ICE 2026 in Barcelona delivered again, bringing together the global iGaming industry to share the latest innovations, challenges and market-leading solutions. For Paysecure, the event was energising, productive and, above all, clarifying.
Across three packed days, we met with clients, partners and new prospects all navigating increasingly complex payment environments. Conversations were future-focused, and while each business faces its own pressures, a consistent theme emerged time and time again – agility is no longer a competitive advantage, it is a necessity.
Payments are more fragmented and more restricted
As Amit, our CEO, reflected during the event, the payments landscape is becoming both more fragmented and more regulated. New markets bring new local payment methods, new compliance requirements and new provider behaviours. At the same time, regulatory scrutiny is intensifying across established jurisdictions.
Operators are being asked to do more; expand faster, localise better, optimise harder, all while operating within tighter constraints. In that environment, static payment stacks struggle.
What came through clearly in our conversations was the need for flexibility within structure, the ability to test new solutions, optimise performance and adapt to regulation without having to rebuild your entire payments stack each time. There’s a growing recognition that orchestration isn’t just about routing transactions. It’s about giving operators room to manoeuvre. This is where orchestration becomes critical. It provides the framework to operate intelligently within regulation, rather than being limited by it.
Our ambition has always been to level the playing field. Not every brand has a huge internal payments team or endless engineering resources. However, every brand should be able to access intelligent optimisation, clear reporting and tools that genuinely improve performance.
Collaboration over competition
ICE also reinforced the importance of partnership. As Mike Peplow, COO, discussed, progress in payments is no longer about isolated providers working independently. The ecosystem is too interconnected, too complex and too performance-driven for that model to work.
True agility requires collaboration between acquirers, PSPs, fraud providers, platforms and operators. All parties need shared visibility, aligned objectives and infrastructure that connects these moving parts seamlessly.
The future isn’t about adding more providers to the stack, it is about orchestrating them intelligently through tools such as payment orchestration, which ensures the entire ecosystem succeeds.
Managing uncertainty on a human scale
Another recurring theme was unpredictability, but this is an ongoing challenge in high-risk, high volume environments. Alex Frishchin, our Account Management Director made a point that resonated with a lot of people we spoke to about payments being uncertain by nature.
Fraud patterns shift, risk appetites evolve, regulatory expectations tighten and player behaviour changes; so the need for flexibility is critical to survive, let alone thrive. Managing this uncertainty at scale requires human level logic, to ensure the nuance of market context, player behaviour and company priorities are addressed. However, it is impossible to physically manage every rule, retry, or payment decision.
This is where intelligent orchestration becomes transformative. Real-time routing decisions, automated retries, redundancy workflows and performance-based logic allow operators to respond dynamically without constant oversight. Agility in this context is not just speed, it is the ability to adapt in real time while maintaining control.
Born from the industry, built for the industry
As Sam, our Head of Sales, highlighted, Paysecure was founded from the perspective of both an operator and a provider. That dual heritage shapes how we approach every conversation.
At ICE we were able to talk through real use cases and scenarios; why certain routing strategies improve acceptance in specific markets, how redundancy workflows protect revenue during outages, and what happens when operators needed to pivot quickly under regulatory pressure.
Agility can mean many things, but one topic that came up repeatedly in Barcelona was the need to trial new PSPs and acquirers without months of commitment or technical overhead. Operators want access to new providers and they want to test performance in live environments. They want the freedom to switch, optimise or scale up quickly if results justify it.
That’s exactly why agility sits at the core of our design. Our integration timeline is typically around two weeks to onboard and activate a new provider within our payment orchestration layer. That speed gives operators room to experiment, compare performance and make informed decisions based on real data rather than assumptions.
Agility isn’t a feature layered onto our platform. It’s structural. From market expansion capabilities to rapid provider onboarding, configurable routing logic and performance optimisation, everything is built to give operators flexibility without destabilising their wider infrastructure.
In today’s market, standing still isn’t neutral. It’s a risk.
Player behaviour informs payment strategy
One of the most interesting threads across the week was how much player behaviour is shaping payment decisions. As Taylor Barnard explained, player behaviour is increasingly dictating payment priorities. The right payment method must be presented at the right time, in the right format, with the right trust signals. Load times, localisation, cashier design; it all matters and supports conversion.
Payments are no longer a backend function or utility, they are a core part of the user experience and directly influence lifetime value. Agility here means being able to experiment and refine continuously, introducing new payment methods quickly, adjusting thresholds, optimising routing logic and tailoring experiences based on behavioural insight.
The brands that succeed will be those that treat payments as a strategic growth lever rather than a static operational function.
Innovation enables control
ICE also gave us the opportunity to demonstrate the latest enhancements to the Paysecure platform. As Cem, our Senior Project Manager, shared, our recent developments focus on delivering deeper control and clearer visibility. Enhanced reporting capabilities, more granular routing logic, and our highly dynamic cashier are all designed to give operators the flexibility to deliver hyperpersonalised payment experiences, without adding complexity.
When regulatory requirements change or new markets open, adaptation should not require months of development. It should be manageable, configurable and fast. That is what modern orchestration needs to deliver.
Resilience is the real benchmark for performance
Perhaps the most significant shift discussed at ICE was how performance itself is being measured.
Acceptance rate remains critical, but resilience is becoming equally important. How effectively can you recover from failed transactions? How quickly can you reroute traffic during downtime? How intelligently can you balance cost against conversion?
In an environment where disruption is inevitable, resilience protects revenue. Agile orchestration creates that safety net through automated retries, intelligent routing and redundancy flows working together to safeguard performance.
In 2026 and beyond, we believe resilience will separate reactive operators from proactive ones.
Looking to the year ahead
More than anything, Barcelona confirmed that the industry is entering a new phase. Operators want flexibility without complexity, optimisation without manual burden and they need intelligence to fuel real-time decisions.
With emerging themes on topics such as agentic AI, intelligence and visibility are becoming ever-more important, alongside the need for agility. We’re proud to be building the orchestration infrastructure that enables brands to capitalise on what’s to come, ensuring proactive operators can expand confidently, optimise intelligently and perform consistently in an increasingly complex payments ecosystem.
If we didn’t connect at ICE, we’d welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation, so please get in touch with the team today.