Online stores often watch a card payment fail, then fail to retry it

Online stores can usually see when a customer's card payment fails. Many do not try again in a smarter way. A new PYMNTS Intelligence report found that commerce companies use "intelligent retry" on 41% of declined payments. Finance and infrastructure firms do it 84% of the time.

What the survey found

Intelligent retry means the payment system tries a failed charge again, or sends it down a different route, instead of giving up. The report says roughly three-quarters of businesses in both groups watch payment performance in real time. So the gap is not about spotting the problem. It is about what happens next.

About one-third of commerce companies said payment orchestration or optimization improved their checkout completion over the past year. Finance and infrastructure firms reported such gains more often. Across all companies surveyed, fewer than 3 in 10 saw them.

Why tokens matter

Tokens are encrypted stand-ins for customers' card numbers. They let a merchant charge a card without storing the actual card details. When a payment processor controls those tokens, moving a transaction to another processor can mean a migration, or asking the customer to type in their payment details again.

That control seems to make a big difference. Companies with little control over their tokens automatically rerouted payments only 7% of the time. With at least partial control, the rate rose to half. Just 3% of commerce firms said they have full token control.

Fixing it takes time

The report defines a complete payment setup as five capabilities:

• Automated routing of payments
• Frequent updates to routing logic
• Failover and backup systems
• Control over payment tokens
• Adding payment methods without a major overhaul

The report found that 63% of finance and infrastructure companies have all five, ahead of the other sectors studied. Catching up is slow. Some 93% of surveyed companies said onboarding a new payment provider takes at least a month, and none said they could do it in under two weeks.

What happens next

Commerce firms say they plan to act. The report found 82% are investing in payment orchestration or plan to within a year. Only about one-fifth were actually building at the time of the survey.

One caution. The report is based on a March survey of 110 U.S. companies with at least $10 million in annual revenue. Sector-level findings come from relatively small samples, and the report says they are best seen as directional.

What it means for sellers

For a business that sells online, a declined card does not have to mean a lost sale. Whether it can be saved depends on how the payment setup is built and who controls the customer's token. Real-time monitoring shows where a payment failed. More routing and token control give a store more ways to finish the sale without making the customer start checkout over.