Friends, today we want to talk about the conversion of payments. What it is? What are the most common reasons for refusals? How to optimize the throughput of payments?
Different people count the conversion in different ways: by the throughput of payments (the ratio of successful payments to the total number of attempts), by the number of successfully paid orders (regardless of the number of attempts required for successful payment), and even - in especially difficult cases - by the number of clicks to the payment form. We consider the first option - for us, as for a payment gateway, the rate of throughput of payments is the most important and amenable to optimization on our part.
Payment conversion is the number of successful payments out of the total number of transactions. The conversion of payments can and should be analyzed, it lends itself to optimization and - depending on the technological capabilities of the payment gateway - can be brought to maximum efficiency.
The "average hospital" rate of Russian e-commerce payment conversion ranges from 60 to 75%, in Payler this figure is in the range of 85-96%. According to our statistics, refusals most often occur for the following reasons:
Most of these problems arise from lack of flexibility / lack of technical capabilities of the payment gateway. At Payler, depending on the specifics of the business, we offer our clients the following solutions:
And this is how a customized payment form of one of our merchants.
The user is most likely to make a successful payment if the payment form helps him in this. Breakdown of the card number input field into blocks of four digits with automatic cursor transfer to the next block, visual imitation of a bank card, no unnecessary fields (the cardholder's name is unnecessary information, getting rid of this field affects the conversion only positively) and tips at each stage of filling payment form - these simple guidelines are suitable for almost all areas of activity.
Every problem has a solution. The task of the payment gateway in the matter of optimizing the conversion of payments is to find an individual solution without crossing the threshold of acceptable risks.
Different people count the conversion in different ways: by the throughput of payments (the ratio of successful payments to the total number of attempts), by the number of successfully paid orders (regardless of the number of attempts required for successful payment), and even - in especially difficult cases - by the number of clicks to the payment form. We consider the first option - for us, as for a payment gateway, the rate of throughput of payments is the most important and amenable to optimization on our part.
Payment conversion is the number of successful payments out of the total number of transactions. The conversion of payments can and should be analyzed, it lends itself to optimization and - depending on the technological capabilities of the payment gateway - can be brought to maximum efficiency.
The "average hospital" rate of Russian e-commerce payment conversion ranges from 60 to 75%, in Payler this figure is in the range of 85-96%. According to our statistics, refusals most often occur for the following reasons:
- 3D-S authorization errors (the user did not enter the code / entered with an error, the code did not come, the 3D-S authorization page did not open). This is the most common reason for rejection. It accounts for up to 42-45% of failures.
- The transaction was rejected by the issuing bank / acquiring bank. This error accounts for about 29-33% of failures.
- The buyer exhibits suspicious activity and is blocked by anti-fraud systems. Between 18 and 25% of failures occur for this reason.
- Buyer errors. The rarest reason is only 3-4% of failures.
Most of these problems arise from lack of flexibility / lack of technical capabilities of the payment gateway. At Payler, depending on the specifics of the business, we offer our clients the following solutions:
- Disabling / varying the 3D-S level. To reduce the failure rate due to 3D-S authorization errors, you can either turn off 3D-S completely, or set more gentle settings. For example, set limits on the amount and number of payments - in this case, the user will be able to pay without 3D-S for a purchase for an amount less than the established limit (as a rule, the amount is within a few thousand rubles). It is also possible to request 3D-S only from transactions from a specific list of countries.
- Manual anti-fraud settings. For example, allow payments if the IP address and country of issue of the card do not match - most payment gateways automatically reject such transactions, but manual settings allow you to find the optimal balance between conversion and security.
- Routing requests. The ability of a payment gateway to conduct on-us transactions, in which the issuing bank acts as an acquiring bank, is practically a guarantee that the lion's share of potentially unsuccessful payments will still be authorized.
- Payment form customization. We want to dwell on this point in more detail. Everyone knows that the payment form should be as usable as possible, but for some reason there are still the following options.
And this is how a customized payment form of one of our merchants.
The user is most likely to make a successful payment if the payment form helps him in this. Breakdown of the card number input field into blocks of four digits with automatic cursor transfer to the next block, visual imitation of a bank card, no unnecessary fields (the cardholder's name is unnecessary information, getting rid of this field affects the conversion only positively) and tips at each stage of filling payment form - these simple guidelines are suitable for almost all areas of activity.
Conversion and risks
In theory, a payment gateway can completely disable 3D-S and set such anti-fraud settings that the conversion will tend to 100%. But you need to understand that these are risks, primarily for the merchant himself (chargebacks are not a toy). The payment gateway itself and the acquiring bank are also at risk. Therefore, the main task in optimizing the throughput of payments is finding a balance. Below we have listed the most common categories of activities in order of decreasing their riskiness:- High-risk. Semi-legal and illegal content. Here the risks are maximum, and those madmen who nevertheless decide to turn off 3D-S and sparingly adjust the anti-fraud filters, as a rule, compensate for their risks with sky-high service rates.
- Ecommerce (physical goods). In the case of the sale of physical goods - gadgets, spare parts and other goods that can be quickly resold, the risks are maximum. Filters come to the rescue with restrictions on the amount / number of purchases, countries.
- Ecommerce (non-physical goods). When selling legal content, subscriptions, cloud services and other services, access to which can be limited at the first suspicion of fraud, the number of fraudulent requests drops sharply - here we can completely disable 3D-S, or connect recurrent services and set the most flexible anti-fraud settings.
- Housing and communal services, state and municipal services. Here the risks are the smallest - in our practice we have not met a single fraudster trying to pay utility bills or fines from a stolen card.
Every problem has a solution. The task of the payment gateway in the matter of optimizing the conversion of payments is to find an individual solution without crossing the threshold of acceptable risks.
