Every business that scales eventually faces a critical decision about its payment infrastructure. The path that worked when processing a few thousand dollars a month becomes strained under the weight of millions. New markets demand new payment methods. Customer expectations rise. Fraud tactics evolve. And somewhere along the way, the question emerges: should we build our own payment orchestration layer, or buy a dedicated solution?
This is one of the most consequential technology decisions a growing business can make. It shapes not only your payment performance but your engineering roadmap, your operational costs, and your ability to adapt to future changes. There is no single right answer for every company. The choice depends on your specific context, resources, and strategic priorities. This guide will walk through the factors you need to consider, the tradeoffs involved, and the questions to ask before making a decision.
Before comparing options, it helps to clearly define what each approach entails.
Building in-house means developing your own payment orchestration layer. This involves creating a unified API that connects to multiple payment service providers, building routing logic to direct transactions, implementing failover mechanisms, developing a tokenization vault, and creating the reporting and analytics tools needed to monitor performance. It also means maintaining all of this infrastructure over time, updating integrations as providers change their APIs, and ensuring continued compliance with security standards like PCI DSS.
Using a payment orchestration platform means subscribing to a dedicated solution that provides these capabilities out of the box. Your developers integrate once with the platform’s API, and the platform handles all connections to underlying payment providers, routing logic, tokenization, and reporting. The platform provider maintains the integrations, manages security compliance, and continuously updates the system as the payment landscape evolves.
At first glance, building in-house might seem like the more flexible and cost-effective option, especially for companies with strong engineering teams. But the reality is more complex. The total cost of ownership for a custom-built solution often exceeds expectations, and the opportunity cost of diverting engineering resources from your core product can be substantial.
The core function of any orchestration layer is intelligent routing and unified data management. To understand exactly how these capabilities translate into better performance, read our detailed guide on payment orchestration and AI-driven payments, which explores how modern systems optimize transactions in real time.
There are legitimate reasons why some companies choose to build their own payment orchestration layer. Understanding these helps clarify when the build approach makes sense.
Complete control over the codebase: When you build your own system, every line of code is yours. You decide exactly how routing logic works, how data is stored, and how the system evolves. For companies with highly specialized needs that no off-the-shelf solution can accommodate, this level of control is essential. You are not limited by another company’s product roadmap or feature priorities.
No recurring software fees: Building in-house eliminates the per-transaction or monthly subscription costs of a third-party platform. For businesses processing enormous volumes, these fees can add up. If your engineering costs are already sunk, the marginal cost of building and maintaining a payment layer may compare favorably to ongoing platform fees.
Deep integration with internal systems: A custom-built solution can be tightly coupled with your existing architecture in ways that a third-party platform cannot. If your payment needs are deeply intertwined with proprietary systems or unique business logic, building internally may be the only way to achieve seamless integration.
Perception of competitive advantage: Some companies view payments as a core differentiator. They believe that unique payment capabilities can set them apart from competitors and want complete ownership of that differentiation. For these businesses, building in-house feels like protecting intellectual property.
However, these benefits come with significant caveats. Control means responsibility. Eliminating software fees means absorbing development and maintenance costs. Deep integration means carrying that integration burden forever. And competitive advantage only matters if your payment capabilities are truly unique and valued by customers, which is rarely the case.
The decision to build often focuses on visible costs like developer salaries and server expenses. The hidden costs are what catch companies by surprise.
Ongoing maintenance burden: Payment providers change their APIs regularly. New security requirements emerge. Card networks update their specifications. Compliance standards evolve. Every change requires engineering time to update your custom code. This is not a one-time project but a permanent operational cost that grows with the number of providers you support.
Opportunity cost of engineering talent: Every hour your engineers spend building and maintaining payment infrastructure is an hour they cannot spend on your core product. For most businesses, payments are a utility, not a differentiator. Investing engineering resources in utilities means slowing down innovation on what actually makes your business unique.
Compliance complexity: Handling payment data comes with serious compliance obligations. PCI DSS requirements dictate how data must be stored, transmitted, and protected. Building a compliant tokenization vault requires deep security expertise. Mistakes can lead to data breaches, fines, and lost customer trust. A dedicated platform spreads these compliance costs across many customers, making them more affordable for each.
Feature gaps that emerge over time: Your in-house system will do what you built it to do. But the payment landscape evolves rapidly. New payment methods appear. New optimization techniques emerge. New fraud tools become available. Keeping pace with these changes requires continuous investment. Most companies find that their internal system gradually falls behind what modern platforms offer.
Scaling challenges: As your transaction volume grows, your in-house system must scale accordingly. This means designing for high availability, building redundancy across regions, and handling traffic spikes during peak periods. These are non-trivial engineering challenges that require specialized expertise.
For most businesses, a dedicated payment orchestration platform offers compelling advantages over building in-house.
Faster time to market: Integrating with a platform takes weeks, not months or years. Your developers complete a single integration, and instantly gain access to dozens or hundreds of payment providers. New providers can be added through configuration, not code. This speed matters when you are entering new markets or responding to competitive pressure.
Lower total cost of ownership: While platforms charge fees, these are often lower than the fully loaded cost of an internal team building and maintaining equivalent functionality. The math becomes even clearer when you factor in the opportunity cost of engineering time. Paying a platform fee is often cheaper than paying developers to build and maintain the same capabilities.
Access to specialized expertise: Payment orchestration is what platforms do every day. They see how hundreds of merchants route transactions. They track provider performance across industries and regions. They know which routing strategies work and which fail. This collective intelligence is built into the platform, giving you benefits you could not replicate internally without similar scale.
Continuous innovation: Platforms are incentivized to keep their offerings current. When new payment methods gain traction, platforms add them. When new optimization techniques emerge, platforms implement them. When compliance requirements change, platforms update their systems. You benefit from this innovation without any development work on your end.
Reduced compliance burden: By using a platform’s tokenization and secure data handling, you can significantly reduce your PCI DSS scope. The platform handles the most sensitive parts of payment processing, simplifying your compliance obligations and reducing risk.
Built-in redundancy and failover: Professional platforms are designed for high availability. They operate across multiple data centers, monitor provider performance continuously, and automatically fail over when issues arise. Replicating this level of operational maturity internally requires significant investment.
The financial comparison between building and buying depends heavily on your specific situation, but a general framework helps clarify the tradeoffs.
Build costs include:
Buy costs include:
For a business just starting to scale, the buy option almost always makes more financial sense. The upfront investment required to build a robust orchestration layer is substantial, and the ongoing maintenance costs are permanent. As volume grows, the per-transaction fees of a platform may eventually make build economics more attractive, but this crossover point is higher than most companies estimate because they underestimate maintenance costs.
A useful exercise is to project your costs over a three to five year horizon under both scenarios, including realistic estimates for engineering time and maintenance burden. Most companies find that buy remains cheaper far longer than they expected.
While economics matter, they are not the only factor. Several strategic considerations should influence your decision.
Speed of adaptation: Markets move quickly. A new payment method emerges in a key region. A competitor launches a smoother checkout experience. A regulatory change requires immediate action. With a platform, you adapt through configuration. With a custom build, you adapt through development cycles. The platform gives you speed.
Risk management: When you build your own system, you assume all the risk. If a provider integration breaks, your engineers fix it. If a security vulnerability emerges, your team patches it. If a compliance requirement changes, your organization addresses it. A platform shares these risks across its customer base, making them more manageable for each individual business.
Focus on customer experience: Your customers do not care whether you built your payment orchestration layer or bought it. They care about whether their payment works smoothly. By using a platform, you free your team to focus on the customer experience improvements that actually differentiate you, rather than the plumbing behind them.
The pace of change in payments is accelerating. Making the right infrastructure choice today means positioning yourself for what comes next. To understand the forces shaping the industry, explore our analysis of the top payment challenges for 2026 and how businesses are preparing.
For businesses currently using a custom-built solution, switching to a platform is not an all-or-nothing decision. Many companies adopt a hybrid approach, using a platform for new markets or new payment methods while maintaining their existing system for legacy traffic. This allows gradual migration without disrupting current operations.
The key is to ensure that your platform choice supports this hybrid model. Some platforms allow you to start with a single use case and expand over time, giving you flexibility in how you transition.
Can a platform really match the flexibility of a custom build?
Modern platforms are designed for flexibility. They offer configurable routing rules, customizable checkout experiences, and APIs that give you control over most aspects of payment processing. For the vast majority of use cases, they provide all the flexibility most businesses need.
What about data ownership and portability?
Reputable platforms give you full ownership of your data and provide tools to export it. You should always verify a platform’s data policies before committing, but data lock-in is not an inherent feature of platforms.
How long does integration take?
A typical integration with a payment orchestration platform takes weeks, not months. Your developers complete a single API integration, and the platform handles connections to all underlying providers. Ongoing changes require configuration, not code.
What happens if the platform goes down?
Professional platforms are built for high availability with redundancy across providers, data centers, and sometimes regions. They also support failover to backup providers automatically. Your business continuity is part of their value proposition.
The decision between building your own payment orchestration layer and using a dedicated platform is one of the most important infrastructure choices you will make. It affects your engineering roadmap, your operational costs, your risk profile, and your ability to adapt to change.
For most businesses, the advantages of a platform far outweigh the benefits of building in-house. Faster time to market, lower total cost, reduced compliance burden, and continuous innovation create a compelling case. The resources saved can be redirected toward the customer experiences and product features that truly differentiate your business.
But the right answer depends on your specific context. The key is making a deliberate, informed decision based on a clear understanding of your needs, your resources, and your strategic priorities. Take the time to evaluate both options thoroughly. Your payment infrastructure is too important to leave to chance.
Ready to explore how a payment orchestration platform can transform your payment operations without diverting your engineering team from your core product? Book a demo today to see the difference a dedicated solution can make.
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