Payments optimisationPrivate preview

Learn about Stripe's optimisation features and how they can increase your payment success rate.

Private preview

Payments optimisation is in private preview.

Use the Optimisation page to view the estimated increase in payment volume and acceptance rate from optimisation features. To navigate to this page in the Stripe Dashboard, click Payments > Analytics > Optimisation.

This page describes Adaptive Acceptance (AA), network tokens, and card account updater, which are all included in Stripe’s Authorisation Boost. Use these features to help increase your success rates on card-not-present (CNP) payments by applying machine-learning driven adjustments to failed or ill-formatted payment attempts.

Note

Optimisation calculations are estimates and aren’t guarantees of any outcomes. You can use the data we provide to help inform your decision-making about whether to use these features. Refer to this page regularly to ensure you have the most up-to-date optimisation feature information.

Optimisation features

Stripe uses the following features to improve your success rates on CNP payments:

Feature	Description	When the feature is applied
Adaptive Acceptance	Adaptive Acceptance uses machine learning to reformat payment requests based on card issuers’ preferences. Stripe can make these changes before sending a payment or after a payment is declined. For example, Stripe selectively adjusts and reattempts declined payments in real-time, which can help recover a significant number of false declines. Additionally, Adaptive Acceptance might apply cost optimisations for businesses on IC+ pricing to help reduce network or interchange fees.	Adaptive Acceptance retried an initially declined payment, and the retry was successful. Or, Stripe reformatted the payment prior to authorisation based on issuer preferences.
Card account updater	Card numbers and expiration dates regularly change, so outdated card information is a common source of declines for online businesses. Stripe integrates with major card networks to update saved card payment information automatically to help you access the latest card details.	A successful payment was made using a card that previously had updates to the underlying card information. Updates include changes to the card expiration date or the primary account number (PAN).
Network tokens	Network tokens are payment credentials that serve as substitutes for card numbers and are more secure. Network tokens help you process payments with the most up-to-date credentials, even if the underlying card data has changed. Stripe has built integrations with major card networks to tokenise your cards. Learn more about network tokens.	A successful payment was made using a network token that previously had updates to the underlying card information. Updates include changes to the card expiration date or the primary account number (PAN).

Feature

Description

When the feature is applied

Adaptive Acceptance

Adaptive Acceptance uses machine learning to reformat payment requests based on card issuers’ preferences. Stripe can make these changes before sending a payment or after a payment is declined.

For example, Stripe selectively adjusts and reattempts declined payments in real-time, which can help recover a significant number of false declines. Additionally, Adaptive Acceptance might apply cost optimisations for businesses on IC+ pricing to help reduce network or interchange fees.

Adaptive Acceptance retried an initially declined payment, and the retry was successful. Or, Stripe reformatted the payment prior to authorisation based on issuer preferences.

Card account updater

Card numbers and expiration dates regularly change, so outdated card information is a common source of declines for online businesses. Stripe integrates with major card networks to update saved card payment information automatically to help you access the latest card details.

A successful payment was made using a card that previously had updates to the underlying card information. Updates include changes to the card expiration date or the primary account number (PAN).

Network tokens

Network tokens are payment credentials that serve as substitutes for card numbers and are more secure. Network tokens help you process payments with the most up-to-date credentials, even if the underlying card data has changed. Stripe has built integrations with major card networks to tokenise your cards. Learn more about network tokens.

A successful payment was made using a network token that previously had updates to the underlying card information. Updates include changes to the card expiration date or the primary account number (PAN).

To learn more about optimisations, see Optimising authorisation rate.

How Stripe calculates uplift from optimisations

For each payment, Stripe assesses the likelihood that optimisations contributed to its success, recognising that some payments might have been approved even without the use of optimisations. This approach helps Stripe estimate the impact of optimisations on your business more accurately. If multiple optimisations are applied to a single payment, the benefit is attributed to the one we determine to be the most likely responsible for approval.

Here’s an example calculation:

We determine which payments benefited from the use of an optimisation feature. For example, your business had 100 payments that were optimised from a feature, each with an amount of 50 USD.
We determine the estimated likelihood that the feature led to the payment succeeding, where it would’ve otherwise failed. In this example, we assume a 20% likelihood for each of the 100 payments.
To calculate the recovered payment volume, we sum the total amount attributed to these optimised payments and multiply this sum by the probability that feature was responsible for the approval. In this example, the estimated recovered volume is: 100 payments * 50 USD * 0.20 = 1,000 USD.

You can see a detailed breakdown of the performance of each optimisation feature in the Optimisations breakdown chart.

Specify date range and aggregation

You can specify a date range and aggregation filter. If you specify a range and aggregation, they apply to all of your charts, metrics, and tables. Selecting different aggregations helps you to see trends and patterns more clearly based on your goals.

Specify the date range

Select the date range and choose a specific period you want to analyse. You can choose from predefined options (such as Last 7 days, Last 30 days) or set a custom date range to suit your analytical needs.

Specify the aggregation method

Next to the date range selector, select the aggregation period. This allows you to view data in specific intervals, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.

Set the aggregation period to 14 days and to display the data in daily intervals.

Optimisation impact summary

Use this report to see either the payment volume or number of payments recovered for your business from your enabled optimisation features.

To see the volume of payments recovered by using optimisations, click Payment volume.
To see the number of payments recovered by using optimisations, click Payments.

For a more detailed breakdown of the performance of each optimisation feature, see the Optimisation breakdown chart.

Payment success rate

This chart visually helps you compare what your estimated payment success rate is without the use of optimisations. The success rate on this chart is for card-not-present (CNP) card payments only and shows the raw rate, rather than the deduplicated one. The raw rate counts all attempts to make the same purchases, whereas the deduplicated rate groups retried attempts together and calculates acceptance based on the final outcome.

The blue dotted line is your estimated rate without optimisation features.

Optimisation breakdown

This chart is similar to the Optimisation impact summary chart, and also provides additional insights into how each optimization feature affects your payment performance.

To see the volume of payments recovered by each optimisation feature, click Payment volume.
To see the number of payments recovered by each optimisation feature, click Payments.

You can see the recovered volume, payments, and success rate increase for each optimisation feature:

Recovered volume	The total estimated monetary amount of payments that were successfully processed as a result of the optimisation feature, which might have otherwise failed without it. It measures the financial impact of the optimisation in terms of revenue retention.
Recovered payments	The estimated number of individual payments that were successfully approved as a direct result of using the optimisation feature. These are payments that might have been declined without the implemented optimisation.
Success rate increase	The estimated growth in the approval rate as a result of the optimisation feature. Stripe models this based on what we think the success rate is without this feature.

Download breakdown

To download these analytics, click Download at the bottom of the chart. The download allows you to see individual payments where we applied optimisation features. You can also see the estimated likelihood that the payment succeeded as a direct result of using the feature.