Multi-Acquiring Strategies

Smart Retry

Imagine a customer eagerly purchasing a limited-edition item from your store. They enter their payment details, but due to a temporary issue with your primary acquirer, the transaction fails. Without Smart Retry, this could mean a lost sale and a disappointed customer. However, with Smart Retry, the transaction is automatically redirected to a fallback acquirer, successfully completing the sale. The customer is happy, and you’ve secured the revenue without any manual intervention.

Navigating Risk Profiles

Another common challenge is dealing with transactions that are flagged as high-risk by acquirers. For instance, a customer from a high-risk region attempts to make a purchase. The primary acquirer declines the transaction due to its risk profile. Smart Retry steps in, rerouting the transaction to a fallback acquirer that has more flexibility in accepting high-risk transactions. The payment goes through, and you’ve managed to convert a potentially lost sale into a successful one.

Optimizing Conversion Rates

Merchants often face issues with acquirers declining payments based on Merchant Category Codes (MCC). Imagine you run an online store selling sporting goods. Your primary acquirer declines a transaction due to the MCC associated with high-risk categories. Smart Retry can automatically resubmit the transaction using a different MCC relevant to your industry, such as retail or apparel. This increases the likelihood of the payment being accepted, boosting your conversion rates.

Enhancing Customer Experience

Picture a customer trying to make a purchase during a flash sale. The initial payment attempt fails due to a soft bank reject, perhaps because of a temporary network issue. Smart Retry immediately resubmits the transaction, either to the same acquirer or a different one, ensuring the payment goes through. The customer completes their purchase without even realizing there was an issue, enjoying a smooth and uninterrupted shopping experience.

Handling Authentication Challenges

In the world of online payments, authentication is key. Suppose a customer’s payment is declined due to a soft decline from the issuer requesting Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). Smart Retry can automatically resubmit the transaction with the necessary authentication data, ensuring compliance with security requirements while still processing the payment successfully. This not only secures the transaction but also builds trust with your customers.

Business Model

Depending on your business model, you can determine how to best recover a payment transaction based on the initial authorization failure reason:

• Automatic smart retrying with a global acquirer when payment transactions fail with a local acquirer.
• Automatic smart retrying with a fallback acquirer that has greater flexibility to accept high-risk profile customers and transactions.

Benefits

You can configure retry options for each channel without the need to update or adjust the payment integration. Smart Retry:

• Supports an enhanced customer experience and drives conversion rates by resubmitting failed transactions for a second attempt.
• Helps to recover lost sales and optimize the payment flow to maintain operational efficiency.
• Helps merchants to deliver excellent acceptance levels and enhanced service to their customers by protecting their reputation, supporting loyalty, and encouraging repeat business.
• Does not require a separate agreement or any adjustment in pricing. Only the additional retried transactions get charged.

Bank Rejects

• Soft bank rejects are temporary and can happen anywhere in the processing chain up to the issuing bank. These rejections often stem from issues with the connection to the acquirer, overly-protective fraud checks by the acquirer, or how transactions are flagged from the acquirer to the issuing bank. Transactions can be immediately retried, often leading to successful processing of legitimate transactions.
• Hard bank rejects are more permanent authorization failures coming directly from the issuing bank. These failures may be caused by stolen cards, invalid cards, closed account cases, or insufficient funds, among other reasons. When a hard bank rejection occurs, the issue lies with the issuing bank, and transactions should not be retried unless the underlying issues have been resolved.

The Smart Retry feature is particularly effective for handling soft bank rejects, as it allows for automatic resubmission of failed transactions to the same or an alternative acquirer, increasing the likelihood of successful payment completion.

BIN Dispatching

While Smart Retry is a powerful tool for handling failed transactions, BIN dispatching adds another layer of sophistication to your payment processing strategy. BIN dispatching involves routing transactions based on the first six digits of the card number, which identify the issuing bank and card type. This method can significantly enhance the efficiency and success rate of your payment processing.

Improve Your Bottom Line and Fight Fraud

Dispatching transactions between different acquirers is a smart way to improve your bottom line and fight fraud simultaneously. Large international merchants often have multiple Merchant Identification Numbers (MIDs) with different acquirers worldwide. For instance, a US acquirer might only process US credit cards, while a European acquirer handles all European-issued credit cards. The BIN Country Dispatcher enables merchants to route their credit card volume to the cheapest acquirer for a specific transaction, saving on shopper exchange costs. These costs occur when a credit card issued in one region is processed by an acquirer in another region.
In cases where fraud and chargebacks are a concern, distributing transactions from high-risk regions to separate MIDs can prevent the termination of a MID due to high chargeback rates. This strategy helps maintain the processing volume and protects the merchant’s business.

Optimizing Transaction Costs

By using BIN dispatching, you can route transactions to acquirers that offer the most favorable interchange rates for specific card types. For example, debit card transactions might be cheaper with one acquirer, while credit card transactions might be more cost-effective with another. This strategic routing helps you minimize transaction costs and maximize your profit margins.

Enhancing Approval Rates

Different acquirers have varying approval rates based on their relationships with issuing banks. By analyzing historical data, you can identify which acquirers have higher approval rates for specific BINs. For instance, if Acquirer A has a higher approval rate for cards issued by Bank X, you can route transactions from Bank X’s BINs to Acquirer A, thereby increasing the likelihood of successful transactions.

Managing Regional Preferences

Customers from different regions may have preferences for certain banks or card types. BIN dispatching allows you to cater to these preferences by routing transactions to acquirers that are more familiar with the local banking landscape. For example, if you have a significant customer base in Europe, you can route European-issued cards to acquirers that specialize in European transactions, ensuring smoother processing and higher approval rates.

Handling High-Risk Transactions

Similar to Smart Retry, BIN dispatching can help manage high-risk transactions. By identifying BINs associated with high-risk regions or card types, you can route these transactions to acquirers that have robust fraud detection and risk management systems. This proactive approach helps mitigate the risk of fraud and chargebacks, protecting your business and your customers.

Improving Customer Experience

A seamless payment experience is crucial for customer satisfaction. BIN dispatching ensures that transactions are processed quickly and efficiently by routing them to the most appropriate acquirer. This reduces the likelihood of declines and delays, providing your customers with a smooth and hassle-free checkout experience.

Product Description

The new Credit Card BIN dispatcher enables you to navigate incoming transactions and send them to a specific acquirer/bank based on defined settings per MID:

• Individual defined Credit Card BIN Ranges
• Selected issued countries of Credit Cards

Within the MID configuration, you can set all these essential parameters to stream your credit card transactions per PSP/Division/Merchant or Channel. Example Configurations:

• Send all credit cards for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland to Acquirer MID A.
• Send all credit cards where the BIN is between 534500 and 534599 to Acquirer MID B.
• Send all credit cards where the BIN is between 510100 and 510900 to Acquirer MID C.
• Send all other cards to Acquirer MID D.

Integrating BIN Dispatching with Smart Retry

Combining BIN dispatching with Smart Retry creates a robust multi-acquiring strategy. Here’s how they work together:

• Initial Routing: Use BIN dispatching to route transactions to the most suitable acquirer based on card type, region, and cost considerations.
• Fallback Mechanism: If a transaction fails, Smart Retry kicks in, automatically resubmitting the transaction to a fallback acquirer.
• Continuous Optimization: Analyze transaction data to refine your BIN dispatching rules and Smart Retry configurations, ensuring optimal performance over time.

Channel Dispatching

In the dynamic world of eCommerce, ensuring efficient and reliable payment processing is crucial. Channel dispatching is a powerful method that allows merchants to distribute payments across multiple channels based on specific criteria or predefined percentages. This strategy not only optimizes transaction routing but also enhances the overall payment processing framework.

Channel Dispatching by Matched Criteria

This method routes transactions to specific channels based on predefined criteria, such as the brand of the card or the issuing bank. By matching transactions to the most suitable acquirer, merchants can optimize approval rates and reduce transaction costs.

Practical Applications:

• Brand-Specific Routing: Direct transactions from specific card brands (e.g., Visa, MasterCard) to acquirers that offer the best rates or highest approval rates for those brands.
• Regional Preferences: Route transactions based on the issuing bank’s region to acquirers familiar with local banking practices, ensuring smoother processing and higher approval rates.

Example: A merchant routes all Visa transactions to Acquirer A and all MasterCard transactions to Acquirer B, optimizing costs and approval rates based on the acquirers’ strengths with each brand.

Channel Percentage Dispatching

This method distributes a certain percentage of transaction traffic to different channels, each configured with specific acquirers. This approach allows merchants to test new configurations, manage risk, and balance load across multiple acquirers.

Practical Applications

• A/B Testing: Evaluate different acquirers by routing a percentage of transactions to each and comparing performance metrics.
• Feature Rollout: Test new gateway features on a small percentage of traffic before full implementation, minimizing risk.
• Risk Management: Experiment with various risk settings on a subset of transactions to analyze performance before broader rollout.

Example: A merchant processes 90% of transactions through Channel A with Acquirer X and 10% through Channel B with Acquirer Y to test Acquirer Y’s performance without disrupting the majority of transactions.

How It Works

When a payment transaction hits the gateway, it is processed according to the dispatching rule set by the merchant. For matched criteria dispatching, transactions are routed based on specific attributes like card brand or issuing bank. For percentage dispatching, transactions are distributed across channels based on predefined percentages, ensuring balanced load management and performance evaluation.