers an optional integrated tool,
powered by its acquisition of Simility in 2018. Called Fraud Protection Advanced, it provides
customizable, large-enterprise fraud detection capabilities powered by machine learning, in
addition to chargeback protection and dispute automation.
Payment acceptance products: PayPal Braintree
HQ location: San Jose, California
Other locations: 13 other U.S. offices and physical locations in 29 countries
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.95%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to digital wallets, bank accounts and cards
Rapyd
Rapyd
Profile: Rapyd is a privately funded company founded in 2016. Its enterprise customers are
located primarily in North America, LATAM, Europe and the APAC region. It holds
domestic local acquiring licenses in 30 countries.
Rapyd’s primary verticals served include financial services, B2B, e-commerce, gaming and
disbursements. Its notable clients include IKEA, Uber, Rappi, Paysafe and Hotmart. Rapyd
cites its depth and breadth of payment methods around the globe (especially bank transfer
types supported by virtual), and payouts to bank accounts and digital wallets among its most
differentiating capabilities.
Rapyd Protect is the vendor’s proprietary fraud detection solution. Rapyd’s tokenization
solution supports bank accounts and personally identifiable information (PII) data, in addition
to sensitive card data fields.
Payment acceptance products: Rapyd Collect
HQ location: London
Other locations: San Francisco; San Jose, California; Miami; Denver; Amsterdam; Singapore;
Tel Aviv, Israel; Mexico City; Rejkjavik, Iceland; Dubai; Hong Kong
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards, digital wallets and bank accounts
Spreedly
Spreedly
Profile: Spreedly is a privately funded company founded in 2007. It supports enterprise
customers mostly in North America, LATAM and Europe, with especially notable depth in
LATAM. These customers represent both B2B and B2C transactions.
Spreedly’s gateway can be used agnostically, with the merchant in control of routing, or it
can be used as a directed gateway, with Spreedly’s rule-based Smart Routing
recommendation API. Spreedly’s primary verticals are delivery and order ahead, travel,
events and ticketing, giving, and digital goods. It cites the breadth of its integration partners
and its secure, independent vault that connects to a global ecosystem of hundreds of payment
services as among its strongest features. Notable clients include Rappi, SeatGeek, PushPay,
Paddle and IL MAKIAGE.
Spreedly’s platform is also agnostic to fraud detection solutions, supporting integrations to
Cybersource Decision Manager, Kount, Ravelin and ACI Worldwide’s ReD Shield. Spreedly
does not offer a virtual terminal, or support the physical POS.
Payment acceptance products: Spreedly
HQ location: Durham, North Carolina
Other locations: N/A
Primary gateway model supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: Not disclosed
PaaPS: No
Payouts: No
Stripe
Stripe
Profile: Stripe is a privately funded company founded in 2011. It holds domestic acquiring
licenses in 45 countries. Much of Stripe’s $640 billion payments volume comes through
Connect, its premier PaaPS product for marketplaces and platforms. Its enterprise clients are
in North America and Europe, and in the MEA and APAC regions.
Stripe enables most alternative and local payment methods under a Stripe master merchant
agreement with each provider, which enables faster time to market as merchants bypass the
process of direct application. Key verticals include software, food and drink, grocery and
food stores, business services, and merchandise. Notable clients include Amazon, Atlassian,
Deliveroo, Wayfair and Zoom.
Stripe cites its payments infrastructure, product velocity and machine-learning-powered
authorization optimization among its most differentiated capabilities. Stripe’s fraud detection
product, Radar, is built into the payment flow or customers can upgrade to Radar for Fraud
Teams to self-manage.
Payment acceptance products: Stripe Payments
HQ location: San Francisco and Dublin
Other locations: Seattle; Chicago; New York; Austin, Texas; Dublin; London; Amsterdam;
Paris; Berlin; Madrid; Stockholm; Singapore; Tokyo; Melbourne, Australia; Bengaluru,
India; Mexico City; Sao Paulo
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99% Stripe System Status
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards and bank accounts
TokenEx
TokenEx
Profile: TokenEx is a privately held company founded in 2010. Its enterprise customer base is
located in North America, LATAM and Europe, and in the APAC region.
The TokenEx core product is the tokenization of sensitive information, including, but not
limited to, credit card data for PCI DSS-compliance purposes. As tokenization alone only
solves part of the compliance issue, TokenEx also acts as a multiprocessor-agnostic platform
for securely transmitting payment data in transit to the merchant’s providers of choice. It lists
its flexibility and focus on security among its most differentiating characteristics.
Connectivity is supported via API or batch, but a hosted order page and virtual terminal are
not offered.
TokenEx’s strongest verticals are retail, travel, software, financial services and business
services. Notable customers include Orvis, SuperTravel, Acima, Tablet Hotels and Pay N
Seconds. It does not support transactional payouts or POS.
Payment acceptance products: TokenEx Data Protection Platform
HQ location: Edmond, Oklahoma
Other locations: Tulsa, Oklahoma; London
Gateway models supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99%
PaaPS: No
Payouts: No
Very Good Security
Very Good Security
Profile: Very Good Security is a privately held company founded in 2015. Its enterprise
customer base is concentrated in North America.
The Very Good Security core product is its PCI DSS-compliant vault. As vault storage alone
only solves part of the compliance issue, Very Good Security also acts as a multiprocessor-
agnostic gateway for securely transmitting payment data in transit to the merchant’s providers
of choice. Connectivity is supported via API or batch, but a hosted order page and virtual
terminal are not offered.
Very Good Security’s strongest verticals are food delivery, QSR, retail, marketplaces and
finance. Notable customers include Rappi, MoonPa and Brex. Very Good Security cites its
data security PCI DSS compliance among its most differentiating features, with payment
features added on for convenience. It does not offer a Virtual Terminal, support for Level 2
and 3 data, POS or payouts.
Payment acceptance products: Very Good Security Payment Optimization
HQ location: San Francisco
Other locations: Remote
Gateway models supported: Multiprocessor-agnostic
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.95%
PaaPS: No
Payouts: No
Worldpay From FIS
Worldpay From FIS
Profile: Worldpay From FIS has been a publicly traded company and a wholly owned
division of FIS since its acquisition in 2019. Worldpay is the largest global acquirer by
volume and offers two full stack digital commerce payment gateways that are profiled in this
research. Its enterprise customer base is concentrated in North America and Europe, and in
the MEA and APAC regions.
The Access Worldpay gateway, with access to all of its 59 domestic acquiring licenses, has a
smaller user base than Worldpay’s Worldwide Payment Gateway (WPG), which is used by
most merchants. Worldpay for Platforms is the vendor’s PaaPS offering and leverages the
recent Payrix acquisition to enable embedded payments for software companies that serve
small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs).18 Worldpay added a chargeback guarantee offering this
year through a partnership with Signifyd.19
Worldpay’s strongest verticals include digital content, financial services, gambling and
gaming, retail, and B2B. Notable customers include Barnes & Noble, Hulu, Little Caesars,
Rent-A-Center and Twitch. Worldpay cites its global reach and the data gained from its high
volume of transactions among its most differentiating features.
Payment acceptance products: Access Worldpay, WPG
HQ location: Jacksonville, Florida
Other locations: More than 50 locations globally
Primary gateway model supported: Full stack
Uptime SLA commitments: 99.99%
PaaPS: Yes
Payouts: Yes, to cards and bank accounts
Market Recommendations
Application leaders responsible for digital commerce payment technologies should:

 Treat payments as strategic, not operational. Manage the payment experience as a

differentiator and an opportunity to increase profitability (see Quick Answer: What
Payment Acceptance Strategies Can Improve Digital Commerce Profitability?).
 Refine their global payment strategy by identifying the markets in which their
organization does most business and its most commonly accepted or desired payment
methods and services. Align vendor selection to the ability to support these markets,
methods and services, for the current state and the foreseeable future.
 Manage fraud detection processes to reduce losses without deterring good customers
(see How to Reduce Dispute and Chargeback Costs in Digital Commerce Fraud
Detection).
 Consolidate payment vendors, where feasible, to reduce costs. For many merchants,
this may mean consolidating the front-end customer experience, and the settlement
and reconciliation processes, while maintaining a wide assortment of vendors
supporting the back end. Most payment pricing is volume-based, so it makes financial
sense to send as many transactions (and, therefore, as much money) as possible
through as few vendors as practical. Consolidation may be achieved in many ways,
such as across:
o Channels — combining POS, mobile, online and other channels through a
single vendor to support an optimized omnichannel experience
o Geographies — as more payment vendors expand their global footprints,
greater opportunity exists to bring diverse countries and regions under a single
provider
o Payment methods — as more payment vendors support all the popular and
relevant payment methods for the geographies in which they compete
 o Functionality — as payment vendors expand their product suites to include
adjacent technologies, such as fraud detection, point-to-point encryption and
bill presentment

Acronym Key and Glossary Terms

Term Definition

3D Secure Payment authentication process defined and certified by EMVCo Terms

of Use.

Bundled pricing Generally presented as a percentage of the transaction value, plus a flat
fee per transaction, this type of pricing is fairly ubiquitous for small and
midsize merchants. This model benefits the organization in its
predictability, and may require less payment expertise in the back office
to manage the accounting and budget reconciliation for fees.

Pass-through pricing This pricing model provides the highest level of transparency, but also
requires the most back-office payment expertise to be managed
effectively. In this model, the actual interchange fees charged by the
issuing bank (or other account guardian) and the card association (or
other network) are passed through without markup. The PSP, gateway or
acquirer that owns the relationship with the merchant applies its own fees
discretely — most often a flat fee per transaction. It is also referred to as
Interchange+ or Interchange++.

Level 2 and Level 3 Additional data elements that can be submitted to the card networks to
data support B2B transactions and that may result in lower interchange rates.

Merchant of record A card brand classification that allows a merchant to share its credentials
with other submerchants and:Uses its name to identify the merchant
outletRepresents itself as selling the goods and services to the
cardholderProvides recourse in the event of disputesMaintains liability
for processing fees, chargebacks and legal compliance with card
association rules

Payments as a A service that enables nonpayment B2B businesses to offer payment

packaged service processing to their merchant customers, or “submerchants,” which
(PaaPS) enables them to accept payments from their end-buyer customers. Also
known as marketplace payment offerings, PaaPS products include three
 key components above and beyond normal merchant payment
processing:Automated onboarding of submerchants via APIsAutomated
funds distribution to submerchants, without requiring the merchant to
handle any fundsDetailed reporting to support all of the above for both
the platform or marketplace and the submerchants

Payouts Support for merchant-initiated transaction processing for any stand-alone

funds being sent out to a recipient via push to debit card, bank account or
wallet. Payouts in this context specifically exclude refunds of prior
purchase transactions.

Point-to-point A highly secure standard for physical POS transactions that may reduce
encryption (P2PE) merchant Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
validation efforts, if the solution has been certified by the PCI council.
To be recognized for P2PE in this research, the solution must appear here
in PCI Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) Solution, PCI Security
Standards Council (PCI SSC).

Secure interactive Indicates a payment vendor’s integration into an IVR or other call center
voice response solution. This is most often via a third party, in a manner (e.g., dual-tone
(IVR) call center multifrequency [DTMF] masking or voice masking) that insulates a
merchant from handling payment data that would invoke additional PCI-
DSS compliance considerations.

Seller of record A merchant of record that is recognized as a selling entity, not only by
the card brands, but also by local legal and tax authorities. A seller of
record bears the tax and legal liability for the merchant site.

Strong consumer Europe’s PSD2 regulation mandates that SCA consists of authenticating
authentication a customer during an online payment transaction using two out of the
(SCA) three traditional stalwarts of authentication (something you know,
something you have, something you are). Most merchants and digital
commerce payment vendors employ 3D Secure, in accordance with the
EMVCo standard, to meet SCA requirements.

Evidence
1
Global Ecommerce Forecast 2021 — Insider Intelligence Trends, Forecasts and Statistics,
Insider Intelligence.
2
A review was conducted of surveyed vendors’ reported and publicly available financial
results for 2020 through 2021. This analysis included some of the vendors named in this
report and none that were not included in this report.
3
Klarna Announces Full Year Financial Results 2021, Klarna.
4
Klarna Confirms $800M Raise as Valuation Drops 85% to $6.7B, TechCrunch.
5
PayPal: BNPL Volumes Surge 226% Year on Year, PYMNTS.
6
PayPal Stock Crash Wipes Out Over $50 Billion In Market Value After Company Lowers
Profit Outlook, Forbes.
7
BNPL Lender Affirm’s Shares Tumble After Gloomy Full-Year Revenue Forecast, Reuters.
8
Affirm Reports Fiscal Year 2022 Third Quarter Results, Affirm.
9
Durbin, Marshall Introduce Bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act, Senator Dick Durbin’s
website.
10
How Real-Time Payments are Going Global, Thunes.
11
Fed Plans 2023 Launch of Long-Anticipated Faster Payments System, WSJ.
12
How Real-Time Payments Are Going Global, Thunes.
13
FIS Unveils Worldpay for Platforms, Enabling Software Providers to Transform SMB
Commerce Experiences, FIS.
14
Fed Plans 2023 Launch of Long-Anticipated Faster Payments System, WSJ.
15
Adyen Launches Next Generation Open Banking Solution In Partnership With Tink,
Adyen.
16
FIS Open Banking Hub, FIS.
17
J.P. Morgan to Acquire Renovite Technologies, J.P. Morgan.
18
EMV Secure Remote Commerce, EMVCo.
19
FIS Launches Guaranteed Payments, PaymentsJournal.
Note 1: Representative Vendor Selection
Where applicable, the payment gateway and its related payment processing and acquiring
services must be available for use by merchants as a stand-alone product. It should be
separate and distinct from any fraud, commerce, subscription, billing or other platform that
may sit in front of it. All vendors included in this Market Guide adhere to the following
criteria:

 Provide a SaaS, API-based commerce payment gateway using their own IP that
supports real-time authorization of major debit and credit cards.
 The payment gateway and its related payment processing and acquiring services,
where applicable, must be available for use by enterprise merchants as a stand-alone
product. It must be separate and distinct from any fraud, commerce, subscription,
billing or other platform that may sit in front of it.
 Support real-time or batch settlement (deposits) of major credit and debit cards.
 Provide local acceptance for enterprise merchants in multiple countries in at least two
major regions — APAC, EU, EMEA, North America LATAM.
 Support alternative payment methods, such as digital wallets, in these same regions.
 Support local payment methods, such as bank transfers, direct debits and local card
schemes, in these same regions.
 Support hosted payment pages or payment data fields and provide tokenization, so as
to reduce the merchant’s PCI-compliance footprint.
 Primarily sell and market the solution directly to digital commerce merchants, rather
than to banks and fintechs.
Inclusion in this research was driven by Gartner client inquiry volume. As such, it reflects our
current coverage geographically. Vendors specific to the APAC region, LATAM and EMEA
markets are not part of our core coverage. Consequently, they are only covered where they
are part of a global solution that is EU- or North-American-centric. APAC includes payment
vendors such as Alibaba Group, AsiaPay, Eway, Razorpay and Tencent. LATAM includes
payment vendors such as allpago, Cielo and Redecard.