Routing logic

Payment routing is a critical component of our payment processing system that determines how payments are processed, which payment rails are used, and how failures are handled. Our routing system combines automated intelligence with configurable controls to optimize payment processing.

It automatically manages retries, rerouting, and error recovery, while also allowing you to specify routing preferences and override default behavior when needed. This section explains the intelligent mechanisms that ensure your payments are processed successfully and details the available controls for customizing routing preferences.

Key Components

Default Routing Logic

Our intelligent default routing logic prioritizes successful payment processing above all other considerations. When a payment is eligible for processing on multiple rails, our system automatically prioritizes:

1. Instant local clearing
2. Local batch clearing
3. Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS)
4. Correspondent bank routing

This default behavior applies universally across all payment types and currencies, ensuring optimal success rates and processing efficiency.

Currency and Scheme Specific Controls

For certain currencies and schemes, we provide additional granular routing controls that allow you to override the default routing logic on a per-payment basis. These controls enable you to specify preferred payment rails or restrict payments to specific networks only.

Further reading:

• Payment Routing Controls for EUR payments
• Automatic Retry & Rerouting for SEPA Instant payments

Payment Rail Exclusion at Client-level

You can request to have specific payment rails completely excluded from your account, preventing them from being used for any of your payments. When a payment rail is disabled at the client level, it will not be used even if a payment would otherwise be eligible for that rail.

This global configuration applies to every payment and requires setup through your Relationship Manager.

Identifying the Payment Rail Used

You can find information about which rail was used for executing your payment through multiple channels:

• GET single payments API endpoint
• GET single payment by ID API endpoint
• Webhook notifications
• Reconciliation report

The paymentRail property in these responses will contain one of the following values: