10 STEPS TO REDUCE PAYMENTS FAILURE

The first step to encourage successful transactions is understanding the reasons behind the failed ones as well as how the online payment process takes place. The best part about shopping online is the convenience. Customers don’t have to move anywhere and they can get almost anything to everything at their doorsteps, considering this current pandemic situation this ease has helped most of us a lot more than we can imagine.

Although, there is one complication that can be troubling for a lot of us i.e. Online payment.

Just like everything else like choosing the products from the website, we want the process to be as easy as it gets. Nowadays we use applications like LazyPay, Simple, Paytm, GPay and many more. These applications have made it a lot easier for the customers to make payments and complete their purchases.

Sometimes, the online payment process hits a glitch and the transaction goes from almost complete to FAILED. This is probably one of the reasons why a customer may feel agitated, they may abandon their shopping cart and move their business to a place which gives them a smoother process and to top it up gives them more options to pay.

I want to share a personal experience, since I’ve been working from home a lot and usually by the end of the day I don’t feel like cooking food. My partner has a late working schedule so we both prefer to order food online. We usually use Swiggy or Zomato to place our orders. They both provide a lot of options to make payments however, there are no options to pay via a lot of applications which we prefer like ZappPay or even ApplePay. I know we don’t need all of these payment methods specially when we have UPI payment methods. But think of this on a larger scale. If I were to purchase other products, and the only way we can pay is via Debit Cards, and they don’t accept Credit Cards, the transaction goes to failed transactions automatically. I don’t think I have any reason to come back to the same website again.

My suggestion to the Merchant would be to enable more options for their Customers while he has already lost a valuable customer. Let’s dig into the top 10 reasons why a payment goes to a failed transaction.

1. Payment Method Not Supported: This happens when the type of card is not supported.
2. Expired credit card: If the consumer provides outdated information, the transaction won’t go through.
3. Deemed inauthentic: If an issuing bank or acquirer deems that the attempted transaction is not authentic based on the consumer’s previous charge history, they will deny permission for it to go through.
4. Location: Banks and acquirers can also deem a charge inauthentic if the consumer is trying to pay from abroad. Additionally, not all credit cards support international charges.
5. Spotty internet connection: A stable internet connection is the backbone of any online transaction. When a consumer’s connection isn’t stable, they can try paying at multiple sites and will always end up frustrated.
6. Downtime/maintenance: Sometimes, payment gateways, processors or issuing banks have downtime, during which the site is being repaired or updated. This can lead to a failed transaction.
7. 3DS2 friction: 3DS2, a multifactor authentication protocol, is designed to reduce friction in the online checkout process. Merchants and banks can share information quickly and determine if a transaction is risky. If it’s fine, it goes right through. If it’s risky, the customer is required to provide an additional piece of information, like a fingerprint, face scan, or one-time password. If a customer isn’t able to provide this information or doesn’t want to, the payment can fail.
8. Insufficient funds: In some cases, the issuing bank determines that the cardholder doesn’t have enough money to pay for the items. In this case, the payment will be denied.
9. Exceeding the single charge limit: Some consumers have sufficient funds but are limited in how much they can spend in one transaction. If they try to buy something that’s over that limit, the transaction can be denied.
10. Mismatched data: If the cardholder enters data that doesn’t match the information the issuing bank has on file; the transaction can be denied. This can include a wrong card number or wrong password.

Tactics to manage these payment failures?

While there is no way to handle a failed payment due to insufficient funds or internet issues, there is a way to manage the problems occurring on the merchant’s end.

It doesn’t matter if the transaction failed due to the issuing bank's authentication or a transaction turned down due to geographic reasons, there are always ways to prevent such occurrences and increase the number of successful transactions.

My personal recommendation, try Payomatix. It’s a solution with a single API, a solution where you find all the solutions, payment providers under one roof, thus improving the failures due to merchant’s end. The routing happens in a way that your customer won’t know if the first transaction through a channel fails as due to the intelligent routing it will get it cleared through other channels of payment. Not only will the customer has the choice to pay with their preferred local methods, but also satisfaction they get when they get what they want without any kind of hassle.?

Payomatix gives the merchant this freedom as well. Let’s say due to whatever reason the merchant doesn;t want to receive payments on a particular bank account, they can always switch it to another channel where they want it to be. This is one of the features from so many that Payomatix will offer their merchant, in turn providing customer satisfaction to their own customers (merchants).?