Selecting a payment provider is one of the most critical operational decisions for an online business, scale-up, or enterprise platform.
European businesses lean more toward choosing a European payment provider as their primary choice.
But the payment landscape in the EU is unique: it is controlled by strict, evolving regulations like PSD2 and DORA, and payment infrastructure has been fragmented until recent political decisions to achieve sovereignty in the European payment landscape. Today, we’re seeing a rapid shift from card networks, which are mostly of non-European origin, to real-time account-to-account (A2A) payments.
How to choose the right partner in this highly changing environment and prevent any technical debt, unexpectedly long settlement times, hidden FX markups, or degraded checkout conversion rates?
Before committing financial and development resources to a payment provider integration, technical leaders and procurement teams must evaluate provider cross-regulatory licensing, payment-rail redundancy, developer experience, fee transparency, and multi-currency infrastructure.
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Licensing, regulatory compliance, and governance
Any jurisdiction has its own rules and requires compliance with its laws. The European Economic Area (EEA) is no exception, and any European payment provider must follow its rules.
The European peculiarity is data protection. That’s why partnering with an unlicensed payment provider could simply lead to losing money. A payment institution with a weak compliance structure will damage your reputation at best. At worst, it will cause operational freezes and delayed payouts.
Licensing infrastructure: EMIs vs. aggregators
Does the company have an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) or Payment Institution (PI)? Is its license issued by a central bank of any EU country (such as the Bank of Lithuania or De Nederlandsche Bank) or not?
This simple question will tell you what you need to know.
Why it matters: EMI licenses are hard to get and maintain, and will require the payment provider to safeguard client funds in segregated accounts at Tier-1 central or commercial banks. This license guarantees your corporate balance is kept protected regardless of the provider’s financial status.
PSD2, PSD3, and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)
Under the EU’s Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and now PSD3, all European transactions require Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). Your European payment provider must natively support 3D Secure 2.2+ protocols supporting frictionless authentication flows.
This is not purely a legal requirement. It is an industry standard, now cemented under the law.
Ask your potential partners this:
Do they support dynamic SCA exemptions (especially low-value exemptions, trusted beneficiary listings, transaction risk analysis)?
Do they have soft-decline experience with other banks from different members of the EU? How do their checkout flows handle it? (Without 3D Secure, transactions would constantly be declined, for example).
Data protection and operational resilience
Data protection is a major focus in Europe now. Simply put, customers’ data must stay within Europe.
A modern European payment provider must follow all the security and privacy standards to preserve it without exception.
GDPR Compliance: Complete data limitation and localized hosting of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Put simply, you or your payment provider cannot collect or store customers’ personal data without consent.
PCI DSS Level 1: It regulates how exactly you should treat or store customers’ data. To qualify for the highest level, you need over 6 million transactions per year. It’s up to you how to handle it, but companies usually go with a payment gateway provider to manage card payment processing without investing in it.
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act): This is a completely technical part to ensure the system doesn’t crash with people’s money: it mandates some risk management, obligatory incident reporting, and continuous operational testing for any financial platforms operating in the EU.
Payment rail diversity and European localization
Historically speaking, credit cards dominated North American markets, while European consumers and businesses were fragmented by local currencies and local payment methods, using major card networks as the only option for international purchases.
Now, the market has shifted from mostly American card networks to European analogs. Euro transfers, Direct debit transactions, and instant bank payments are much more popular.
But major card networks (Visa, Mastercard) remain popular. Thus, restricting checkout to credit card fields guarantees lower conversion rates.
Region / market | Dominant local payment rail | Primary benefit |
Pan-European | SEPA Instant payments / Open Banking | Real-time settlement, zero chargebacks |
Netherlands | iDEAL | Over 70% online market share |
Poland | BLIK | Mobile code-based instant payments |
Belgium | Bancontact | Preferred debit payment method |
DACH region | Sofort / Giropay / EPI | High trust, account-to-account |
Beyond cards: the rise of account-to-account (A2A) payments
Account-to-account payments are the core concept of Open Banking. Its protocols enable pulling funds directly from the buyer’s bank account into the merchant’s account.
A2A transfers work so well in Europe because they avoid traditional card networks completely. This means no interchange fees. Open Banking payments work only with strong customer authentication, which means it severely reduces fraud risk; it also provides instant payment confirmation.
Integrating an Open Banking merchant account allows merchants to tap directly into these benefits.
SEPA Instant and real-time settlement rails
Standard SEPA credit transfers can take up to two business days to clear. This is standard, thus, regular SEPA transfers are reversible. To clear payments faster, you need SEPA Instant payments (SCT Inst) – they are completely different things. SEPA Instant clears euro transactions in under 10 seconds – it’s available 24/7/365 across participating European banks.
Choose a European payment provider that supports both payment methods. They are different at the core: instant payments are irreversible, unlike regular SEPA payments.
Also, SEPA Instant payments to be truly instant require some hardware and software capabilities from the payment provider.
Genome’s merchant account enables instant account-to-account payments across 2000+ European banks with zero chargeback risk and significantly lower processing fees. Funds settle directly into your account via SEPA Instant Transfers, giving your business real-time cash flow management and seamless operational control.
Cross-border capabilities and multi-currency IBANs
Euro won’t be enough for a truly pan-European business model. Poland and Sweden have their own local currencies despite being part of the EU. Some countries like Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland are not part of the EU but are close partners with their own currencies. Great Britain left the EU but remains a major trading partner.
The EU also has very tight trade relationships with the USA, Canada, China, and Japan. All of them are very much separate entities with their own currencies.
You can’t reliably handle this without dedicated multi-currency business accounts, which let you accept, hold, and settle funds in local currencies (such as EUR, USD, GBP, PLN, CHF, JPY, SEK, and CAD) without forced FX conversions at checkout. It’s also a good benchmark when you are looking for a payment provider.
Technical integration, API flexibility, and developer experience
The true cost of a payment provider integration is the hours your development team will spend integrating and maintaining it. A provider’s technical documentation is a must-read before choosing a provider.
Core components of a modern payment architecture:
Merchant checkout frontend: Supports either Hosted Payment Pages (HPP) or direct Host-to-Host (H2H) REST API calls.
Payment processing engine: Connects live Open Banking merchant account rails, SEPA Instant payments, and upcoming card payment processing.
Settlement account: Directs incoming multi-rail settlements into dedicated business multi-currency IBANs.
Hosted payment pages (HPP) vs. host-to-host (H2H) integration
They are mutually exclusive, and you should choose one during payment provider integration:
Hosted payment pages (HPP): Simple integration and secure payment frames managed entirely by the provider. Usually a small company’s choice.
Host-to-host (H2H) / REST APIs: Grants complete control over the checkout user experience; this is a way to go for any custom SaaS platforms and high-volume e-commerce applications.
Sandbox quality, webhooks, and event-driven architecture
This is very important. Before signing a contract, request access to the provider’s developer sandbox during the payment provider integration trial phase. Test for:
Webhook reliability: It offers real-time push notifications for transaction events (payment_succeeded, payment_failed, payout_settled). Available inside Genome.
Idempotency support: Ensures API calls can be safely retried without processing duplicate transactions.
Comprehensive SDKs: Pre-built libraries for major languages (Node.js, Python, PHP, Java) and plugins for e-commerce engines (WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify).
Uptime SLAs, redundancy, and failover routing
Checkout downtime is not acceptable – it just loses money. When you deal with a payment provider, there is a so-called guaranteed API uptime – the higher, the better. Check it out before payment provider integration.
Understanding total cost of ownership (TCO) and fee structures
Payment processing pricing is a forbidden topic for some companies, but explicit pricing structures are essential when selecting a European payment provider. We can even say that if prices aren’t open, it may be a red flag for a parent.
Pricing models: interchange++ vs. blended rates
Interchange++: The most straightforward pricing model for card payment processing. It separates the actual card scheme/interchange fee charged by Visa/Mastercard from the acquirer’s margin.
Blended rates: Charges a flat percentage per transaction regardless of card type. While predictable for low volumes, blended rates become significantly more expensive as your business scales.
Hidden fees, FX Markups, and reserves
Markup and hidden fees are avoidable, but reserves are not.
Cross-border surcharges: Extra fees applied when accepting cards issued outside the EEA.
FX spread/markup: One of the golden geese for payment providers. The margin added on top of mid-market exchange rates during automated currency conversions is very common.
Rolling reserves: A very important part for e-commerce merchants. The percentage of your revenue the acquirer holds back (it may be 5%, 10%, or even 15%) for a set period (90-180 days). This is held as a reserve to ensure you have cash to return money for disputes or chargebacks.
Chargeback & refund fees: Traditional card payment processing is full of chargebacks, and entire bank risk policies are built around it (if you have too many, you will be treated differently).
Future-proofing payments with Genome
Genome is not just a payment provider – we are licensed and supervised by the Bank of Lithuania, Europe’s financial hub. We provide businesses across Europe with an all-in-one platform for cross-border trade, business IBANs, and unified merchant services.
The Genome unified payment ecosystem:
Genome business wallet: Dedicated EUR IBAN plus multi-currency accounts in 12 currencies ( for global operations. Includes the most popular EU currencies.
Open Banking merchant services (Live): clearing via SEPA Instant payments – zero chargeback risk and significantly lower transaction fees.
Card payment processing (Upcoming): You will be able to accept payments via Visa and Mastercard cards in EUR, USD, and GBP.
An Open Banking merchant account from Genome was designed so that online merchants can accept instant bank payments directly at checkout:
Broad EU Coverage: The Open Banking system is massive and covers most of the European banking system.
Instant settlement: With SEPA Instant payments, funds move and clear rapidly directly into your dedicated Genome business wallet.
Eliminate fraud & chargebacks: Direct bank-to-bank authorizations authenticated via customer banking apps completely eliminate the possibility of chargebacks and reduce overall processing overhead versus an ordinary Open Banking merchant account alternative.
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Coming soon: card payment processing
We can soon offer card payment processing for our clients. We are expanding our acquiring capabilities. We made this feature specifically for merchants to accept major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard), alongside Open Banking options. Thus, you get Open Banking merchant accounts and native card payment processing under one roof.
Streamline your European integration
Streamlining and automation are everywhere now: ideally, a successful payment provider integration should be as easy as possible on the technical side, while remaining profitable and scalable long-term.
No solution is better for the European market than a European payment provider that offers real-time settlement rails, multi-currency support, solid regulatory compliance, and open pricing. Frictionless checkout experience for your clients? Possible, durable, and way cheaper than you may expect.
Ready to unlock high-converting payment rails for your business? Set up your Open Banking merchant account today, or join the waitlist for early access to incoming card payment processing.
