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# Smart transaction routing

Smart transaction routing sends each transaction to the connector best suited to process it, based on rules you define — by currency, customer country, amount, card properties, risk score, and more. Routing also covers **failover** (retrying failed transactions on backup connectors) and **load balancing** (splitting traffic across connectors).

Routing rules are configured on a **meta-connector** : a virtual connector that dispatches every transaction it receives to one of the merchant's regular connectors. Your integration processes payments against the meta-connector like against any other connector — the routing decision happens transparently on the platform.

There are two ways to author routing rules:

* **Admin interface** — the visual rule editor, explained in the user manual: [Meta-Connector routing](https://documentation.ixopay.com/manual/docs/connector/routing-cascading-balancing-fallback) and [Multi-Method Connector](https://documentation.ixopay.com/manual/docs/connector/multi-method-connector).
* **Provisioning API** — author the same rules programmatically as JSON documents, for example from your own dashboard.

> **Reference**
>
> For more details on  connector routing via the Provisioning API, check out the in-depth article on [connector routing via the Provisioning API](https://documentation.ixopay.com/docs/reference/features/provisioning/connector-routing "Connector routing via the Provisioning API reference article") in the reference.

Both paths read and write the same configuration, so they can be combined freely.