Your business customers already take payments from their own customers through the services you provide: over the phone, in the contact centre, through IVR and online. Every one of those transactions earns revenue for a payment provider. With a branded payment service, some of that revenue could be yours.
On paper, launching that service can look like a straightforward development project.
You already have the business customers, brand, digital channels and technical team. Why not build the payment capability yourself?
Behind every transaction sits gateway connectivity, acquirers, PCI DSS compliance, tokenisation, recurring payments, authentication, routing, reporting and support for different payment methods.
Each component needs to work reliably with the others. And once you’ve built it, you need to keep it working as payment technology, customer expectations and compliance requirements change.
For CTOs, Product and Commercial leaders, the real question isn’t whether you can build it. It’s whether that’s where you want to invest your development resources, as well as those needed to manage the dependency and maintenance.
What does it take to build a branded payment service?
Start with connectivity. Your payment service needs to communicate with gateways and acquirers reliably. If you want to work with several providers, your team needs to build, test and maintain those integrations.
Then there’s PCI DSS. If your systems handle cardholder data, payment security needs to form part of your architecture from the start. You need to consider where payment information enters your environment, which systems can access it and how you keep that environment secure.
Recurring payments introduce another requirement. Your business customers may need to take subscriptions, instalments, account balances or repeat payments. That means considering how card details can be tokenised and used securely for future transactions.
You’ll also need authentication, reporting and support for the payment methods cardholders want to use.
And if you’re working with multiple acquirers, how will you decide where each transaction should go?
None of these problems is impossible to solve. Together, however, they turn a payment feature into a substantial technology product, and one your specialists will be maintaining for years. The real question is whether that’s the best use of their time.
The ongoing cost of building payment infrastructure
Getting to launch is only the first part of the investment.
Payment infrastructure doesn’t stand still.
APIs change. New payment methods emerge. Security requirements evolve. Acquirers update their services. Cardholders expect new ways to pay. Your business might also want to add another channel or change how payments are routed.
Every change creates another requirement for your development roadmap.
You also need to consider resilience. What happens if a payment route isn’t performing as expected? Can you move transactions elsewhere without building another integration? Can you introduce a new acquirer without changing the checkout experience for your business customers?
The cost of building payments isn’t just the initial project. It’s the technical resource required to maintain, secure and develop the service over the long term.
White-label payments: an alternative to building from scratch
Partnering changes the equation.
You don’t have to choose between owning the relationship with your business customers and using established payment infrastructure. You can put your own brand and customer journey over technology that’s already built.
This model is already being used by Encoded’s telco partners. Rather than referring their business customers elsewhere for payment services, they can offer payments under their own brand while Encoded provides the infrastructure behind the scenes.
For the telco, there’s a commercial opportunity too. They retain the customer relationship and can generate revenue from the payment services their business customers use, through an agreed commercial model with Encoded.
Encoded’s Payment Gateway provides a single API that integrates with more than 30 acquirers and gateways. It also supports Hosted Payment Pages, Hosted Payment Fields, tokenisation, dynamic routing and multiple payment methods.
Hosted Payment Fields are a good example of how this approach works. They allow your business customers to embed secure payment fields within their own website or application. Their customers stay within that branded checkout, while card data is processed through Encoded’s infrastructure. Because card data never touches your systems or theirs, PCI DSS scope is significantly reduced for both, and Encoded is a Level 1 PCI DSS certified service provider. Because card data never touches your systems, your PCI DSS scope is significantly reduced, and Encoded is a Level 1 PCI DSS certified service provider.
For a telco, that means a new revenue stream without a new development programme. Your Product and Development teams can focus on the proposition your business customers actually see and use. Instead of spending time recreating the payment technology underneath it, they can launch services faster, test new offerings, improve customer journeys and keep developing the proposition as their needs change.
How payment orchestration supports a branded payment service
Getting a payment service live is one challenge. Making sure it can adapt as your business customers’ needs change is another.
A business customer might start with card payments, then want to add a digital wallet, work with another acquirer or introduce payments through a new channel. Supporting each requirement separately can quickly add complexity.
Payment orchestration gives telcos a central way to manage those changes. Different acquirers, gateways and payment methods can sit behind the same proposition, giving you more freedom to adapt without creating a separate payment setup every time.
It can also help improve how transactions are processed. Payments can be routed according to factors such as cost, success rates and processing times, with different routes available when requirements change.
For Product teams, that means more freedom to test new services, respond to your business customers’ requirements and expand the payment proposition without having to rethink the underlying infrastructure each time.
Build for the payment journeys that come next
The build or partner decision isn’t only about supporting the payment journeys cardholders use today. Your payment infrastructure also needs to adapt as those journeys change.
Contact centre payments are one example. Many of your business customers already take card payments from their customers over the phone. Encoded’s IVR, agent-assisted and PayByLink solutions let them do that securely, keeping card details away from their agents and call recordings, and give you another payment service to offer under your own brand.
AI is another. As your business customers introduce AI assistants, bots and conversational services, their customers may expect to do more within those interactions, including making a payment.
That doesn’t mean the AI application itself needs to handle sensitive payment information. A secure payment layer can sit behind the experience, allowing the cardholder to move from conversation to payment while keeping the payment process separate.
It’s a good example of why flexibility matters. New channels and customer experiences will continue to emerge, and building the underlying payment technology yourself means taking responsibility for adapting it each time.
Working with a payment partner gives Product teams more freedom to focus on developing those customer experiences, while the payment infrastructure underneath them evolves to support new ways to pay.
Build or partner: where do you want to invest?
Building payment infrastructure yourself gives you control. It also means taking responsibility for developing, maintaining and adapting everything behind the customer journey.
Partnering changes where you invest that time and expertise.
Instead of rebuilding payment infrastructure that already exists, your Product and Development teams can focus on what differentiates your proposition: creating better customer journeys, launching new services faster and responding to what your business customers need next.
That distinction matters as payment journeys continue to change. The question isn’t simply whether you can build the technology yourself. It’s whether that’s where your resources will create the most value.
So before putting another payment project onto the development roadmap, ask a more useful question:
Which parts of our branded payment service are actually worth building ourselves?
Encoded helps telcos launch payment services under their own brand, and earn revenue from payments they already help their business customers take, without having to build and maintain the underlying payment infrastructure from scratch.
Explore how telcos can earn revenue from payments? Â Talk to Encoded.
