How an acceptance rate is calculated
The basic sum is approvals divided by attempts. The choices behind it change the result: whether a retried payment counts once or every time, whether payments abandoned during authentication are in the total, and whether refunds and card checks for no amount are left out.
A single overall figure hides most of what matters. Gateways therefore break the rate down by card scheme, issuer, card country, card type, acquirer and decline code.
What moves an acceptance rate
- The issuer's own risk decision, and whether the account has funds
- Authentication: a failed or abandoned 3-D Secure step never reaches authorisation
- Data quality: expired cards, wrong security codes, missing fields
- Where the acquirer is: issuers approve domestic payments more readily than cross-border ones
- Network tokens and card updates for stored cards
- Retry rules, and routing to a second acquirer
Why the acceptance rate matters
A declined payment is a sale the merchant had already won. For a gateway, the rate is also a product measure: merchants compare providers by it, and routing, retry and tokenisation features exist to raise it.
Acceptance rate, authorisation rate or conversion?
- Authorisation rate
- Often the same thing. Used strictly, the authorisation rate counts only requests that reached the issuer, and leaves out payments stopped earlier by fraud rules or authentication.
- Checkout conversion
- Counts every buyer who started the checkout, including those who left before submitting a payment.
Where an acceptance rate shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- Card acquiringCard acceptance on the phone, in store and online, through the acquirer you choose.
- Analytics & monitoringProduct analytics, attribution, engagement and crash reports, on a tracking plan you control.
- CheckoutA hosted checkout for cards, wallets, bank payments and crypto, routed to the best provider.
- Fraud & riskReal-time fraud scoring, limits and case management, with the risk engines you already trust.