ISVs don’t fail because of bad ideas. They fail because of bloated timelines, bolted-on tech, and backend complexity. Especially in payments, the wrong integration can become a drag on every part of your roadmap.
Many payment providers are cobbled together through years of acquisitions, with each new feature sitting on a different backend. Thanks to these legacy API stacks, you’re often forced to manage separate APIs for things like ACH, reporting, and onboarding—each with its own logic, data structures, and authentication—which in turn causes ongoing challenges such as increased development complexity, higher maintenance costs, data fragmentation and synchronization issues, an inconsistent user experience, compliance and security risks, limited payment optimization, and longer time to market.
You probably don’t need us to tell you that working with fragmented APIs can be a costly mess.
A unified API, on the other hand, circumvents these problems. It gives you one streamlined integration point into a robust backend payments platform, simplifying development, reducing maintenance, and enabling scalable access to almost every payment type—credit and debit cards (present and not-present), ACH and eCheck, digital wallets, and pay-by-link via text and email.
In this blog, we’ll:
Modular APIs remain common in the payments industry for a variety of reasons. One we’ve already mentioned is that many mid- to large-sized payment providers have grown through acquisition, often creating a hodgepodge of siloed legacy technology and APIs that don’t speak the same language. Another is that different payment components have different regulatory and compliance requirements. ACH payments, for example, involve bank account verification, NACHA file formats, and disparate clearing times, while card payment workflows must manage tokenization, refunds, and disputes. And a third, less-common reason is specialty requirements. ISVs sometimes only want certain features, so separate APIs allow them to integrate specific capabilities without bloating their software with unnecessary functions.
So let’s say you want to support credit/debit cards as well as ACH in your application. Still to this day, many payments providers will make you build two separate integrations—each with its own test environment, onboarding process, and terminology. This creates redundant dev work, longer timelines to launch, disjointed reporting and maintenance challenges, and a support nightmare—especially as you scale.
But at Payroc, we believe you shouldn’t have to build workarounds just to access basic functionality. The payment infrastructure you choose should be as streamlined as the software it's powering. That’s why, as the payments industry has grown and evolved, it’s become increasingly clear that unified payments APIs are the preferred building block for ISVs.
It’s no longer enough for a payments integration to simply process payments. Instead, what you need is a unified payments integration that manages all payment types through a single interface, with no separate onboarding or duplicate logic.
We’re talking:
It’s simplicity by design—something that most developers we’ve worked with not only understand but have a deep appreciation for. We couldn’t agree more.
In addition, your payments integration should provide:
The good news is that there are now a number of payments providers who offer products meeting all of these criteria. For ISVs, there’s no longer a need to settle for anything less.
You’ve probably heard various API suite terms that muddy the waters regarding what defines a true unified API.
A truly unified API, on the other hand:
With Payroc’s unified API, whether you're onboarding a merchant, processing a transaction, managing funding flows, or pulling reports, all of it happens through one integration.
The APIs included in our unified API include:
What’s more, our unified API uses additive architecture. This means you can layer on new features—like hosted fields or dynamic funding—without rebuilding your integration. It’s built to evolve with your software.
Some APIs sound unified but are not, so buyer beware. They can create the illusion of simplicity while really requiring multiple integrations. If an API is marketed as unified but actually isn't, you'll notice:
❌ Multiple API keys for different services
❌ Different compliance requirements for each payment type
❌ Multiple dashboards for reconciliation and reporting
❌ Limited cross-payment functionality (e.g., you can’t refund an ACH transaction via the card API)
For ISVs, separate APIs can cause myriad headaches. As we’ve mentioned, having to manage them can bog down deployment, cause data fragmentation and synchronization issues, increase maintenance costs, create inconsistent user experiences, give rise to compliance and security risks, and limit payment optimization.
But a unified API, conversely, opens the door to:
If it sounds like a unified payments API is the new must-have benchmark for ISVs, you’re right. After all, it’s now on the payments industry menu, and it can make all the difference in your applications’ success.
We’re proud to offer Payroc’s unified API because we understand how impactful it will be for our ISV clients.
With our unified API, your payments integration will unlock:
Payroc’s unified API allows for modular API access if you need it while creating a truly unified experience. Our API handles:
All of this happens through one integration, not four separate projects.
Payroc has long been the payments provider for partners. Our unified API is built for developers, by developers, to ensure:
What’s more, Payroc’s unified API is backed by real people. With us, you get white-glove support and solutions engineers to help guide you from planning to production. You’re never left figuring it out alone.
Integrating payments shouldn’t feel like a series of one-off projects. It should feel like infrastructure. And a unified API suite is definitely a giant step in that direction. It gives you the freedom to launch fast, scale smart, and support a wider set of use cases, all without increasing complexity.
With Payroc, you get one integration, one platform, and everything you need to turn payments from a problem into a competitive advantage.
We invite you to schedule a demo today.