Your Own Payment Gateway: Is it the Right Thing for You?

Written by

James Davis

Written by James Davis

Senior Technical Writer at United Thinkers

Author of the Paylosophy blog, a veteran writer, and a stock analyst with extensive knowledge and experience in the financial services industry that allows me to cover the latest payment industry news, developments, and insights. Read more

Reviewed by

Kathrine Pensatori

Reviewed by Kathrine Pensatori

Product Specialist at United Thinkers

Product specialist with more than 10 years of experience in the Payment Processing Industry. I help payment facilitators and PSPs solve their various payment processing issues. Read more

What having your own payment gateway means to you? An image-booster? More control over payment processing? Reduction of payment processing costs? Foundation for a new payment ecosystem?

Here are 3 cases when owning a payment gateway makes sense:

For image purposes, you want your customers to perceive you as a payment service provider. In this case, you do not really need to own a payment gateway. You can work out a white-label offering so that somebody else’s gateway is going to be presented as your own. This white-labeling concerns all e-mails and merchant statements. It will allow you to create an image of an ultimate service provider.
You want to get more control over the process and reduce processing cost. In this case, depending on your volume, you might find a new acquiring partner and connect to it using either in-house or white-label payment gateway.
You want to upgrade your existing payment infrastructure. In this case, you need some new gateway solution to serve as a foundation for your operations. For example, you can license an open-source payment gateway product (such as UniPay Gateway). Licensing a ready-made product is, usually, much cheaper than developing your own payment gateway software from scratch. This will allow you to have a payment gateway of your own. You will truly become a full-fledged gateway provider in your own right. However, such a strategy makes sense only under large processing volumes.

To summarize

In case, you do not have the necessary budget or have not yet achieved sufficient processing volumes, then existing service providers, such as Stripe or Square, might be the best gateway solutions for you. If you need an image boost, you might also go with some flavor of a white label solution. If you feel confident enough and seriously consider becoming a payment gateway provider, then you are welcome to explore United Thinkers’ UniPay Gateway platform and request demo of our payment technology. It might be just the solution you are looking for.