How payment failover works
A merchant, or the orchestration layer in front of its providers, holds live connections to two or more acquirers. Each payment goes to the primary route. If the request times out, the connection fails or the provider answers with a system error, the same payment is sent down the next route while the buyer is still waiting.
Health checks run alongside. When a provider's error rate or response time crosses a threshold, new payments skip that route until it recovers, so buyers do not wait for a timeout each time.
What payment failover has to get right
- Idempotency: a timeout does not prove failure, so the first attempt is checked or reversed
- Tokens: card data held in a vault that works with every provider
- Authentication: a 3-D Secure result that either acquirer can use
- Classification: a route error triggers failover, and an issuer's decline does not
- Reconciliation: one order may have attempts at two providers
Why payment failover matters
Every acquirer and processor has incidents, and for an online merchant an outage at a peak hour is revenue that does not come back. A second route also gives leverage on price and a way to leave a provider gradually.
Sending a declined payment to another acquirer in the hope of an approval is a different practice, often called cascading. An issuer's decline and advice codes say whether another attempt is allowed, so those rules belong with decline handling and not with failover.
Failover, retry or routing?
- Retry
- A new attempt after an issuer's decline, where the decline code allows one.
- Payment routing
- Choosing the best route for each payment, by cost or approval rate. Failover is the rule for when the chosen route breaks.
Where Payment failover shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- CheckoutA hosted checkout for cards, wallets, bank payments and crypto, routed to the best provider.
- 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.