A payment processor is the company that handles the technical execution of a payment transaction. When a customer taps their card or submits their details online, it is the processor that routes the transaction data through the card network to the issuing bank, receives the authorisation response, and later facilitates the settlement of funds from the issuing bank to the acquiring bank and ultimately to the merchant’s account. Processors operate the rails on which electronic payments travel: they are the infrastructure behind the scenes of every card transaction.
There are two main categories: front-end processors and back-end processors. Front-end processors connect to card networks on behalf of acquiring banks and handle the real-time authorisation of transactions. Back-end processors handle settlement, the batch process of moving approved funds between banks at the end of each business day. Many large payment companies act as both front-end and back-end processors, but the distinction matters because authorisation speed and settlement timing are affected by different parts of the chain. A processor with fast authorisation but slow settlement still creates cash flow challenges for merchants.
Processor performance varies meaningfully across geographies, card types, and industries. A processor with strong domestic routing in the US may have poor authorisation rates for cross-border European transactions. A processor optimised for e-commerce may lack support for MOTO (mail order/telephone order) transaction types that contact centres require. These performance differences are not always visible to platforms at integration time; they emerge over time as transaction volumes grow and diversify.
Shuttle Global abstracts the processor layer, so which processor a platform uses becomes a configuration setting rather than an integration project. Platforms integrate with Shuttle’s unified API, and Shuttle handles the connection to over 40 processors and gateways across multiple regions. This architecture lets a platform choose which connected provider handles each payment type, and set minimum amount, maximum amount and currency rules for when each payment method is offered. Shuttle makes no per-transaction decision on the platform’s behalf. If a processor has an outage, the platform can move the affected payment types to another connected provider. There is no automatic failover, and saved cards stay with the provider that stored them, so repeat payments on stored cards will not run through the second one. For platforms using Embedded Payments, Voice Checkout, or Links Checkout, this means one integration to maintain instead of one per provider.