Discover your potential revenue

A payment authorization rate is the percentage of attempted payment transactions approved by customers' banks or payment providers. To calculate it, use this formula:

Authorization rate = (authorized transactions ÷ total attempted transactions) × 100

For example, if 9,000 of 10,000 attempted transactions are approved, the authorization rate is 90%.

A payment can be declined at several points between checkout and the customer's bank. Common causes include:

• Transactions routed through an international acquirer when a local one is available
• Customers who can't pay with their preferred payment method or currency
• Issuer and card network responses, such as insufficient funds or suspected fraud
• Incorrect or outdated card details
• Fraud prevention rules that block legitimate customers
• Failed payments that are retried at the wrong time, or not retried at all

For subscription businesses, a declined renewal can end a customer relationship the customer never chose to end. Expired cards, outdated details, and bank declines all cause involuntary churn, where a customer is lost because a payment failed.

In Cleverbridge's 2025 Friction Report, 63% of software sellers said no more than half their churn is voluntary — the rest is preventable, driven by failed payments and billing errors. That makes the authorization rate a retention metric as well as a revenue metric.

Most gains come from reducing avoidable declines:

• Offer the payment methods and currencies customers use in each market
• Process transactions through local acquirers where possible
• Use account updater services to refresh expired or replaced cards
• Retry failed payments with smart retry logic and better timing
• Adjust fraud rules so they stop real fraud without blocking good customers

Doing all of this in-house means managing multiple payment partners and local setups, and optimizing performance as you go.

A merchant of record (MoR) sells your software on your behalf and takes responsibility for payments, tax, compliance, and related commerce requirements in each market.

For authorization rates, the MoR provides the local payment methods, currencies, and payment infrastructure your customers need, so your team doesn't have to assemble and maintain them market by market. With a payment processor, your team typically owns more of that work itself, including adding payment methods, configuring fraud rules, and managing tax and compliance across markets.

As a merchant of record, Cleverbridge takes on payment operations across 240+ markets, so clients don't have to build and manage them in-house. Cleverbridge uses intelligent transaction routing, retry logic, account updating, and local payment acquirers to help approve more payments and reduce failed transactions.

Payment performance also improves over time. Cleverbridge combines its platform, data, and expertise to raise payment success alongside checkout conversion and renewal performance, drawing on more than $10 billion in transactions processed to date.

Cleverbridge supports 30+ global payment methods, including credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express), digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal), bank transfers (ACH, SEPA), and buy now, pay later. It processes transactions in 59 currencies across 240+ markets.

Payment choice has a direct effect on revenue. According to The Friction Report, when a preferred payment method was missing, 33% of buyers said they would abandon the purchase outright and another 56% said they might not continue.