Access to richer payments performance data across all channels was the payments orchestration benefit that retail payments professionals selected most often, at 47%, according to new research from ACI Worldwide, an original innovator in global payments technology. Respondents were able to pick up to three benefits from nine options, and reduced payment-processing cost through competitive routing was selected least often, at 19%.

The research was commissioned and funded by ACI and designed and fielded by Retail Systems. The findings are published in the report The Revenue Hidden in Plain Sight: Closing the Retail Payments Optimization Gap.

Payments orchestration is a platform that connects and manages a retailer’s payment ecosystem. It can provide the means for payments optimization, including the ability to route transactions, retry declined payments, and bring performance data from multiple providers together.

The findings highlight a central tension: retailers rank richer payments data as the top benefit of payments orchestration, yet 60% still measure payments optimization by the cost of processing.

Key findings at a glance

• Data outranks routing. Access to richer payments performance data across all channels was the most-selected orchestration benefit at 47%, followed by an improved ability to retry declined transactions without customer friction at 44%. Reduced payment-processing cost through competitive routing was selected least often, at 19%.
• Cost-centric scorecards. The cost of payment processing is how 60% measure the success of payments optimization. Revenue directly attributed to payments performance gains is used by 37%, and 9% have no defined metrics at all.
• Limited board visibility. Payments optimization is a top-tier strategic priority with board-level visibility at 25% of respondents’ organizations, leaving 75% that did not report board-level visibility for it.
• What retailers plan next. Over the next 12 months, 61% plan to engage external expertise or a managed optimization program, 57% plan to implement or expand a payments orchestration solution, and 30% plan to adopt AI or machine learning tools for payments optimization.
• A visibility gap. Only 30% place their payments performance at or above market benchmarks, and 12% say they do not have enough visibility to assess it accurately.

What retailers want from payments orchestration

Asked which benefits of payments orchestration are most relevant to their business, respondents could select up to three of nine options. Access to richer payments performance data across all channels was selected most often, by 47%, followed by an improved ability to retry declined transactions without customer friction, at 44%, and greater flexibility to expand into new markets or geographies, at 36%. Routing-led benefits ranked lowest: the ability to route transactions across multiple acquirers — the banks and payment processors that accept card payments on a merchant’s behalf — to improve approval rates was selected by 26%, and reduced payment-processing cost through competitive routing by 19%.

How payments optimization is measured

Respondents could select all measures that apply. The cost of payment processing was the most common measure of success, cited by 60%, followed by customer conversion and basket completion rates at 58% and reductions in fraud and chargeback rates at 51%. Revenue directly attributed to payments performance gains was cited by 37%, and 9% said they have no defined metrics for payments optimization success. The mix leaves 63% of organizations without a direct revenue measure of payments performance — the “revenue hidden in plain sight” of the report’s title.

Board-level visibility and planned changes

Payments optimization is a top-tier strategic priority with board-level visibility at 25% of respondents’ organizations, leaving 75% that did not report board-level visibility for it.

Over the next 12 months, 61% plan to engage external expertise or a managed optimization program, 57% plan to implement or expand a payments orchestration solution, and 30% plan to adopt AI or machine learning tools for payments optimization. Just 7% do not anticipate significant changes to their current approach. Respondents could select up to three planned actions, and these figures reflect stated intent rather than commitments already made. The findings set the test for those intentions: whether adoption is accompanied by wider use of revenue-based success metrics, today applied by just 37%.

Performance visibility and barriers

Only 30% of respondents placed their payments performance at or above market benchmarks, and 20% described it as adequate but below potential. A further 22% reported significant performance gaps they lack the resources to address, 15% reported underperformance relative to the market, and 12% said they do not have enough visibility to assess performance accurately.

Asked to select up to three barriers to improving payments performance, respondents pointed most often to internal resource or budget constraints, cited by 55%, followed by the difficulty of balancing fraud prevention against false declines — legitimate transactions mistakenly rejected by fraud controls — at 35%, and competing internal priorities slowing decision-making, at 34%. Lack of clear ownership of payments optimization was cited by 32%, a figure that sits alongside the finding that 75% of respondents’ organizations give payments optimization no board-level visibility.

A cost-centric scorecard

“Payments teams are often asked to make a revenue case with a cost-centric scorecard,” said Dan Coates, Director, In-Store and Omnichannel at ACI Worldwide. “The question is how approval rates, declines and retries affect completed sales. Processing cost matters, but on its own it is only part of the picture, and in my experience the teams that can also show what payments performance contributes are the ones that get the investment.”