UK-based Ecommpay has introduced Partial Approval, allowing issuers to authorise card payments for less than the requested amount.
Partial Approval is a feature that allows an issuing bank to approve a lower amount than requested when the cardholder has insufficient funds, rather than declining the transaction outright. In this way, purchases that would previously have failed can therefore go through at the approved amount. The feature is aimed at merchants looking to reduce declined card transactions and collect more customer top-ups.
How Partial Approval works
Partial Approval is designed for merchants whose business models can accommodate a partial collection, with payment top-ups and subscription billing cited as examples. Merchants activate it on a per-transaction basis through a single flag included in each request, choosing which attempts it applies to and leaving it disabled elsewhere.
According to Ecommpay, the capability does not require changes to a merchant's checkout architecture, existing payment flow, or endpoint. Merchants also do not need to maintain separate integrations to apply partial collection selectively across different parts of their business.
On the customer side, a branded warning label appears on the card entry screen, accompanied by an information pop-up explaining partial authorisation. A dedicated final screen shows both the requested and the approved amount. All screens are delivered through Ecommpay's Hosted Payment Page and carry the merchant's branding.
Addressing insufficient-funds declines
Max Ryzhov, Chief Product Officer at Ecommpay, explained that, in the standard flow, a transaction is treated as a decline when the issuer can cover only part of the requested amount. Ecommpay frames such declines as lost volume and activity, and potentially lost customers.
With Partial Approval, the transaction succeeds, and the account is topped up with the approved sum. The customer can add the remaining balance later, once additional funds are available, or complete it using a different payment method. According to the official, this removes the need to start over and manually enter a lower amount, reducing friction and the risk of drop-offs. For use cases such as subscriptions and in-game purchases, the approach is intended to let customers continue their activity without interruption.
Regulatory standing
Founded in 2012, Ecommpay UK Ltd is authorised by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the Payment Services Regulations 2017. The company is a principal member of Mastercard and Visa, and its platform is certified to PCI DSS Level 1.
