TNS adds smart routing to Payment Orchestration platform

Transaction Network Services has added smart routing to its Payment Orchestration platform, targeting businesses that handle unattended and high-volume payments.

The new routing function is aimed at operators in sectors including parking, electric vehicle charging, transport, vending and retail. It directs transactions according to business rules, provider availability and performance signals.

Payment approval rates and processing costs can vary by issuer, acquirer, card type, payment method, transaction channel and geography. For businesses processing large volumes of payments across multiple markets, small shifts in acceptance rates or transaction costs can have a material commercial effect.

The smart routing process runs continuously and is designed to reduce manual oversight. The system assesses each transaction against configurable criteria and routes it along the path that best matches an operator's priorities.

Operational focus

The enhancement sits within the broader Payment Orchestration platform, which is designed to reduce the operational burden of managing payment performance across providers, channels and markets. The platform also supports the company's Android-based unattended terminal range and Bring Your Own App offering.

Alongside routing, the TNSPay Merchant Portal gives businesses visibility into payment performance across providers, channels and locations. It includes AI-assisted insights to help operators identify trends, track approval and decline patterns, and analyse payment data through dashboards, scheduled reports and natural language queries.

Michael Johnson, the Global Managing Director, TNS Payments Market, said that unattended payment settings leave little room to recover lost sales after a failed transaction.

"Every failed transaction in an unattended environment represents lost revenue with no opportunity for recovery," Johnson said.

"TNS's optimal routing technology gives operators the intelligence to maximise the value of every payment by responding automatically to changing transaction conditions, helping to improve revenue without increasing operational complexity," he added.

Routing logic

The technology is built to respond to changing transaction conditions in real time across a large number of parameters. This is intended to give operators more control over routing strategy without requiring staff to intervene in individual transaction decisions.

David Hore, Senior Director, Payments Product Portfolio at TNS Payments Market, said the system is designed to work at scale.

"Every payment has an optimal path, but identifying and acting on that path in real time across hundreds of parameters is not something operators should have to manage themselves," Hore said.

"TNS Payment Orchestration uses smart routing to apply those parameters at scale, giving operators greater control over their routing strategy while removing the need to make individual transaction decisions manually," he added.

TNS provides payment and network services to more than 2,800 organisations in over 50 countries, according to the company. Its portfolio includes unattended and in-store payment terminals, online payment products, network connectivity and payment orchestration services.