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Insights and Expertise

From blind spots to building blocks:

How payments data fuels

smarter merchant decisions

In steps orchestration
Orchestration changes the job. By routing payments and
data through a single layer, it gives teams a shared view
of what is happening across providers and channels, and,
more importantly, the ability to act fast.

If a retail channel starts to underperform, traffic can be
rerouted immediately. If approval rates dip for a particu-
lar issuer or network, the affected flows can be isolated
and recovered. If retries perform better through a specific
payments provider or device, teams use those findings to
update routing and retry rules via agreed playbooks, so
future attempts follow the better path.

We have seen this in practice with a betting merchant that
experienced a subtle drop in approvals. Internal monitor-
ing, aggregated at a high level, missed it. The orchestra-
By Thomas Gillian tion layer surfaced the pattern early, a swift reroute fol-
BR-DGE lowed and conversion was protected. That responsiveness
turns small signals into timely action.
very payment tells a story: how much was
spent, where it was made, where it succeeded Metrics that matter
or if it stalled. That story builds with every
E transaction, and merchants are watching it Payments data can be framed in two dimensions: metrics
unfold as payments are processed. and breakdowns. Metrics include volume, value, success
rate, declines, failovers and 3D Secure (3DS) interactions.
At the online checkout, choice has multiplied. Digital wal- Breakdowns include retail channel, processor, method,
lets are now the leading way to pay globally (see https:// transaction type, currency, decline type, issuer, network
bit.ly/48ao3o5) with cards and account-to-account close and token type.
behind. More ways to pay mean more signals in the flow:
authentication steps, device quirks and second attempts With that model, merchants can slice any metric by any
that clear on a different path. That volume isn't just con- breakdown, tracking retry success rates by device, spot-
sumer behavior; it's a stream of live signals merchants ting issuer anomalies by channel, or comparing 3DS out-
have to read and act on. comes by method. That flexibility surfaces patterns that
standard reporting can miss.
Each click, challenge or retry adds to a growing dataset.
It reflects customer intent, payment behavior and how A notable share of 3DS failures relate to redirection and
systems respond under pressure. Seen as transactions are challenge handling in the checkout flow rather than out-
processed, it shows where authorizations succeed, where right refusal. By drilling down to device-level trends, mer-
declines cluster and how routing decisions affect out- chants can uncover pockets of preventable friction, such
comes. as a desktop browser or operating system version that mis-
handles a redirect. The fixes are often straightforward, but
But for many merchants, that data doesn't flow. It sits in the cumulative impact on completion can be significant.
silos—in acquirer portals, payment provider dashboards, Retry behavior and revenue recovery
fraud tools or tokenization services—each offering a par-
tial view with its own logic and latency. When authoriza- Merchants want to prioritize the transactions most likely
tion rates dip or failures spike, merchants may not spot it to succeed. Orchestration enables that. Instead of blanket
for hours, or days or maybe not at all. rules, recovery of failed transactions can be driven by is-
suer behavior, decline reason and what has worked before.

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