Top 7 Alternatives to Building Your Own Payment Gateway in Europe

Building a payment gateway from scratch sounds appealing — full control, custom features, and no vendor lock-in. But the reality is far less glamorous. Development costs routinely exceed $500,000, PCI DSS certification alone can take months, and the ongoing maintenance burden never truly ends. For European businesses operating in a fast-moving, regulation-heavy environment, the time-to-market lag of custom development can be a dealbreaker.

That’s precisely why a growing number of PSPs, fintech startups, banks, and online merchants across Europe are turning to proven third-party platforms instead. Whether you need payment orchestration, white-label infrastructure, or seamless multi-connector management, the market now offers powerful alternatives that let you launch in weeks — not years.

Here are the top 7 alternatives to building your own payment gateway in Europe, ranked by capability, flexibility, and overall value.

1. Akurateco — Best White-Label Payment Gateway for PSPs, Banks, and Merchants

When it comes to fully brandable, enterprise-grade payment infrastructure, Akurateco stands in a category of its own. Founded and led by a team with 15+ years of hands-on experience in online payments, Akurateco delivers a complete white-label payment gateway solution that eliminates the need for in-house development entirely — without sacrificing control, flexibility, or scalability.

What Makes Akurateco Different

Unlike generic payment platforms, Akurateco was purpose-built for businesses that want to operate their own payment gateway under their own brand. The platform is fully brandable, PCI DSS Level 1 compliant, and deployable in as little as two weeks. Whether you’re a payment service provider looking to launch a new processing business, a bank needing a merchant management system, or a marketplace seeking embedded payment facilitation, Akurateco has a solution tailored to your exact use case.

Businesses exploring white label merchant services consistently find that Akurateco offers one of the most comprehensive and cost-effective paths to market — combining powerful technology with a dedicated team that functions as an extension of your own.

Core Platform Capabilities

• 600+ ready-to-use payment connectors, covering global and local payment methods across all major regions
• Intelligent payment routing that directs transactions to the optimal acquirer, maximizing approval ratios
• Cascading logic to automatically retry declined transactions through alternative processors
• Smart billing module for creating sophisticated, custom pricing models for your merchants
• Recurring payments and tokenization for subscription-based business models
• AI-driven fraud prevention with both internal anti-fraud tools and third-party integrations
• Automated merchant onboarding, reducing manual workload and accelerating growth
• Real-time analytics and comprehensive reporting for full visibility across all payment channels
• Chargeback management built directly into the platform

Deployment Options

Akurateco offers more flexibility than most competitors when it comes to infrastructure. Businesses can choose between a SaaS model or a dedicated on-premise/private cloud deployment, giving enterprises full control over their data environment without the complexity of building from scratch.

Payment Team as a Service

One of Akurateco’s most distinctive offerings is its Payment Team as a Service model. Rather than simply handing over software, Akurateco provides dedicated account managers with deep industry expertise who handle strategic alignment, routing configuration, compliance guidance, and technical support on an ongoing basis. This means your internal team stays focused on business growth while Akurateco’s specialists manage the complexity of your payment stack.

Proven Results

The numbers speak for themselves. Akurateco clients have seen:

Real-world case studies reinforce these figures. TESS Payments, a dynamic PSP operating in Qatar’s tightly regulated market, used Akurateco to gain access to a PCI DSS Level 1-certified platform with built-in fraud management and API-driven integrations. Dineropay, a Saudi Arabia-based PSP, leveraged Akurateco’s white-label infrastructure to launch a compliant mobile payments platform complete with automated merchant onboarding and real-time analytics — a build that would have taken years to develop independently.

Who It’s For

• Payment Service Providers looking to launch or migrate to a new platform with zero capital expenditure on development
• Banks and acquirers that need a merchant management system with compliance, anti-fraud, and settlement tools
• Online merchants and marketplaces looking to embed payment facilitation and unlock new revenue streams

For those weighing the full scope of payment gateway development against a white-label approach, Akurateco’s platform makes the case clearly: equivalent capability, a fraction of the cost, and a timeline measured in weeks rather than years.

2. Rapyd — Fintech-as-a-Service for Global Payment Access

Rapyd is a global Fintech-as-a-Service platform that gives businesses access to a broad network of payment methods, payouts, and financial services through a single API. For European businesses seeking rapid international expansion, Rapyd is a well-known option.

Key features:

• Unified API covering 900+ payment methods in 100+ countries
• Built-in e-wallets, FX, and mass payouts
• Compliance and licensing support in multiple jurisdictions

Best for: Companies that need broad geographic reach and multi-method payment acceptance without deep customization needs.

Limitation: Rapyd functions more as a payment aggregator than a true white-label infrastructure provider, meaning branding and control over the payment stack remain limited compared to a dedicated white-label solution like Akurateco.

3. Spell — No-Code Payment Orchestration

Spell is a relatively newer entrant in the European payment orchestration space, positioning itself as a no-code or low-code platform for businesses that want to connect multiple payment providers without heavy engineering resources.

Key features:

• Visual, drag-and-drop routing and cascading flows
• Multi-PSP connectivity through a single integration
• Real-time transaction monitoring and analytics

Best for: Small to mid-size businesses or startups that want fast PSP switching and basic orchestration without writing code.

Limitation: Spell’s feature set is narrower than enterprise-grade platforms, and it may lack the depth of fraud management, billing customization, and merchant management tools that scaling PSPs require.

4. Paydock — Payment Orchestration for Enterprises

Paydock is an Australian-founded payment orchestration platform with growing traction in Europe. It focuses on helping enterprises manage multiple payment gateways and methods from a single hub, reducing integration complexity and improving checkout performance.

Key features:

• Unified API connecting to multiple payment services and gateways
• Vault-based tokenization for secure card storage
• Workflow automation and smart routing rules
• Strong compliance tooling, including PCI DSS scope reduction

Best for: Mid-to-large enterprises that already have payment relationships in place and need a centralized orchestration layer to manage them more efficiently.

Limitation: Paydock is primarily an orchestration layer rather than a full white-label gateway platform. Businesses looking to launch their own branded payment service will find its capabilities less suited to that goal.

5. CellPoint Digital — Payment Orchestration for Travel and Airlines

CellPoint Digital is a specialist payment orchestration platform with a strong focus on the travel and airline industry. It helps travel businesses optimize payment flows, reduce processing costs, and improve conversion across multiple acquirers.

Key features:

• Purpose-built for the travel vertical, with deep integrations across airline PSPs and GDSs
• Multi-acquirer routing and dynamic currency conversion
• Strong focus on reducing payment costs for high-volume travel transactions
• Retailing and offer-order management capabilities

Best for: Airlines, travel agencies, and hospitality businesses processing high volumes of cross-border transactions.

Limitation: CellPoint Digital’s strong vertical focus means it is not a general-purpose solution. Businesses outside the travel sector will find limited applicability, and it does not offer the full white-label gateway infrastructure that PSPs or banks typically require.

6. BridgerPay — Payment Operations Platform

BridgerPay is a cloud-based payment operations platform that enables businesses to connect to hundreds of payment service providers through a single interface. It emphasizes ease of integration and a no-code approach to payment routing.

Key features:

• 500+ PSP connections via a unified platform
• No-code routing, cascading, and retry logic
• Checkout optimization tools and real-time reporting
• PCI DSS compliant infrastructure

Best for: Online merchants and businesses that need fast access to multiple PSPs with straightforward routing logic and minimal technical overhead.

Limitation: BridgerPay focuses primarily on merchants rather than PSPs or banks looking to build and brand their own payment infrastructure. It lacks the merchant management, billing customization, and Payment Team as a Service model that enterprise payment operators demand.

7. Spreedly — Open Payments Platform for Developers

Spreedly is a developer-focused open payments platform that allows businesses to vault payment data and route transactions across a wide network of payment gateways. It is particularly popular among software companies and platforms that need flexible, API-first payment infrastructure.

Key features:

• PCI-compliant card vault that works across 100+ payment gateways
• Transaction routing and gateway redundancy
• Strong developer documentation and API flexibility
• Supports complex payment flows and marketplace models

Best for: SaaS platforms, software companies, and technically mature teams that need a flexible, developer-friendly layer for multi-gateway management and card vaulting.

Limitation: Spreedly is a technical building block rather than a complete business platform. It requires significant development investment to implement and does not provide the end-to-end operational support, fraud management, merchant onboarding, or billing modules that a full-service platform like Akurateco delivers out of the box.

Quick Comparison: At a Glance

Conclusion: Stop Building, Start Scaling

The European payments landscape is one of the most dynamic — and demanding — in the world. Between PCI DSS requirements, PSD2 compliance, multi-currency complexity, and fierce competition, the cost and time required to build a payment gateway from scratch are rarely justifiable.

The seven platforms covered in this article each offer legitimate paths to faster, more efficient payment operations. But they are not equal. For businesses that want true white-label infrastructure, a dedicated expert team, proven approval rate improvements, and a platform that can genuinely scale from launch to enterprise — Akurateco leads the field by a significant margin.

The others serve specific use cases well: Rapyd for global reach, Spreedly for developer flexibility, CellPoint Digital for travel, Paydock for enterprise orchestration. But none combine the full breadth of white-label capabilities, Payment Team as a Service, 600+ connectors, and a two-week launch timeline that Akurateco consistently delivers.

If your goal is to own a payment business — not just connect to one — the choice is clear.