How Vaultera Switch Works: One API, 20+ PSPs

How does Vaultera Switch let you connect to 20+ payment service providers through a single API? Switch acts as an intelligent routing layer. You integrate once. You send a transaction with basic details (amount, currency, customer data). Switch automatically routes it to the most appropriate PSP for that specific transaction based on geography, currency, cost, or approval rate. If a PSP fails, Switch fails over to another automatically. You get one unified API response, regardless of which PSP processes the transaction behind the scenes.

For travel businesses managing payments across regions, currencies, and channels, Switch eliminates the complexity of juggling multiple PSP integrations. One API. Global coverage. Automatic optimisation.

The Architecture: How Switch Routes Transactions

Your System → Switch API → Best PSP → Card Network → Response

Here's what happens when a guest at a hotel books a room and pays with a card:

1. Guest provides card details through your booking platform (web, mobile, app)
2. Your system sends a transaction request to Switch:
   • Amount: $800
   • Currency: USD
   • Guest location: Iceland
   • Card token (from Vaultera Vault)
   • Guest data: email, phone, address
3. Switch evaluates the transaction using its routing rules:
   • USD transaction from Iceland? Check.
   • Card token from Vaultera Vault? Check.
   • Approval rate for this guest type? Check.
   • Which PSP has the best combination of cost and approval rate for USD from Iceland? PSP A.
4. Switch routes to PSP A. PSP A processes the transaction through the card network (Visa, Mastercard, etc.)
5. The card network responds with approval or decline
6. Switch receives the response and returns it to your system in a unified format:
   • Status: approved
   • Transaction ID: tx_1a2b3c4d
   • PSP used: PSP A
   • Cost: 2.4% + $0.25
7. Your booking system confirms the payment and sends confirmation to the guest

The flow is fast — typically a few seconds, depending on PSP latency and whether 3DS authentication is required. The guest doesn't know which PSP processed their payment. They just see "payment approved."

One API, Many PSPs

Switch currently connects to 20+ PSPs worldwide:

• Global PSPs (Stripe, Adyen, WorldPay)
• Regional PSPs (local processors in each market)
• Specialist PSPs (high-risk approval specialists, currency specialists, fraud prevention)

To your system, they all look the same. You call the Switch API the same way for every transaction. Switch decides which PSP to use.

If Vaultera adds a 21st PSP next month? You don't change your code. Switch's routing rules are updated in the Switch dashboard. Your system continues calling the same API endpoint. The new PSP is automatically available.

Need to remove a PSP because they're too expensive? Flip a switch. No code changes.

For travel tech companies, this is transformational. You're not managing 20 different APIs. You're managing one. And you get the benefits of 20.

Smart Routing: The Engine Behind Switch

Switch doesn't route randomly. It routes intelligently based on rules you define and data it learns.

Rule-Based Routing

You set routing rules in the Switch dashboard:

• By Geography: "Route all USD transactions from the US to PSP A (lowest cost)"
• By Currency: "Route all GBP transactions to PSP B (supports GBP natively)"
• By Approval Need: "Route transactions with low approval history to PSP C (best at approving risky transactions)"
• By Volume: "Distribute 50% to PSP A and 50% to PSP B for load balancing"
• By Risk: "Route transactions flagged as high-risk to PSP D (fraud specialists)"

Your rules are as simple or as sophisticated as you want. You can route by single attributes (currency) or combinations (USD + first-time customer + international IP = route to PSP C).

Learning and Optimisation

As Switch processes your transactions, it collects data:

• Which PSPs approve the most transactions?
• Which PSPs have the lowest fees for each corridor?
• Which PSPs are fastest?
• Which PSPs have the lowest decline rates for your specific customer types?

Over time, Switch builds a picture of your payment patterns. This data helps you refine routing rules — and as the platform evolves, increasingly automates routing decisions based on real performance data.

Automatic Failover: Never Stop Processing

Your primary PSP goes down. What happens?

Without Switch:

Your payment processing stops. You're calling that one PSP's API. It's not responding. Your customers see "payment processing failed." You lose revenue. You get calls from angry customers and properties. You spend hours investigating, only to discover the PSP had a database issue 3000 miles away.

With Switch:

Your primary PSP goes down. Switch detects the failure (no response, timeout, error response). Within seconds, Switch routes subsequent transactions to your secondary PSP. Your customers don't experience any disruption. Payment processing continues. Your dashboard shows "PSP A degraded, failover to PSP B active." By the time you get a notification, failover has already happened and transactions are processing normally.

When PSP A recovers, Switch gradually shifts traffic back to it (if it's optimal to do so) or keeps the failover in place (if PSP B is now performing better).

For a hotel PMS system or booking platform, this is critical. You can't afford payment downtime. Switch can significantly reduce single-PSP outage risk by automatically failing over to alternate providers when configured. If one PSP fails, transactions route to your next preferred provider.

Vault + Switch: A Complete Solution

Vaultera has two products. They work together seamlessly.

Vaultera Vault: Tokenisation

• Guest provides card once
• Card is tokenised into a secure token
• Token is reusable, secure, PCI-compliant
• Your systems store the token, never the card

Vaultera Switch: Orchestration

• Tokens from Vault are sent to Switch
• Switch routes to the most appropriate PSP for that transaction
• Switch handles the PSP response and failover
• Your system gets a unified API response

Together:

Guest books a room. Card is tokenised and stored (Vault). During the stay, multiple transactions occur — pre-auth, incidentals, final charge. Each transaction uses the token (from Vault) and is routed optimally through Switch. No card data ever appears in your systems. Payment processing is optimised automatically. If a PSP fails, failover happens transparently.

This is payment infrastructure done right. Secure (Vault tokenises and stores). Flexible (Switch routes to the most appropriate PSP). Resilient (failover is automatic). Scalable (add more PSPs without code changes).

Real-World Example: A Multi-Market Hotel Chain

Imagine you operate a PMS system serving 500 properties across 12 countries:

• 200 properties in the US (USD)
• 150 properties in the EU (EUR, GBP, SEK, etc.)
• 100 properties in Asia (SGD, THB, PHP)
• 50 properties in Turkey (TRY)

Before Switch:

You're integrated with Stripe (works in most markets, but not Turkey). You built a separate integration with a Turkish processor. Your codebase has:

• Stripe logic
• Turkish PSP logic
• Different token formats
• Different webhook handlers
• Different error handling
• Different reconciliation systems

Adding a second PSP for Asia took significant development time. Your total cost to support 12 markets: 3 separate integrations, months of development, and ongoing maintenance of 3 different systems.

With Switch:

You integrate once with Switch. Your dashboard routes:

• USD transactions → PSP A (Stripe, optimised for US)
• EUR transactions → PSP B (local European processor)
• GBP transactions → PSP C (UK specialist)
• SEK, NOK transactions → PSP D (Nordic specialist)
• SGD, THB, PHP transactions → PSP E (Asian processor)
• TRY transactions → PSP F (Turkish processor)
• Backup failover for all regions → PSP G, H, I

Your codebase has one integration: the Switch API. All 12 countries are supported. Integration time is significantly shorter than building separate PSP connections. Ongoing maintenance means updating routing rules, not code.

A new country is added to your platform? Switch already supports it (it connects to 20+ PSPs). You configure routing in the dashboard. No code changes. No integration sprints.

The Travel Tech Advantage

Travel businesses are global. But payment infrastructure is fragmented. Different countries, currencies, card types, and PSP coverage make payments complex.

With Switch:

• Global PMS systems connect to one API, serve properties worldwide
• Booking platforms expand to new regions without integration delays
• Channel managers optimize costs across all connected channels automatically
• Payments succeed more often (Switch routes to PSPs with best approval rates)
• Payment costs decrease (Switch routes to the cheapest PSP for each corridor)
• Single-PSP outage risk is significantly reduced (automatic failover to alternate providers)

Switch handles much of the routing and failover complexity, so your team can focus less on PSP plumbing and more on your product.

Getting Started with Switch

Switch pairs with Vault. If you're already using Vault for tokenisation, adding Switch is straightforward:

1. Integrate Vault (if not already done): Cards are tokenised once, tokens are stored securely
2. Integrate Switch: Send transactions to the Switch API with the token from Vault
3. Configure Routing: Define routing rules in the Switch dashboard (or let Switch's learning engine optimise automatically)
4. Test Failover: Verify that transactions fail over correctly if your primary PSP goes down
5. Go Live: Start routing production transactions through Switch

Switch launches in April 2026. Early adopters get priority integration support and the opportunity to shape the product's feature roadmap.

The Bottom Line

Payment orchestration isn't a nice-to-have for travel tech companies. It's foundational. Vaultera Switch gives you exactly what modern payment infrastructure requires: one API integration, 20+ PSPs, intelligent routing, automatic failover, and cost optimisation.

Paired with Vault's tokenisation, you have a complete solution. Secure card handling. Intelligent routing. Global coverage. Automatic resilience.

For hotel PMS systems, channel managers, and booking platforms, this transforms payment operations from a constraint into a competitive advantage.

Ready to replace your multiple PSP integrations with one unified API? Contact Vaultera to learn how Switch can simplify and optimise your payment infrastructure for travel tech.