Three-phase transformation of payment network specifications.

Cross-regional payment processor

PaymentsImplementation SupportIndustry Benchmarking

Challenge

One of our clients, a cross-regional payment processor, had decided to harmonise their technology house built over the decades of their business consolidation history. Over this time, their services had evolved with divergent transaction processing rules, message formats, field locations, data content, and technical documentation standards.

These variations created substantial operational challenges:

Technology delivery costs increased, due to maintaining parallel technical implementations.
Higher operational overhead from supporting divergent processes and specifications.
Inconsistent documentation and data standards drove up the complexity of support.
Customers experienced suboptimal support, because of fragmented service delivery approaches.

Approach

Explicit Selection was engaged to conduct a comprehensive gap analysis across three critical operational domains, from a technical specification point of view: Authorisation, Clearing & Settlement, and Disputes.

Goals included:

Identify and document all technical differences across product specifications.
Assess the business and operational impact of gaps.
Provide actionable recommendations for consolidation and standardisation.
Benchmark the unified approach against industry standards and best practices.

Three phases, one roadmap

From baseline understanding to a complete consolidation roadmap.

Phase 01

Authorisation

Compared authorisation-related technical specifications covering processing rules, interfaces, protocols, network services, messaging standards, and implementation guides. Established baseline understanding, identified critical gaps, gave consolidation direction, and validated the approach against industry standards.

Phase 02

Clearing & Settlement

Examined file exchange processes, settlement timing, data transmission mechanics (FTP, web portals, APIs), entity taxonomy, transaction data structures — across nine major document categories covering approximately 1,200+ pages of specifications. Acquirer-side and issuer-side analysis, ISO standards adoption opportunities, and a consolidation roadmap.

Phase 03

Disputes

Dispute management: file exchange, initiation / resolution workflows, upload / retrieval sequences, transmission mechanics, and governance. Comprehensive gap analysis, a unified dispute process view, benchmarking against industry standards, and the final consolidation roadmap component.

Outcome

Our client received a complete roadmap for consolidating its credit product platform specifications. The deliverables offer both the detailed technical foundation for implementation and the strategic business case for executive decision-making.

By the numbers

1,200+

pages of specifications reviewed in Phase 2.

major document categories mapped.

operational domains covered: Authorisation, Clearing & Settlement, Disputes.

Related services

Payment networks dashboard with charts and a highlighted radar comparison

Payment Networks Benchmarking

You get an independent, expert-led view of how your network products compare to the industry.

Open service page

Implementation Support

Between a vision and a service running in production lies a long, multi-stage journey. We engage from end to end, or on whichever part of it needs support.