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So, you integrated a payment processor to accept credit cards and potentially other forms of payments. That’s a good start! But what happens if a transaction is declined? Declines lead to buyer frustration, lost revenue, and manifest themselves as lower retention rates or lower conversion rates, depending on when they occur in the customer lifecycle.

The bottom line is, declined payments cost your business money. And it’s probably a lot more than you think.

Why do transactions get declined?

Declines have many root causes that go well beyond insufficient funds. Ultimately, the decision to accept a transaction is up to the issuer of the payment method. An issuer’s perception of risk for a given transaction, and their decision or ability to accept a transaction, is influenced by a variety of factors including:

  • Geolocation
  • Card type
  • Product type
  • Price point
  • Maintenance outages
  • Platform limitations

Reduce Declined Transactions with Payment Gateway Failover

Large organizations have dozens of payments and engineering resources focused on optimizing payment performance. It’s safe to say your company is leaving money on the table if it is not automatically adapting to declines, or relying on a single processor relationship.

Getting a successful transaction right on the first try is important, and that’s where “failover attempts” come in. With FastSpring, if a decline occurs, we take another shot at the transaction automatically—often including different information and/or with a different processor. This entire process is handled seamlessly, securely, and in compliance with payment industry regulations.

As the merchant of record, FastSpring’s built-in failover logic can route payment retries to one of our backup processors, to get around situations where a payment may be unrecoverable with the same processor or gateway. This can lead to a significant increase in revenue for your business, capturing dollars that might otherwise be lost forever.

As a FastSpring seller, you don’t have to do any additional work to get this benefit or establish new relationships with other processors or gateways. And your consumers get a smooth experience, with fewer declines since all the work happens in a split-second behind the scenes.

Not a FastSpring seller yet? Sign up for a free account today to see how you can start earning 30% or more revenue with full-service ecommerce.