Daniella Sjarki, Business Growth Specialist at Ecommpay, explains how AI can be used to turn payments data into a valuable real-time intelligence layer that can recover revenue, protect margins, and guide enterprise-wide decisions.
Every payment processed provides merchants and payment providers with a wealth of valuable customer data. But when payments are treated as infrastructure instead of intelligence, merchants are missing an opportunity to improve the payment process, increase customer loyalty, and boost revenue.
Research published in 2026 suggested that false declines cost merchants as much as USD 443 billion globally. Ecommpay analysis included in our latest whitepaper showed that AI-led optimisation increased transaction authorisation rates by an average of 6.96%.
Rising cross-border ecommerce and global real-time payments infrastructure, as well as the emergence of autonomous shopping and payment agents mean AI support is increasingly valuable. Transaction volumes are rising, operational complexity is increasing, and decisions need to be made faster. This places mounting stress on merchants’ online operations today and in the future.
Checkouts must adapt to meet changing requirements of increased local and international traffic, demand for additional payment methods, and purchases made by AI agents rather than human customers.
The authorisation problem
Before investing in attracting new customers to boost revenue, merchants should find and resolve issues that lead to existing customers being lost at the all-important point of payment.
While static reports can help merchants understand what happened last quarter or last month, AI-driven real-time analysis can rapidly flag any issues with the customer experience so that solutions can be delivered much more quickly. It can also help businesses understand why performance is changing and how they need to respond.
Looking at the causes of payment declines can offer valuable insights and opportunities for merchants; tackling the root causes will also reduce customer frustration and lost revenue from legitimate transactions being declined. At Ecommpay, for example, we use AI to help us diagnose why a transaction was declined by analysing routing, 3DS, issuer behaviour, payment mix, and retry strategy.
The insights allow us to make practical recommendations for tweaks that will improve future transactions, leading to measurable increases in authorisation rates. In turn, this improves customer retention.
Transaction routing
To further optimise payments, reduce settlement times, and avoid overpaying transaction fees, merchants need to ensure their transactions are processed through the right payment routes. In a clear demonstration of the potential revenue lost to poor transaction routing, one merchant was reported to have boosted revenue by EUR 1.63 million by avoiding costly or failing payment rails.
‘Smart routing’ – the process of utilising AI to analyse and optimise transaction routing – can help to reduce transaction costs, improve settlement speed, increase acceptance rates, and even streamline cross-border payments.
Checkout intelligence
AI insights into the payment journey can also quickly identify points of friction that lead to drop-offs – form design, payment flow, Personal Information Inputs (PII), for example. Indeed, AI analysis helped fashion brand Alice + Olivia identify drop-off causes and implement changes that led to a 35% increase in online orders.
As explained in our white paper ‘Earning insight from every transaction: optimising enterprise-wide performance through AI and payments data’, transaction intelligence can also help merchants optimise the payment methods they offer to customers at checkout. AI-led analysis will identify the most suitable payment methods for each region, so that merchants can offer the most popular payment methods without integrating unnecessary, rarely used options that add cost without improving conversion.
Optimising performance
When merchants harness the power of AI, payments data can become a live intelligence layer that delivers enterprise-wide benefits beyond improving the checkout process itself. Ecommerce businesses are therefore at a tipping point when it comes to the use of AI. They must decide whether to use the data they already hold to optimise the customer journey, including checkout, or continue overlooking the valuable insights it provides. And partnering with a trusted PSP can provide merchants with instant access to AI models and rich transactional data from across the ecosystem to help enhance every stage of their own customer journey, increasing successful transactions and boosting profits.
About Daniella Sjarki
A Business Growth Specialist at Ecommpay, Daniella is an expert in payment analytics, revenue optimisation, payment acceptance strategies, and AI-driven business insights. Her work centres on transforming complex payment data into actionable strategies that improve transaction success rates, reduce payment declines, increase merchant revenue, and enhance customer experiences.
Daniella’s role currently focuses on leveraging artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to identify hidden opportunities within payment ecosystems. By combining deep data analysis with automation, she is helping Ecommpay clients uncover performance gaps, improve operational efficiency, and maximise the value of existing technology investments.
About Ecommpay
Ecommpay is an inclusive global payments platform designed to connect to global financial ecosystems and help businesses grow. We make online payments as smooth as possible. We’re more than just a provider; we’re business partners dedicated to keeping our clients’ payments flowing, helping them make the most of every transaction. We offer global and local acquiring, over 180 payment methods, payments processing, and orchestration on one platform and via a single API.
