Payment outages are widespread and expensive
Recent industry research highlights how urgently businesses need payment resilience and contingency payment processing in place:
- BR-DGE (2025) reports that 92% of enterprise e-commerce merchants experienced at least one payment outage in the past two years.
- Among those, 50% faced losses between £1.1m and £10m, while 34% lost £100,000–£1m.
- Over 54% said payment limitations had directly delayed or blocked expansion into new markets.
- A 2025 FreedomPay study estimates £1.6 billion in annual lost sales in UK retail and hospitality due to payment system failures.
- Many UK merchants experience five or more major outages per year, with 61% occurring at peak trading times.
These figures demonstrate that payment processing contingency is a necessity. The financial impact of outages is now measurable, predictable and for many merchants, severe.
When payments fail, customers leave - often for good. Resilient checkout, with silent switchover and clear on‑page messaging, prevents frustration and preserves loyalty. That’s why contingency belongs in the CX toolkit, not just in IT.
Where merchants are still exposed
Despite the scale of the problem, most merchants still rely on a single primary payment provider, creating a clear single point of failure.
According to BR-DGE:
- Just 32% of enterprise merchants have an automated payment failover route.
- 71% route most of their volume through a single PSP.
- 44% cite integration complexity as the main barrier to implementing payment contingency.
This means most businesses are unprepared for outages, even though PSP downtime is becoming more frequent.
How a backup payment provider protects revenue
Implementing a contingency payment solution or failover-ready payment infrastructure offers major advantages:
- Immediate revenue protection
When a PSP outage happens, the system automatically (or manually) switches to your alternative payment processor, keeping checkout live.
- Better customer experience
No failed transactions, fewer complaints, reduced cart abandonment, and far less reputational damage.
- Reduced dependency on a single PSP
A backup PSP removes the single point of failure that causes many high-impact outages.
- Business continuity built into payments
A contingency setup ensures payments continue even during high-traffic events, maintenance windows or unexpected downtime.
- Futureproofing for growth
As businesses scale, they need payment infrastructure resilience to support expansion without bottlenecks.
Automated failover is about designing payments with the same resilience we expect in modern cloud services. Multi‑acquirer routing, portable tokens and health‑based switchover take you from hope to certainty, so an incident becomes a controlled, testable pathway instead of an outage.
Why 2026 is the year to prioritise payment resilience
With payment systems becoming more complex and consumer expectations rising, payment continuity planning is fast becoming a core component of business continuity strategies.
Payment contingency is not insurance, it’s operational hygiene.
Whether you use it once a year or once a week, having a backup payment provider or redundant PSP configuration protects revenue, customer experience and long-term growth.
If you want to explore how a contingency payment provider setup would work for your business, or what a fully resilient, failover-ready payment infrastructure looks like, we’d be happy to guide you.
FAQs
What is payment contingency?
Payment contingency is a resilience strategy that keeps your checkout live if your primary payment service provider (PSP) or acquirer fails. It typically uses automated failover to a backup PSP and multi‑acquirer routing so transactions can be rerouted when a route degrades.
Do UK merchants need a backup payment provider?
Yes. A backup provider with failover rules protects revenue and customer experience during outages, especially on major UK trading days like Bank Holidays, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day. It also reduces operational risk and supports compliance with resilience planning.
How does payment failover work?
Failover uses health checks and routing rules to automatically switch transactions to a healthy PSP or acquirer when the primary route degrades or fails. If automation isn’t available, manual switchover acts as the fallback.
What’s the difference between multi‑acquirer routing and payment orchestration?
Multi‑acquirer routing: Connects you to multiple acquirers/processors and intelligently distributes or reroutes volume to avoid single points of failure.
Payment orchestration: Adds a central layer that manages provider connections, tokenisation, and smart rules so failover works seamlessly across routes and markets.
What’s the first step to build a failover‑ready payment stack?
Start by adding a secondary PSP and configuring automated switchover rules. Then ensure portable tokenisation so customer credentials can be processed across providers without friction.
How should we test and monitor contingency?
Run scheduled failover drills (quarterly is common) to simulate PSP outages and measure: Switchover time, authorisation/approval rates, refunds and reconciliation, and on‑site messaging. Back this with real‑time health monitoring for proactive alerts.