In 2025, one in five retail transactions globally occurred online, totaling $6.42 trillion in processing volume, a 7% increase from 2024. The U.S. accounted for 23% of global eCommerce activity ($1.47 trillion), growing nearly 10% year-over-year.
As digital spending grows, payment providers must maintain a strong, reliable infrastructure. Payment gateways make this possible. In a competitive field where 99.999% uptime is expected, even minor disruptions matter. For example, TSG’s Global Experience Monitoring platform measured 99.983% accessibility among North American gateways during the peak Thanksgiving shopping period.
Beyond uptime, differentiation increasingly hinges on API accessibility, onboarding speed, reporting depth, mobile support, and payment method coverage; factors that help merchants and software companies navigate a fragmented landscape.
To bring clarity to this market, TSG has published its latest Payment Gateway Directory, sponsored by Deluxe, which features research on over 125 global gateways and more than 7,000 data points. This is the most comprehensive gateway resource available, covering leading global brands, regional specialists, and emerging providers across the ecosystem.
Paired with its release, several trends and insights poised to shape gateway strategy this year are highlighted below:
- Geographic Focus: 46% of gateways in the Directory maintain global reach or support clients across at least two continents. By region, North America dominates with 94% coverage, followed by Europe (42%), APAC (34%), Latin America (30%), and the Caribbean (27%).
- Focus Verticals: Retail remained the top industry served, cited by 84% of gateways. Other high‑priority segments included Eating & Drinking Places (61%), Healthcare (60%), and Entertainment & Recreation (57%).
- Emerging Payment Methods: Support for Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) continued to accelerate: 35% of gateways now offer native BNPL enablement, up from 22% in 2023 and 31% in 2024. Cryptocurrency acceptance also rose to 23%, continuing its multi‑year upward trend.
- Setup Fees and Monthly Costs: In at least some cases, 22% of gateways charge a gateway setup fee, and 51% charge a monthly fee.
- Reporting Capabilities: Nearly all providers (98%) offer online reporting or dashboards, but only 84% provide APIs that allow developers and merchants to query reporting data on-demand.
- Client Focus: Merchants remain the primary target client type (88% of gateways), with software companies close behind at 73% as more gateways optimize for embedded payments and software partnerships.
- API Accessibility: Public developer access is now common: 69% of gateways provide fully open APIs and developer centers. Conversely, 17% do not offer public access, and 14% operate with “quasi‑public” access requiring approval or sandbox onboarding.
Access the Payment Gateway Directory
This Directory is exclusive to eReports subscribers. Subscriptions, which include an enterprise license, provide direct insight into the merchant acceptance space, created by payments experts for payments experts. Subscribe today.
Current subscriber? Login to TSG Portal for access to this and more.
Not a subscriber? Create an account to preview reports and try products.
Sources: TSG research, CapitalOne eCommerce Statistics