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Using the Payment Router

A Payment Router is used when multiple Merchant Accounts can be used for the same campaign. A Payment Router is set up to determine which transaction is assigned to which Merchant Account based on the criteria & rules setup within the Payment Router.

A payment router is the key to maximizing your payment processing success. Instead of being locked into a single payment processor that becomes a critical point of failure, a payment router gives you the power to distribute transactions across multiple merchant accounts with intelligent, automated logic.

This means when one processor goes down, experiences issues, or starts declining more transactions than usual, your business keeps running. The router allows you to shift traffic to healthy processors, protects you from hitting processing caps, and gives you the flexibility to optimize approval rates by testing and routing to the best-performing merchants for each transaction type.

Whether you're processing high volumes, need multi-currency support, want to protect against downtime, or simply want to maximize every sale—a payment router transforms payment processing from a single point of failure into a intelligent, resilient system that works for you 24/7.

Why Use a Payment Router

Redundancy & Failover

  • Eliminate single point of failure
  • Automatic handling of merchant downtime
  • Continue processing when one merchant has issues

Optimization

  • Maximize approval rates across processors
  • Balance transaction volume automatically
  • Route based on card type, items, or customer

Flexibility

  • Support multiple currencies through different merchants
  • Configure complex rules without code changes
  • Adapt to changing business needs in real-time

Activating a Payment Router

After you create your payment router, you will need to assign it to your campaign:

  1. Go to your campaign settings
  2. Set the campaign's Payment Type to Router
  3. Select your router from the dropdown
  4. All transactions will route through the selected router using the router's currency

Understanding Routing Methods

When you create a router, you choose how transactions are distributed across merchants:

Round Robin - Rotates transactions evenly across all merchants in sequence

Weighted - Distributes transactions by percentage across merchants

Volume - Routes based on remaining monthly processing capacity

Custom - Use API overrides to implement your own routing logic, or contact support for custom algorithms

Learn more: Router Setup Guide

How Router Logic Works

When a transaction comes through, the router evaluates multiple rules in a specific order to determine which merchant should process it. This includes checking merchant groups, BIN restrictions, item routing rules, caps, priorities, and more before applying the routing method.

Every transaction logs its routing decision in the Route Log tab on the order. Use this to debug routing issues, verify logic is working correctly, and understand which rules were applied to each transaction.

Learn more: Router Logic & Decision Flow

Learn more: Payment Router Troubleshooting

Testing Your Router

Vrio provides a testing tool to simulate routing without processing real transactions. Use this to verify your routing configuration works as expected before going live.

Learn more: Testing a Router

Advanced Features

Once your basic router is working, you can enable advanced features:

Priorities & Caps

Initial Decline Reattempts (IDR)

Auto-Deactivation

Item-Based Routing

Max Attempts

Merchant Groups

BIN Routing

  • Block specific card BINs from certain merchants
  • Priority routing for specific BINs to preferred merchants
  • Learn more: BIN Routing

Troubleshooting

Payment Router Troubleshooting Guide

FAQ

Related Documentation

Updated 6 days ago