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Adyen NV and Worldpay are among processors that have signed up to participate in a new platform from Mastercard Inc. aimed at boosting approval rates for card transactions. Announced Monday, the Payment Optimization Platform seeks to boost approval rates using AI engines trained on transaction data, the card network said in its announcement of the service.
The new service, which is in pilot, comes as e-commerce approval rates generally range from 85% to 95%, depending on a variety of factors, according to industry data. Rates for in-person transactions generally run somewhat higher. Higher approval rates can mean more revenue for merchants as well as for acquirers and processors, which generally collect fees based on a percentage of the transaction total.
The issue of payment success rates has helped spawn new technologies in recent years, including payment orchestration, which seeks to ensure acquirers can field the widest variety of card payments by handing off transactions to participating processors that may be better positioned to handle them.
The new service from Mastercard should also please cardholders, the network says. “It provides our acceptance community partners with tools and intelligence to deliver the best payment experience and drive higher conversions,” says Sumeet Bhatt, senior vice president for payment optimization at Mastercard in a statement. “We are excited to continue our pilot program to enable more successful transactions.”
Early results with the new service indicate an increase in conversions—a measure of transaction success rate—ranging from 9% to 15%, Mastercard says. The service taps into Mastercard data and will incorporate artificial intelligence technology “shortly after pilot,” the network says.
Information was not immediately available regarding pricing for the Mastercard service, if any. The timing of the rollout is “later in the year with additional acceptance partners,” according to the network’s announcement.
