What does integration utopia look like for enterprise businesses?

Enterprise businesses are in a constant race to innovate, delivering cutting-edge solutions that meet real-world consumer needs. But staying ahead of your competitors requires seamless, agile execution from starting an integration to go-live. For your integration teams; clunky, time-consuming processes without clear steps do nothing but hinder time-to-value.

To help those looking to integrate Pay by Bank into their payment tech stack, we combined analysis of key trends in enterprise RFPs with our own integration experience, to uncover what makes large-scale integrations truly seamless. Here’s what we found.

Your Pay by Bank provider should break silos, not build them

Integration utopia is more than just enabling a connection between systems, it’s about connecting every stakeholder involved in implementing technology within your business. A smooth integration can determine whether your business enters a new phase of growth, and it takes expert coordination to make that happen.

The good news? Your Pay by Bank provider should handle the thinking for you. Instead of requiring you to get every stakeholder in a room, your provider should proactively engage with payment teams, security, compliance, and developers to ensure their needs are met and exceeded. Not only does this remove the complexity for your teams but it ensures a frictionless process from scoping to go-live.

A framework designed for flexibility

While a structured integration framework and checklist are essential, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The real value lies in how these frameworks are customised to the specific needs of each enterprise merchant. At TrueLayer, integration specialists fully scope the required solution upfront, analysing the technical architecture so that each client framework is unique to their business requirements and timelines. This also allows the TrueLayer product roadmap to include feature requests not already spoken for.

By understanding these nuances early, we ensure that the integration, testing and deployment phases are aligned with business goals, avoiding surprises and delays down the line.

Some might say that the best implementations are based on who your integration manager is, which is why a culture-match is so important. You should trust their judgment, expertise and meticulous attention to detail. The test for this? After a short time, they’ll feel like a member of your own team.

Seamless execution needs expert project management

Enterprise integrations aren’t just about technology, they’re about planning and execution. That’s why having an experienced integration team to guide the process is key. TrueLayer doesn’t just provide the tech; we run the integration as a project in tandem with your teams, helping plan resources, set realistic timelines, and manage performance expectations.

With our experience in enterprise integration, we remove the burden from your team, to ensure a structured and predictable rollout.

And no, it’s not a pipe-dream

You’ve heard it all before, right? One team, one dream and all that. If you’re sitting there with one eyebrow raised, then let’s get the framework debate settled:

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“Our integration experience was excellent. TrueLayer has a structured approach whereby they provide us with a framework. They gave us clear communication from start to finish which helped us navigate through all the various phases from development, testing through to deployment.  Nothing's too much trouble.

Jaja Finance’s Heather Le Quesne, Head of Finance Operations

Read the Jaja story

Testing made easy (because it’s handled for you)

Once the front-end and back-end work is completed, and design best practices are implemented, testing becomes the most crucial step. So, what should providers be testing for?

• Flow validation: end-to-end testing checks to ensure payment journeys are frictionless and will drive high conversion rates, putting user experience at the heart of every flow.

• Security: account-to-account payments involve sensitive financial data. Testing must be rigorous to help identify vulnerabilities, ensure compliance and reduce the risk of fraud.

• Regulatory compliance: it’s no surprise that Pay by Bank transactions must comply with financial regulations (such as PSD2). The testing phase is crucial for checking that all legal and compliance requirements are met.

• Compatibility: businesses use different banks, devices, and platforms. There are multiple moving pieces. Testing helps verify that integrations actually work across various banking systems, APIs and user environments.

• Performance and scalability: load testing ensures that the system can handle high transaction volumes without performance degradation. This is crucial for enterprise businesses with large volumes.

Ultimately, this level of testing is what maximises adoption and customer retention and minimises downtime and errors. This includes us providing our clients with a Sandbox environment for risk-free testing, allowing developers to debug at a rapid pace.

With zero limitations to the number of requests you can make, our real-world testing ensures continuous improvements over time.

No matter the complexity, we’ve seen it all before

While many enterprises are moving towards headless technology, the reality is that most still operate on legacy systems. The complexity of integration doesn’t come from the Pay by Bank provider, it comes from navigating your existing tech stack.

That’s why we designed TrueLayer to plug into anything, no matter how legacy or convoluted. Our initial scoping phase ensures we account for the complexities of your infrastructure, making integration seamless regardless of your current setup.

Direct integration vs. PSP integration. What’s right for you?

Enterprise integrations are never one in the same. Depending on your business needs, you may choose to integrate:

1. Directly through your Pay by Bank provider

2. Through a PSP (Payment Service Provider)

The benefits of integrating with your Pay by Bank provider

• Customisation is in your hands: you can tailor the user experience and optimise the payment flow to your own specific needs, giving you more control.

• Increase your uptime: if a PSP experiences downtime, Pay by Bank may be affected.

• Direct relationship, direct action: without an intermediary between the business and Pay by Bank provider, your issues often get resolved quicker.

• Performance and settlement advances: direct integration can often reduce transaction latency and improve settlement times.

• Expand your Pay by Bank journey quicker: you can leverage full open banking capabilities, such as instant refunds, faster sign-up and advanced authentication by owning the relationship with your Pay by Bank provider.

• Lower transaction costs: eliminates PSP fees when you choose a direct integration.

The benefits of a PSP integration

• Multiple birds, one stone: a PSP allows you to offer various payment options at the same time (credit/debit cards, Pay by Bank, digital wallets, BNPL, etc.). Not only does this mean you can combine projects, but you can often turn on Pay by Bank with zero engineering resources required.

• Combined settlement: received reconciled settlement / settlement files for your payments via the PSP.

• Combined reporting: once you implement all payment types at the same time, you can join together your reporting for one view of all payments.

• The agency effect: if you think of a PSP as an agency, in theory you can let them handle the integration with less of a lift, which can reduce go-live time.

The choice is yours. At TrueLayer we offer multiple integration methods such as WebSDK, MobileSDK and HPP.

The key takeaway: enterprise integrations are complex, but can be simplified

No enterprise integration is easy. Even if the system you’re integrating with is what you might think of as ‘simple’, making it work with your existing (and sometimes archaic) infrastructure is the challenge. That’s where the right integration partner makes all the difference.

As an enterprise merchant, you want a partner with significant experience in enterprise integrations — one that can scope and execute your integration by deeply understanding your tech stack and stakeholder requirements. This means creating a bespoke scope of work, project plan and testing checklist that minimises unexpected complications.

One last thing…don’t forget to find those proof points

Finally, this last one may sound obvious but; credibility is key. To understand whether a Pay by Bank provider can handle truly enterprise volumes and navigate complex tech stacks, it’s time to take a look at their client list. This is one of the reasons Nicola Bettari, Fintech and Payments Director at lastminute.com found TrueLayer to have “established itself as a key player” in their long-term payment vision.

For other enterprise businesses in ecommerce, integration utopia isn’t a dream for the future, it’s achievable now. Businesses that run the right processes will find their best-fit provider to help them enjoy greater agility, stronger security, and customer experience that brings their customers back.

If you want to find out more about TrueLayer’s integration framework, speak to one of our specialists today.