Payments intelligence
for professionals.
Deep dives on approval rate optimisation, fraud, routing strategy, and what's changing in the industry. Written for people who build and operate payment systems.
10 articles · page 1 of 2
Why approval rates drop at month-end — and how to fix it
Acquirer capacity constraints, velocity thresholds, and BIN-level degradation all cluster around month-end settlement cycles. Here's what's actually happening and how smart routing mitigates it.
Introducing Sentinel ML 2.0 — adaptive thresholds are now live
Sentinel ML now calibrates fraud scoring thresholds per merchant, per card type, and per geography — in real time. Early results show a 12% reduction in false positives across the merchant base.
PSD3 and what it means for payment orchestration in Europe
The European Commission's PSD3 proposal introduces new SCA exemptions, open banking mandates, and liability shifts. We break down what changes for PSPs and merchants operating in the EU.
The hidden cost of a single acquirer: a data analysis
We analysed 18 months of transaction data across 200+ acquirers. Single-acquirer merchants consistently underperform on approval rate by 6–14 percentage points compared to multi-acquirer setups.
Decline code 51 vs 05 — why the distinction matters for routing
Insufficient funds and do-not-honour are treated identically by most payment stacks. They shouldn't be. The routing logic you apply to each determines whether a retry converts or churns.
Payment Bridge now supports 14 new acquirers across LATAM and SEA
Expanding our network into Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Merchants processing in these regions now have access to local acquirers with significantly better approval rates than cross-border routing.
iGaming payments in 2026: what operators need to know
Card scheme rule changes, new AML thresholds, and the shift to alternative payment methods are reshaping how iGaming operators handle deposits and withdrawals. Our analysis of the key trends.
3DS2 and approval rates: what the data shows two years in
Two years after PSD2's strong authentication deadline, we have enough data to evaluate the real impact of 3DS2 on conversion. The results are more nuanced than the industry expected.
How card scheme fees changed in 2025 — and who's paying for it
Visa and Mastercard's 2025 fee schedules introduced new categories that hit PSPs harder than merchants. We map out which transactions are now more expensive and what you can do about it.
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