3 Payment Acceptance Strategies to Improve eCommerce Revenue and Reduce Fraud

Digital commerce businesses spend much time and effort getting products in front of responsive buyers. But when it’s time to checkout, there are several things that can prevent a transaction from clearing. How can e-commerce companies improve their payment acceptance rates to increase revenue while also reducing fraud?

Improve Card Authorization Rates

Credit card payments must go through several entities before a transaction will clear. This includes the merchant’s bank, the card’s network processor, and the customer’s issuing bank. When a customer makes a purchase, their card is authorized for the amount of the purchase to ensure they have sufficient funds or available credit. Authorizing funds is a process that looks different from card company to card company. 

You can improve card authorization rates simply by accepting credit cards from companies with sophisticated authorization technologies. If payments are declined, be proactive in asking for the reason. Most importantly, ask for transparency into how issuing banks will mitigate declines moving forward.

Increase Conversion Rates with a Better Customer Experience

Lengthy checkout processes, account creation, and other verification steps can lead to friction and fatigue on the customer’s end. Companies can increase conversion rates by optimizing the customer experience. Only collect the data you really need, and find ways to condense steps when possible. 

Reducing the checkout process is especially important for mobile shoppers. Smaller screens and keyboards make purchases more complicated than buying on a desktop or laptop. Offering alternative payment options, such as mobile payments, allows customers to reduce checkout complexity and pay how they wish.

Maintain the Integrity of the Payment Acceptance Process

Online payments are susceptible to fraud. These payments are arguably harder to verify because merchants don’t have the advantage of comparing a shopper’s credit card name with their ID. To combat online payment fraud, merchants can deploy fraud detection solutions developed by a vendor to increase visibility into the fraud landscape.

Purpose-built fraud prevention tools like DataVisor allow merchants to stop fraud at the gate before financial damage occurs. Strong measures and prevention also help to support a case when refuting non-fraud-coded chargebacks that may be the byproduct of friendly fraud. What’s more, advanced fraud tools that review holistic data in real time can help to prevent profit-eroding promotion abuse by identifying duplicate or bot-created accounts. 

Such tools should be supported by internal policies and procedures so that when fraudulent activity is found, teams know the best next steps to take to address the fraudsters and prevent repeat occurrences.

Reducing Payment Fraud with DataVisor

Merchants need to increase payment acceptance rates with confidence, but they also want to minimize acceptance rates for fraudulent transactions. Where is the ideal balance?

DataVisor’s AI-powered fraud and risk platform is helping to create the best of both worlds with holistic fraud prevention. By reviewing millions of data points in real time, DataVisor helps to stop fraud at the gate while reducing false positives and limiting friction in the customer journey. 

Learn how you can eliminate false declines with DataVisor.