TSG Real Transaction Metrics Awards: What Gateway Uptime Means for Merchants

By Fortis | March 5, 2024

In an industry as dynamic and intricate as payments, recognition from impartial third-party reviewers stands as a testament to the dedication and excellence of companies striving for unparalleled service. These awards not only celebrate achievement but also serve as beacons guiding stakeholders toward industry leaders. Among these esteemed reviewers, The Strawhecker Group (TSG), a globally recognized analytics, intelligence, and solutions-focused firm in the payments industry, plays a pivotal role. With a keen eye for identifying excellence, TSG meticulously evaluates companies based on their performance across various essential criteria, offering invaluable insights into the ever-evolving landscape of payment solutions. Their recognition serves not only as a badge of honor but also as a catalyst for innovation and improvement within the industry.

In 2024, TSG determined that Fortis offers the best payment gateway uptime and was the second-best solution globally for the lowest gateway minute outage.

The award criteria

TSG 2024 Best Transaction Metrics Awards used its Global Experience Monitoring (GEM) platform to evaluate various payment gateway companies. The GEM system tracks credit card transactions and non-synthetic pings from over 30 global locations over four continents. Each award category is based on a metric that provides insight into the merchant’s view of checkout performance.

TSG featured Fortis in three awards:

Best Gateway Uptime— Fortis won the Best Gateway Uptime award, which regularly measures performance checks to determine the availability of the gateway at any given time.
Lowest Gateway Minute Outage— Fortis received first place for Lowest Gateway Minute Outage (North America). GEM pings locations in the United States and Canada to determine minute outages. An outage is recorded if at least 25% of location checks fail simultaneously.
Lowest Gateway Minute Outage (Global)— Fortis was the runner-up for this award, which checks GEM pings in North America, South America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific to determine outages. Outages are recorded only when at least 50% of location checks fail at the same time.

Ensuring payment gateway availability and reducing outages is essential for a best-in-class payment platform. These technical aspects monitor a platform’s reliability—the higher the uptime, the better.

Uptime’s relationship to excellent performance

A high uptime means that a website or application is rarely offline or unstable, and downtime is when a website or application is not available or working. As a result, payment gateways with a high uptime ensure a seamless experience for both the merchant and the consumer. Having a low downtime reduces the potential for error or lost data. Additionally, downtime causes merchants to potentially lose sales because they are unable to accept payments. Therefore, having little to no downtime ensures merchants do not lose potential revenue during unforeseen downtime events.

To achieve reliable gateway uptime, a payment platform typically invests in several regional data centers and creates redundant infrastructure to prevent potential data loss. These systems must also be monitored, tested, and maintained to ensure high-quality performance.

High uptime typically means the payment gateway is well-equipped to handle potential threats, such as system malfunctions, maintenance interruptions, cyberattacks, and high transaction volumes.

Likewise, a solution with a low outage minutes measurement isn’t down for very long when an issue does occur.

Fortis users can experience a reliable gateway—ensuring that merchants and consumers can use its payment system 24/7. And on the rare occasion that downtime does occurs, the platform isn’t offline for long.

Who is Fortis?

As a leading payments partner, Fortis enables software companies to develop customized commerce experiences through embedded payment solutions, omnichannel payments, loyalty programs, alternative payment methods, and more.