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Core concepts

Payment service provider (PSP)

A provider that bundles gateway, acquiring, and often risk and reporting into a single payments platform.

When this matters
  • You are doing a provider selection or RFP.
  • You are deciding whether to multi-home across PSPs versus standardising on one.
  • You are planning an architectural shift toward orchestration.
Operator tips
  • Assess PSPs on roadmap fit and operator tooling, not just API shape.
  • Ask for metrics and tooling that let you distinguish PSP issues from issuer behaviour.
  • Clarify data portability and export formats up front to reduce lock-in risk.
How to use this term

Use this definition when you are aligning stakeholders across product, engineering, finance, and operations. Shared vocabulary makes it much easier to argue about tradeoffs without talking past each other.

For deeper context, pair this term with the free assessment and providers/methods directories. They give you a concrete view of how concepts show up in real stacks.