First featured exclusively in iGaming News.
With players having more choice than ever before, iGaming operators are seeking greater control over their payment processes to give them every competitive edge possible to attract and retain users. This desire is twofold: ensuring the payment stack aligns with core business goals and having the flexibility to personalise the customer journey in response to ever-changing market demands. To achieve this, many have debated the timeless question of “build versus buy,” with some venturing down the long and difficult path of creating their own in-house orchestration technology.
However, this path is often fraught with unforeseen challenges and pain points that third-party solutions are designed to solve. Worse still, significant investments in time and resources can be rendered obsolete as market developments and technological advancements leave bespoke systems behind. For mid-tier operators, in particular, the dream of a perfectly tailored in-house solution can quickly become a costly mistake. And orchestration is no longer just about control, but about smart, scalable, and future-proofed growth. So why should operators, especially those looking to scale, look to buy their orchestration solutions from third parties instead of building their own?
The true power of payment orchestration
Before answering this question, it’s crucial to understand what modern orchestration truly represents. These solutions are not merely tools for centralising and automating payment workflows; they are the strategic centre of the entire payment ecosystem. For an operator, this means streamlining complex processes, significantly reducing operational costs, and optimising Payment Service Provider (PSP) routing to enhance the customer experience. The real-time, consolidated analytics available through these platforms empower operators to make data-driven UX decisions that directly increase transaction success rates.
Some providers offer elements of orchestration in isolation – for example, cashier or routing tools that address only part of the payment flow. However, fragmented systems like these can create operational inefficiencies, slow down performance, and add unnecessary friction for players. True orchestration brings every capability together under one roof, ensuring each component works in harmony. By consolidating cashier management, PSP connectivity, fraud prevention, compliance, and reporting into a single intelligent layer, operators gain complete visibility and control over their payment infrastructure. This unified approach not only improves performance and approval rates but also delivers the seamless experience players increasingly expect. One of the key themes emerging in the industry is the need for a resilient, connected tech stack, and orchestration provides exactly that.
While typical orchestrators provide smart routing and basic reporting, solutions built specifically for the iGaming industry offer a much deeper set of features designed for the market’s complexity. To meet the unique demands of this sector, these platforms combine a customisable cashier, integrations that grow with business needs, payment stack optimisation, and granular analytics – all with the singular purpose of increasing transaction success.
Trust plays a far greater role in iGaming payments than in most other industries. Players aren’t simply buying a product; they’re handing over funds in anticipation of an experience. That means every stage of the cashier journey must feel secure, seamless and familiar. The ability to customise this experience – not just to reflect brand identity but also to align with individual player behaviour and preferences – helps build that trust and encourage repeat engagement. This is being seen in reality, with operators using Paysecure’s orchestration solutions seeing a rise of up to 7% in iGaming transaction approvals.
This capability is also a powerful democratising force. For too long, the industry’s largest operators have been able to outspend their competition on analytics and data to customise every facet of the user experience. Now, cost-effective and revenue-sharing models from third-party orchestrators give smaller and mid-sized firms access to the same powerful technology, levelling the playing field and providing them with the tools to compete with the market giants.
The hidden costs and limitations of an in-house build
On the surface, building an orchestration platform in-house seems attractive. It promises total control and a solution designed for an operator’s exact needs. Gaining the benefits of a unified system over a fractured collection of individual processes is undeniably more efficient. However, the reality of the “build” approach involves significant and often underestimated costs that extend far beyond the initial development.
These solutions are incredibly expensive. They demand a significant upfront and ongoing investment in hardware, data storage, cooling, and the specialist expertise required to both build and maintain the technology. Infrastructure and data management, in particular, can become an expense that operators often fail to predict accurately.
The time investment is another critical, and often overlooked, barrier to entry. The iGaming market moves at a phenomenal pace. A solution designed to meet today’s goals may be unsuitable by the time it’s finally ready for deployment, as the operator may find themselves in a completely different market to that they built their solution for. By the time an in-house build is complete, it may already be out of date. Pre-built integrations, by contrast, allow operators to seize new market opportunities immediately, drastically reducing the time and resources needed to deploy new payment solutions and helping them stay nimble.
Furthermore, there is the data blind spot. A core function of orchestration is to serve as a central data hub that not only surfaces real-time information but provides the tools to act on it. Third-party orchestration platforms provide unprecedented depths of data and analytics, leveraging information from every stage of the payment process. An in-house solution may not collect crucial data points simply because it lacks deep integration with the full spectrum of PSPs, payment methods, and other third-party technology providers. This is a widespread issue; data from Paysafe shows that over 30% of e-commerce merchant finance teams don’t receive detailed payments data, leaving them without the key insights needed for informed decision-making. In-house solutions risk capturing an incomplete picture, missing the wealth of analytics required to drive real growth.
Customisable third-party solutions: The smart operator’s choice
Choosing to “buy” doesn’t mean settling for a one-size-fits-all product. The best third-party orchestration solutions are modular, customisable, and built with the operator’s customers at the centre of everything. This approach offers the best of both worlds: the speed and power of a ready-made platform combined with the flexibility to tailor it to specific needs.
From day one, a bought-in solution gives an operator access to best-in-class technology, immediately putting them on par with the world’s largest iGaming companies. For fast-growth operators, this is a game-changer. They can rapidly level up their customer’s payment journey using insights delivered by the orchestration platform. Because these operators are often more nimble, they can utilise these learnings faster than larger, slower-moving organisations.
The real power lies in leveraging real-time, aggregated data to act on information as it happens. Using modular tools like Paysecure’s dynamic cashier, operators can test, learn, and implement improvements in a SandBox mode at speed and scale, directly maximising revenue. The analytics at the cashier stage are invaluable, showing where users abandon the process, how long they spend on each step, and how they interact with elements like promotional banners before depositing. This data can then be used to create highly specific customer segments, allowing operators to build unique journeys that reward, for example, VIP customers, while mitigating risks associated with new players.
All these components come together in a carefully curated, smart routing engine that uses real-time insights to select the most effective payment paths. By combining connectivity, performance data and behavioural analytics, operators can ensure every transaction follows the optimal route – maximising approval rates, minimising friction, and strengthening player confidence from deposit to payout.
Finally, third-party orchestrators provide access to vast, pre-existing networks of PSPs and payment providers. This allows operators to serve diverse markets, such as offering MobilePay in Denmark or iDEAL in the Netherlands, through a single integration, bypassing a hugely time-consuming process. At Paysecure, we also help facilitate strong commercial relationships between operators and payment gateways, a significant advantage for scaling businesses. This approach future-proofs an operator’s payment system by leveraging an ever-growing list of suppliers.
The verdict: Why buying is the new building
So, should you build or buy? While many operators understand the benefits of orchestration, they have historically been concerned about cost, data ownership, and the perceived limitations of third-party solutions. However, with the arrival of next-generation ecosystems like Paysecure’s, these concerns have been addressed once and for all, marking a significant shift in the market.
With affordable, highly scalable, and fully integrated technologies now readily available, the case for adopting third-party orchestrated solutions has never been stronger, especially for operators with ambitions to scale quickly. As the iGaming world becomes more sophisticated and globalised, in-house solutions will struggle to keep pace, making bought-in technology the only viable long-term option. Ultimately, the speed of adoption of orchestration and third-party ecosystems will be what separates successful operators from unsuccessful ones.
