Highlights
- Built from the Ground Up: SPD Technology designed and built utlx based on Axcess’s product vision and business requirements, covering the payment orchestration architecture, backend and frontend development, payment integrations and merchant-facing capabilities.
- Smart Routing Capabilities: We designed and implemented smart routing capabilities to support payment decisions across multiple processing partners and changing merchant needs.
- Fraud and Risk Management: We integrated fraud and risk-management capabilities into the payment platform, balancing stronger protection with a smooth experience for legitimate payments.
- PCI DSS Delivery: SPD Technology incorporated PCI DSS requirements into platform engineering from the start, and the platform has successfully passed PCI DSS audits.
Client
Axcess Payment Services is a UK payment service provider that works with card-not-present merchants across a wide range of industries. Many of these merchants sell across borders, so they take payments in many currencies and often work with more than one acquiring bank.
To support them, in 2026 Axcess launched utlx, its proprietary intelligent payments infrastructure platform. The platform brings smarter payments, complete visibility and total control into one place, backed by more than 300 banking connections and over 30 alternative payment methods.
For merchants operating across multiple providers, acquirers and markets, utlx is designed to simplify complex payment operations, improve visibility and help optimize payment performance.
Product
utlx is the intelligent operating layer from Axcess Payment Services, bringing multiple payment providers, acquirers and markets into one platform for greater control, visibility and more efficient payment operations.
The platform combines intelligent transaction routing, automated reconciliation, real-time monitoring and unified reporting with merchant-facing capabilities such as Pay by Link, Virtual Terminal, recurring payments and custom checkout experiences.
Key capabilities include:
- Payment orchestration
- Intelligent transaction routing
- Automated reconciliation
- Real-time monitoring
- Advanced reporting and merchant analytics
- Pay by Link and Virtual Terminal
- Recurring payments
- Custom checkout experiences
Goals and objectives
- Smart Routing: Direct payments to the most suitable processing partner across a multi-acquirer environment, supporting better payment performance and merchant-specific needs.
- Scalable Connectivity: Create an integration foundation that can support continued expansion of gateway and acquiring connectivity.
- Fraud and Risk Management: Integrate risk-management capabilities into the wider payment platform while preserving a smooth customer experience.
- Merchant Experience: Support consistent merchant-facing payment capabilities across checkout, recurring payments and operational tools.
- Reporting and Reconciliation: Improve visibility into payment activity and support more efficient operational reconciliation.
- PCI-Aligned Engineering: Incorporate PCI DSS v4.0.1 requirements into architecture, development and delivery from the start.
Challenges
- Multi-Provider Payment Environment: The platform needed to support multiple payment providers, acquiring relationships and merchant scenarios while maintaining a consistent payment experience.
- Growing Integration Landscape: New payment integrations and capabilities needed to be introduced without continuously increasing complexity in the core platform.
- Live Payment Reliability: The platform had to continue evolving while processing live payment traffic and maintaining stable merchant operations.
- Compliance as an Engineering Constraint: PCI DSS requirements had to influence architecture and development decisions throughout delivery.
Solution
SPD Technology partnered with Axcess Payment Services to design and build utlx. Axcess defined the product vision, business rules and acquiring relationships; SPD Technology was responsible for engineering the platform. Our engineers developed its payment orchestration architecture, backend and frontend, smart routing, fraud and risk management, payment gateway integrations, and merchant-facing capabilities. In parallel, SPD Technology established the AWS infrastructure and continues to maintain it, providing DevOps and site reliability engineering as the platform evolves.
Payment orchestration and gateway integrations
SPD Technology designed the payment orchestration core and engineered integrations with payment gateways and processing partners. The team established reusable integration patterns to accommodate different payment providers within a consistent platform experience. This engineering foundation supports expansion of payment connectivity without redesigning the platform for each new integration.
Smart routing engineering
SPD Technology designed and implemented smart-routing capabilities as part of the wider payment orchestration platform. The work included integrating routing across multiple processing partners and creating a consistent interaction model across payment integrations, so the capability could evolve as the processing network and merchant requirements grew. The engineering focus was on payment performance, extensibility and maintaining a consistent merchant experience as new connectivity was introduced.
Fraud and risk management
SPD Technology integrated fraud and risk-management capabilities into the wider payment platform, ensuring they worked consistently across payment flows and merchant scenarios. The engineering challenge was to support effective risk control while preserving a smooth experience for legitimate customers and keeping the capability adaptable as requirements evolved.
Merchant-facing services
SPD Technology also built the merchant-facing layer of the platform, including checkout experiences, payment-management tools, reporting and reconciliation capabilities, and recurring-payment scenarios. The goal was to provide a consistent merchant experience across the broader payment ecosystem.
Embedding PCI DSS requirements into architecture and development
PCI DSS requirements informed architecture and development from the beginning of the project. SPD Technology integrated compliance considerations into engineering reviews and delivery practices while building the platform. The platform has successfully passed PCI DSS audits, providing a concrete result of this compliance-focused approach.
How our engineering approach makes the difference
Behind the platform are engineering decisions that make utlx easier to operate, extend and scale. These are the same principles SPD Technology applies to payment orchestration, gateway integration and fintech platform projects.
- Modular architecture: Independent components for routing, risk and gateway connectivity let the platform evolve one part at a time while live payment traffic keeps flowing.
- Standardized gateway integrations: A unified integration approach makes it easier and faster to connect new gateways, reducing the effort and cost required to expand the payment network.
- Compliance built into delivery: PCI DSS requirements are part of the development lifecycle, from architecture decisions to code review, rather than a separate step at the end.
- AWS Infrastructure and SRE: SPD Technology built the platform’s AWS infrastructure from the beginning and continues to maintain it through DevOps and site reliability engineering, supporting reliable operation and ongoing platform evolution.
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Our results
SPD Technology delivered utlx end-to-end, bringing together payment orchestration, smart routing, gateway connectivity, fraud and risk management, merchant-facing services and the AWS infrastructure behind the platform. The engagement continues through infrastructure maintenance and SRE support.
- Payment Platform Built End-to-End: SPD Technology designed and implemented the utlx platform, including its payment orchestration foundation and merchant-facing functionality.
- Gateway Integration Foundation: We engineered payment gateway integrations using reusable patterns designed to make additional connectivity easier to develop and maintain.
- Smart Routing Delivered: SPD Technology built routing capabilities that select processing partners across a multi-acquirer environment, helping Axcess address merchant-specific payment requirements.
- Merchant-Facing Capabilities: We built checkout experiences, payment-management tools, recurring-payment functionality, reporting and reconciliation capabilities.
- Successful PCI DSS Audits: The platform has successfully passed PCI DSS audits following the integration of compliance requirements into architecture, development and delivery.