Most merchants see demand as the main constraint on revenue. For many, however, the real constraint is payment performance. According to the 2026 Retail Systems and ACI payments optimization survey of 203 retailers across the US and Europe, half say they are underperforming or cannot assess their own payment performance.

These findings set the scene for a webinar produced by The Paypers and ACI Worldwide. Moderated by Masha Cilliers, Payment Industry Expert, iNED, and Board Advisor, the discussion brought together Rabea Ehrlich, Senior International Payment Manager at S.OLIVER GROUP, and Silviu Parau, Principal Product Owner at ACI Worldwide, to explore where revenue leaks across the payment journey and how to optimize performance at each step.

Here are the key takeaways.

Averages hide the leaks

Silviu advised against relying on approval-rate averages. One merchant he worked with reported a healthy 91% approval rate, but once the data was segmented by issuer, market, payment method, and authentication path, one flow was performing at just 75%.

He recommended starting with two metrics: the platform authorization acceptance rate, which measures how many of every 100 attempts get through checkout, authentication, and fraud screening to the issuer, and the issuer (or alternative payment provider) acceptance rate, which measures how many of those transactions are ultimately approved. Together, the two metrics show whether revenue is lost before or after authorization.

Masha added that counting transactions can also mislead: strong rates on low-value payments can mask weaker results on high-value ones, which changes the revenue picture.

Rabea explained that S.OLIVER looks at profitable payment conversion rather than acceptance alone. The harder part is finding the right data, since web analytics, order management systems, PSPs and acquirers, and fraud platforms each hold only a piece of the picture.

Payments need a clear owner

Rabea noted that many merchants have no dedicated payments team, with payments handled partly by customer service and e-commerce, a setup more common than people think. Responsibility is naturally fragmented: payments affect integration and fraud, e-commerce influences conversion, finance cares about costs, and PSPs control other elements. Payments often get attention only when something goes wrong, so her advice is to appoint one clear business owner for end-to-end payment performance before looking at any data.

Silviu sees the same pattern from the vendor side: merchants invest heavily in acquisition and checkout but give less attention to what happens once the shopper presses pay now.

Authentication is a conversion decision

Silviu identified the biggest mistake as having no authentication strategy or an overly aggressive one. Authentication should be treated as a conversion strategy, not a compliance exercise, because issuers behave differently by market and journey. He pointed to adaptive authentication, which takes into account the issuer, the risk and shopper profiles, the credentials, the ticket size, and the market, while balancing risk and liability.

Rabea said merchants often treat authentication as a compliance requirement rather than a lever for conversion, as S.OLIVER did at first. A review of the card setup can reveal that almost all transactions run through a friction flow, costing revenue and customers, and may lead a merchant to rethink its setup or even its payment provider. She recommends reviewing fraud rules every month, asking not only how much fraud was stopped but how many legitimate customers were stopped too.

Orchestration is more than routing

Orchestration once meant routing between acquirers. Silviu said it now applies at every stage of the payment journey: authentication, fraud, routing, and what happens after authorization. In his example, a merchant’s returning-buyer (unscheduled card-on-file) transactions were declining on one acquiring connection, with the issuer and shopper ruled out. While the dialogue with the acquirer continued, the transactions were rerouted to another acquirer, and performance improved. Orchestration, he said, is about identifying a performance signal and finding the best alternative path.

Rabea said orchestration makes most sense for card payments, while she sees less value for alternative payment methods. Even so, the reporting that a single technical layer provides is, in her view, a strong reason to consider it. She would also welcome a model-based tool that picks the best route for each transaction, because no matter how much market research a merchant does or how many trackers it embeds on its website, it will not have the full context needed.

Silviu said such models are already in use: instead of relying on fixed rules, they read live performance signals and route each transaction to the path most likely to succeed at that moment.

What happens after a decline

For subscriptions, network tokens have eased the expired-card problem, Silviu said. Today, insufficient funds and credit limits are the biggest source of payment loss, especially where merchants retry blindly. He also suggests tracking the retry rate, the recovery rate, which attempt leads to recovery, and whether it happens with the same card or a different one.

Where to start

Optimization is not only about revenue: it means balancing conversion, cost, fraud risk, and customer experience. Silviu outlined three priorities for merchants looking to improve payment performance: understand where losses occur by tracking the two-acceptance metrics, revisit the authentication strategy, and focus on what happens after a decline.

Rabea’s recommendations were to establish a baseline for conversion, authentication, and authorization across main markets and payment methods, find the biggest recoverable leak before investing in technology or partners, and put a number behind it.

Looking ahead, Silviu expects payment optimization to become increasingly adaptive. Merchants tend to optimize transaction by transaction today, he noted, while PSPs optimize portfolio by portfolio, and routes and rules will adjust to the signals they see. For PSPs, he added, looking across the whole merchant portfolio reveals patterns no single merchant can see, and models now make it possible to act on them by choosing the best acquiring path at any given moment.

Want to hear the full discussion? Watch the webinar recording here.

About Paula Albu

 

Paula Albu has experience in content writing and editing, as well as being a creative storyteller. As a Junior Editor at The Paypers, she investigates Web3 technologies along with the latest trends and regulations in banking and fintech. Paula is committed to turning complex industry topics into engaging, accessible content that resonates with readers and creates a meaningful connection. She is available via LinkedIn or at paula@thepaypers.com.

 

About ACI Worldwide

ACI Worldwide, an original innovator in global payments technology, delivers transformative software solutions that power intelligent payments orchestration in real time, so merchants, intermediaries, billers, and banks can drive growth while continuously modernizing their payment infrastructures, simply and securely. With 50 years of trusted payments expertise, we combine our global footprint with a local presence, offering enhanced payment experiences to stay ahead of constantly changing payment challenges and opportunities.