Multi-Acquiring Strategies

Multi-Acquiring Strategies

Last updated:October 14, 2024

Imagine you’re a merchant running a bustling eCommerce business. Your customers come from all over the world, and ensuring their payments go through smoothly is crucial for maintaining your reputation and driving sales. In the fast-paced world of eCommerce, efficient and reliable payment processing is essential. Multi-acquiring strategies like Smart Retry, BIN Dispatching, and Channel Dispatching can significantly enhance your payment processing framework. This guide will help you understand each strategy, when to use them, and the problems they solve through practical examples.

Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Business

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.

Summary of Multi-Acquiring Strategies

Orchestration Strategy Description When to Use Interactive Guide
Smart retry Automatically retries failed transactions with fallback acquirers. High rates of transaction failures due to temporary issues or high-risk declines. Smart Retry
BIN Dispatching Routes transactions based on the card’s Bank Identification Number (BIN) to the most suitable acquirer. Need to optimize transaction costs and improve approval rates by directing transactions to the best acquirer for specific card types and regions. Bin Dispatcher
Channel Dispatching Distributes transactions to designated channels based on specific criteria (e.g., card brand) or predefined percentages. Balance transaction loads, conduct A/B testing of different acquirers, or tailor payment routing to specific transaction attributes. Channel Dispatcher

Combining Strategies for Robust Multi-Acquiring

Combined Strategy Description When to Use
BIN Dispatching + Smart Retry Combines optimized routing based on card BINs with a fallback mechanism for failed transactions. Use when you need both optimized routing and a safety net for failed transactions.
Channel Dispatching + Smart Retry Balances transaction loads and retries failed transactions with fallback acquirers. Use when you need to balance load and ensure high success rates by retrying failed transactions.
Channel Dispatching + BIN Dispatcher Combines targeted routing based on card BINs with cost efficiency and improved approval rates. Use when you need to optimize costs and approval rates by leveraging both dispatching methods.
Comprehensive Strategy Integrates BIN Dispatching, Channel Dispatching, and Smart Retry for maximum optimization. Use when you need the most robust setup for managing costs, risks, and ensuring high transaction success rates.

Conclusion

Smart Retry is more than just a fallback mechanism; it’s a powerful tool that helps you navigate the complexities of payment processing. By automatically handling failed transactions and optimizing the payment flow, Smart Retry ensures that your customers enjoy a seamless shopping experience, and you maintain operational efficiency and high conversion rates. Embrace Smart Retry to protect your reputation, support customer loyalty, and drive repeat business.


See also