The value of payment gateways for merchants, independent sales organizations, and processors has only grown in recent years. Now, as the tangible benefit of a gateway migrates from operational stability to aiding better business outcomes, their importance has grown.
To help payments companies navigate the gateway segment, TSG, an Omaha, Neb.-based payments advisory firm, has released its roster of the top-performing payment gateways. Based on TSG’s proprietary Global Experience Monitoring platform data, payment gateways are evaluated on transaction activity, their ability to capture payments, uptime, and latency signals.
The best-performing gateway in 2025 was Fusebox from Elavon, the acquiring arm of U.S. Bank. The runners up were the United Payment Gateway from JPMorgan Chase and Express from Worldpay. The same three also had the best transaction speed as measured by TSG.
PNC had the best record for highest authorization rate, and the top rank for best gateway reliability in North America went to Bank of America. Globally, Worldpay had the best reliability. Repay Holdings Inc. garnered the best gateway uptime accolade.
The first gateway is generally considered to be Authorize.net, launched in 1996 in the early days of e-commerce as an easier connectivity rail for online payments. Today, that connection remains central to gateway, but their value extends beyond that.
“Gateway value moved from offering operational stability to offering better business outcomes. Stability in network access, reliability, and settlement remain important, but the shift to increasing approval rates and reducing fraud from building transaction intelligence is tangible,” Michael Trilli, TSG product manager for its GEM gateway analysis, tells Digital Transactions News.