'Tis the season to secure sales: How to improve authorisation rates for your business

Every time a customer attempts a payment, their bank needs to confirm the availability of funds and verify the transaction's legitimacy. Authorisation rates measure the proportion of attempted payments that are successfully authorised and completed. Having a high authorisation rate shows that your customers are able to pay seamlessly, which increases conversions, rather than their cards getting declined, excess friction I the process, and your business losing sales as a result.

As the countdown to the holiday sales begins, ensuring a seamless and secure authorisation process becomes even more critical. Enhancing authorisation rates during this festive period is key to boosting revenue and ensuring a top-notch shopping experience for customers.

But how can you optimise your authorisation rates and make the holiday shopping journey merrier for users?

Embrace Digital Wallets

Introduce digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay as payment options. These methods often boast higher acceptance rates due to their reliance on secure biometric data, ensuring smoother and more accurate authorisations.

Optimise Payment Flow

Tailor your payment flow to the holiday season. For businesses with deferred payments, strategically choose the best time to charge customers and the optimal amount. Consider collecting a percentage upfront and the remainder upon completion to strike a balance between customer experience and revenue optimisation.

Collect Comprehensive Billing Information

Enhance trustworthiness by collecting and submitting detailed billing information, signalling credibility to banks and increasing the likelihood of payment verification.

Implement 3D Secure 2.2

Check with your payments provider that they are using 3D Secure 2.2 (3DS2.2), a robust payments security protocol, to significantly improve authorisation rates. Its advanced verification processes, including multi-factor authentication, reduce cart abandonment and boost conversions, ensuring a secure yet streamlined payment experience.

Combat Fraud with Vigilance

Maintain low levels of fraudulent activity by investing in reliable fraud detection and prevention systems. Customise rules to categorise transactions based on risk levels, utilizing machine learning to make accurate decisions. Preventing fraud enhances your business's reputation and contributes to higher authorisation rates.

Understand Response Codes

Familiarise yourself with response codes, as they provide insights into the success or decline of a card transaction. Use these codes strategically, retrying soft declines and avoiding retries for hard declines. Automation triggered by decline codes can personalise customer interactions and optimise the payment journey.

As you gear up for the festive rush, optimising authorisation rates can significantly impact the success of your Christmas sales. Higher authorisation rates translate to more completed payments, leading to increased revenue, a vital factor for the success of online businesses during the festive season. Successful transactions also contribute to a positive customer experience, crucial for retaining and building customer relationships.

At Cashflows, we provide our customers with comprehensive real-time customer data from all of their channels all in one place, providing crucial insights into declines and authorisation rates. Our team works hard to ensure that our customers have the tools they need to understand and improve their authorisation rate and give their customers  seamless payment experiences. To find out more about our data reporting click here. To contact our team and find out more about how we can support your business to grow click here.