RS2 Research Reveals Massive Maturity Gap in Global Payments Orchestration

RS2 has issued a warning to the fintech sector that basic payment connectivity is being mistaken for true orchestration, leaving significant revenue and performance gains unrealised. For fintech professionals, the data highlights a critical maturity gap where manual intervention still dominates, despite the availability of automated routing and real-time intelligence.

What was announced

RS2 released a white paper titled The Orchestration Imperative: Turning Payment Complexity into Strategic Advantage, which identifies a significant disconnect between current business practices and the potential of modern payment technology. While 89% of surveyed organisations have implemented basic payment failover or redundancy, only 41% have moved to automated dynamic routing. Even more telling is that only 22% of businesses continuously update their routing logic, and a mere 7% maintain full control over payment tokens. Only 3% of respondents described adding a new payment rail as "very easy."

The research reveals that 55% of organisations still make routing decisions manually, while 68% depend on manual intervention to switch providers during a system outage. RS2 identifies five core capabilities that distinguish mature payment orchestration: connect, control, optimise, protect, and adapt. These allow for a consistent integration layer across multiple providers, central application of commercial rules, and the ability to introduce new payment rails without repeatedly rebuilding core infrastructure.

The financial stakes of this maturity gap are high. According to the research, 78% of companies possessing all five orchestration capabilities reported transaction-completion improvements of at least 2%. In contrast, only 10% of organisations with three or four of these capabilities saw similar gains. For high-volume merchants, these percentage points represent substantial revenue that is currently lost to avoidable declines and inefficient routing across increasingly complex global environments.

"Connecting to multiple payment providers is no longer the difficult part. The question is what you can do once those connections exist. Can every transaction be routed according to performance, cost and risk? Can you automatically move traffic when a provider fails? Can you introduce a new payment method or acquirer without rebuilding the underlying infrastructure? And, crucially, can you make those decisions using real-time intelligence rather than manual intervention? That is where orchestration moves from being an integration exercise to becoming a strategic capability."

Radi El Haj, Group Chief Executive Officer at RS2.

The companies involved

RS2 is a Tier-1 global provider of cloud-native payment processing infrastructure and payment technology solutions. The company focuses on delivering high-performance platforms that allow financial institutions, payment service providers (PSPs), and merchants to manage complex payment ecosystems. As a provider of core infrastructure, RS2 occupies a critical position in the market, facilitating the movement of transactions across diverse geographies and regulatory environments.

The company’s technology is designed to handle the increasing complexity of the global payments landscape, which now includes a vast array of payment methods, gateways, acquirers, and fraud services. By providing a unified integration layer, RS2 enables its clients to move beyond simple connectivity. This is particularly relevant for large-scale merchants who are increasingly adopting multi-acquirer models to ensure resilience and negotiate better commercial terms. Under the leadership of Group Chief Executive Officer Radi El Haj, the firm continues to advocate for the transition from manual, reactive payment management to automated, intelligent orchestration that can adapt to real-time market changes and consumer behaviour.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely followed the evolution of payment orchestration and the expansion of global processing networks. In September 2026, we reported that RS2 Partners With PXP to Power European Acquiring Across 30+ Markets, a move that significantly extended the company's footprint across the continent. This focus on cross-border efficiency mirrors broader industry trends, such as when the ECB and Brazil Explore TIPS-Pix Link: A New Era for Cross-Border Instant Payments. Additionally, the demand for sophisticated routing was highlighted when Inter Pag Taps ACI Worldwide to Scale Intelligent Payments Orchestration in Brazil, demonstrating that the shift toward intelligent orchestration is a global phenomenon affecting emerging and established markets alike.

What this means

The industry is reaching a tipping point where "having a connection" is no longer a competitive advantage, but a baseline requirement. The fact that over half of businesses still rely on manual routing suggests a massive operational vulnerability and a failure to capitalise on available data. As payment methods proliferate and consumer expectations for "invisible" payments rise, the pressure is mounting on legacy PSPs and banks to provide more than just a pipe for data. The market is likely to see a widening performance gap between those who treat payments as a utility and those who treat it as a data-driven strategic asset. The real question for the sector is how quickly legacy systems can be decoupled to allow for this level of dynamic control without compromising security.