5 Ways eCommerce Merchants Can Increase Authorization Success Rates

To make more sales, it is imperative for eCommerce merchants to improve authorization success rates and reduce transaction declines. The easy part in eCommerce business however is to build an eCommerce website and hosting it live. But, mastering the art of making your customers feel well-treated requires some measure of expertise. The most vital of this expertise is how best to optimize eCommerce payment solutions to enhance customer satisfaction. These here are a few key aspects of the business that any eCommerce merchant should always consider whenever they aim to improve authorization rates for their customers. 

1. Know Your Customer (KYC) 

Knowing exactly who your customer is goes way beyond just doing KYC. Granular customer profiling reduces friction and builds trust at checkout. If for instance you know the countries where people buy and the issuers behind their payment methods, you can tailor your requirements to reduce checkout friction, increase comfort, and boost stickiness. In whichever country your customers are, the customers’ issuers will be happier knowing a merchant has already taken steps to verify payment legitimacy. That way they avoid shifting any form of liability to the issuer. Doing this can reduce consumer friction and increase authorization rates. What this means is that merchants must always ensure they check with their fraud team first before payment is authorized. Merchants can also routinely review the effectiveness of performing 3-D Secure. With this validation, they can always avoid the friction 3-D Secure can create for customers, a consequence of which a huge chunk of transaction attempts are usually lost.

2. Speak to Sell

Most online shoppers always appreciate having more information when shopping. Introducing soft messages at the checkout process always helps out a great deal. Tailoring checkout responses based on your acquirer’s feedback can improve outcomes. Always be very careful about the language you use at this stage. If for instance you respond with something like “your payment has failed” without the specific reason, you miss the chance for the consumer to try again more effectively. You must always aim to help a customer complete a purchase by providing soft prompts to help them along the way. This is exactly why the information from your acquirer really matters. You may for instance tell the customer they used an incorrect CVV code, that funds are insufficient, or that a card cannot be stored because it’s a single-use virtual card. These are soft message prompts designed to help a customer through the purchase process. If you do things right by using a more specific response, it can prompt a positive customer reaction and potentially turn a decline into a sale.

3. Introduce Network Tokens

Network tokens are essentially tokenization that follows standards provided by popular global payment schemes like Visa, Mastercard and American Express. These schemes do offer network tokens that essentially replace the Primary Account Number (PAN) with a secure, dynamic token for online purchases. It has since been discovered that most online shoppers will abandon their carts if they encounter any friction at checkout. As a result, a very huge chunk of sales are annually declined due to outdated credentials. This is exactly what network tokens try to mitigate. Network token is used on future card-on-file transactions and recurring transactions instead of the actual card details, as any other token. Additionally, if a card expires or is replaced, or if the consumer data changes, the same network token remains valid without updates. This is a major advantage of network token. They significantly help customers to complete purchases online with less friction. 
 
4. Add Mobile Wallets

Most online shoppers are used to simply entering their physical credit cards numbers to make payments online. Mobile wallets are now handy. Some issuers are no longer issuing cards with printed account numbers. Mastercard for instance is now working towards total eCommerce tokenization to eliminate manual card entries. Apple and Google are actively building mobile wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay to simplify eCommerce payments. These smart wallets significantly increase authorization rates and reduce checkout process frictions by eliminating incorrect manual input errors. 

5. Use Smart Tools to Recover Declined Transactions

Technically, not all declined transactions are unrecoverable. Some declines are retriable immediately while others are retriable after specific window of time. The number of retries for specific declines also has a maximum, and beyond that maximum amount per month, penalty fees do apply. There are categories of declines which can be taken advantage of to retry depending on the issuer. Visa and Mastercard for instance have Merchant Advice Codes (MAC) that contains additional information not originally in the decline message. This message helps in the retrial process. This vital information helps merchants to optimize their cost of processing and authorization rate thereby cutting down on decline rates. It directly results in more sales/revenue.