How Adyen Works: The One-Stop Engine Powering Global Payments

Payments are a maze, or a puzzle. Most companies touch just one piece of that puzzle. Adyen, they went about it differently and built the whole thing to reduce and remove complexity.

Adyen’s approach of bundling payments as a single service is what allowed them to land some of the largest companies in the world like Spotify, Uber, and McDonald’s. Sure, these companies could have pieced a payments solution together, but the Adyen promise stripped away all of that leg work.

In today’s breakdown, we’re going to explore Adyen’s integrated platform and talk about how it’s put together.

How Credit Card Processing Works

Giving cash is easy. Using a credit card isn’t - even though it seems it on the surface.

Before talking about Adyen, let’s first touch on how a credit card is actually processed. Visual learner? Here’s a look at the path:

More a story learner? Hey, we can do that too. You’re in the market for some new shoes and find yourself at the mall. You find a great pair, $100 on the dot so you head to the cash register.

“$100,” says the cashier as the credit card reader lights in front of you. You tap your card and “authorizing” pops up on the screen.

This payment terminal takes the information off of the credit card and sends it to the acquirer processor.

The acquirer processor looks at this data and figures out where it needs to go next. It does this by looking at those first digits on your card (ever noticed how Visa always starts with a ‘4’).

Once it figures that out though, it sends the transaction to the card network (sometimes called a scheme). The card network uses the first six digits of the card number (“BIN”) to find the issuer - in your case let’s say it’s Chase.

So, the card network lets Chase know that you’re trying to buy from “Shoe Barn” and you’re looking to spend $100. Chase then very quickly checks a lot of things:

Are you a customer
In good standing
With enough credit / balance to cover the charge
And you’re allowed to shop at Shoe Barn
And there’s nothing really weird about this transaction (like it’s 2000 miles away from your transaction 15 minutes ago)

If all these checks pass, Chase gives a thumbs up and that thumbs up works its way back through the system.

Where Does Adyen Fit?

Assume you’re setting up a store. That store will sell in-person and online and you’d like a way to process payments. You’d have to find a few things:

Point-of-sale system provider
Payment gateway
Acquiring bank
E-commerce payment solution that likely differs from the three above
A team to piece everything together

Putting all these pieces together can take a lot of effort and time. Once they’re together, there’s a lot of maintenance too.

So, in comes a company like Adyen. Adyen thought “what if we could replace almost every part of this with one solution?” And then they built it.

This required the business to become an acquiring bank and follow banking rules worldwide. It required them to build a leading POS system, and put together an e-commerce platform that works as well as the best-in-class.

In short, then, Adyen is a one-stop shop for:

Payment Gateway
Acquiring bank
Risk tools
Reconciliation
Clearing & Settlement
and even got into the issuing game

By consolidating most of the stack Adyen has better data, higher approval rates, and faster scaling.

Why Companies Choose Adyen

Big companies don’t just want to accept payments. They want control, visibility, and consistency across every country and channel. That’s where Adyen shines.

Instead of stitching all the parts we discussed above together, Adyen offers a single platform with global reach. One API, one dashboard, one source of truth for all of a business’s payments.

That kind of thing matters when you’re Uber, trying to accept payments in 70+ countries. Or McDonald’s trying to sync in-store and app purchases with the same customer profile.

Adyen offers multinational corporations—and smaller firms—an excellent platform with clear, well-broken-down pricing. With its Interchange++ pricing model, Adyen separates out card network fees, issuer costs, and Adyen’s own margin so that merchants know exactly what they’re paying for.

The one line answer to “why Adyen?” It’s well built, cost effective payments infrastructure that reduces risk at any scale.

Adyen’s Differentiation

Many players in the payments space specialize. They hone in on one piece of the stack and do it really well. When it comes time to grow beyond their specialization, they acquire or partner with another vendor.

One of the key things that sets Adyen apart and, in my opinion, the best part of this business is that Adyen builds everything in house. Everything, end-to-end, and it has done that since day one.

That means no third-party dependencies, no duct-taped dashboards, and no Frankenstein tech stack behind the scenes. A lot of software fails at integration points and, by removing this, Adyen has a built in immunity to the issues its peers will face.

Here’s a look at Adyen, Stripe, and Legacy acquirers:

Feature	Adyen	Stripe	Legacy Acquirers
Built In-House	✅ Full-stack	⚠️ Partially (some acquisitions)	❌ Mostly acquired
Direct Acquiring Licenses	✅ Yes (globally)	⚠️ Partial coverage	✅ Yes
Unified Commerce	✅ Online + In-store	❌ Online-first	⚠️ Disjointed systems
Interchange++ Pricing	✅ Transparent	❌ Blended pricing	❌ Blended or opaque
Enterprise Focus	✅ Primary market	⚠️ Moving upstream	✅ But often inflexible
Risk + Reconciliation	✅ Native	⚠️ Add-ons	⚠️ Often 3rd-party

✅ = Core strength

⚠️ = Partial / growing

❌ = Weak or missing

Adyen: The Quiet Backbone of Global Payments

Adyen isn’t flashy. It’s not trying to win on marketing or buzz. It’s trying to win by being the most reliable, scalable infrastructure for global payments and that’s exactly what it has done.

By building everything in-house, Adyen controls the entire payment flow from terminal to settlement. That gives it an edge in data, performance, and customer experience that’s hard to replicate.

It’s not for everyone, Stripe still dominates the startup world. But for global brands that care about consistency, conversion, and cost control, Adyen is becoming the default.

Next time you tap your card at McDonald’s or order on Uber, there’s a good chance Adyen is moving your money behind the scenes.

And now? You know how.