The Green Sheet Online Edition
November 24, 2025 • 25:11:02
From blind spots to building blocks: How payments data fuels smarter merchant decisions
Every payment tells a story: how much was spent, where it was made, where it succeeded or if it stalled. That story builds with every transaction, and merchants are watching it unfold as payments are processed.
At the online checkout, choice has multiplied. Digital wallets are now the leading way to pay globally (see bit.ly/48ao3o5) with cards and account-to-account close behind. More ways to pay mean more signals in the flow: authentication steps, device quirks and second attempts that clear on a different path. That volume isn't just consumer behavior; it's a stream of live signals merchants have to read and act on.
Each click, challenge or retry adds to a growing dataset. It reflects customer intent, payment behavior and how systems respond under pressure. Seen as transactions are processed, it shows where authorizations succeed, where declines cluster and how routing decisions affect outcomes.
But for many merchants, that data doesn't flow. It sits in silos—in acquirer portals, payment provider dashboards, fraud tools or tokenization services—each offering a partial view with its own logic and latency. When authorization rates dip or failures spike, merchants may not spot it for hours, or days or maybe not at all.
In steps orchestration
Orchestration changes the job. By routing payments and data through a single layer, it gives teams a shared view of what is happening across providers and channels, and, more importantly, the ability to act fast.
If a retail channel starts to underperform, traffic can be rerouted immediately. If approval rates dip for a particular issuer or network, the affected flows can be isolated and recovered. If retries perform better through a specific payments provider or device, teams use those findings to update routing and retry rules via agreed playbooks, so future attempts follow the better path.
We have seen this in practice with a betting merchant that experienced a subtle drop in approvals. Internal monitoring, aggregated at a high level, missed it. The orchestration layer surfaced the pattern early, a swift reroute followed and conversion was protected. That responsiveness turns small signals into timely action.
Metrics that matter
Payments data can be framed in two dimensions: metrics and breakdowns. Metrics include volume, value, success rate, declines, failovers and 3D Secure (3DS) interactions. Breakdowns include retail channel, processor, method, transaction type, currency, decline type, issuer, network and token type.
With that model, merchants can slice any metric by any breakdown, tracking retry success rates by device, spotting issuer anomalies by channel, or comparing 3DS outcomes by method. That flexibility surfaces patterns that standard reporting can miss.
A notable share of 3DS failures relate to redirection and challenge handling in the checkout flow rather than outright refusal. By drilling down to device-level trends, merchants can uncover pockets of preventable friction, such as a desktop browser or operating system version that mishandles a redirect. The fixes are often straightforward, but the cumulative impact on completion can be significant.
Retry behavior and revenue recovery
Merchants want to prioritize the transactions most likely to succeed. Orchestration enables that. Instead of blanket rules, recovery of failed transactions can be driven by issuer behavior, decline reason and what has worked before.
That precision lifts approval rates without disrupting the customer experience.
Scenario-based analysis then shows which retry paths are most effective. Some will find that wallet-based retries outperform card-on-file attempts for certain issuers or devices; others will see better recovery through a particular payments provider.
Teams apply those insights to adjust routing and retry rules, so future attempts take the route that's proven to work better.
Token performance and data visibility
Tokenization is gaining ground across schemes and processors, but tokens don't behave the same in every context. Merchants now track how tokens are created, where they're used and how they perform across channels, networks and issuers.
Adding token type to the breakdowns creates a new lens on performance: by comparing conversion for network/scheme tokens, processor/PSP tokens, wallet tokens, and merchant or vault references, as well as non-tokenized payments, teams can see where different token types deliver uplift and where they don't.
Fraud, risk and routing intelligence
Orchestration isn't only about payment-routing performance; it also strengthens fraud resilience. Centralizing data helps teams spot risk patterns early and deploy tools with more precision, balancing performance against agreed risk thresholds.
Controls tighten when signals cross those thresholds and ease when completion suffers, with authentication and routing applied according to policies and pre-set rules.
It also brings trade-offs into the open. Routing via a local scheme might lift approvals but offer weaker fraud coverage; with orchestration, those scenarios can be tested and the right fraud tools can be layered into the customer journey.
Beyond recovery
Early adopters of orchestration moved quickly because their stacks were under pressure. Orchestration helped them regain control. The greater advantage arrived when it became part of the operating model rather than a fallback. These merchants steer volume based on issuer behavior, launch in new markets without delay and tailor payment setups region by region.
Where it makes sense, merchants layer platforms, pairing routing with a centralized tokenization service to sharpen results. Orchestration provides full visibility on the flows it processes, while fee and settlement data is sourced from providers and combined for a complete picture.
What merchants should expect
Merchants need more than dashboards. They need a live, unified view of the online payments stack and the levers to act within established controls: tracking approval rates by issuer and payments provider, spotting retry patterns by device, comparing performance by token type across channels, and tuning fraud controls in line with agreed thresholds and outcomes.
Orchestration links data across systems, surfaces live signals and enables faster, better-informed decisions. That visibility also changes how teams work.
Payments operations can move in step with fraud, CX and data teams, using shared insight to inform wider decisions. When orchestration is embedded in the operating model, payments move from cost center to strategic lever.
If every payment tells a story, orchestration is the way to hear it as it happens. 
Thomas Gillian is CEO of BR-DGE, an innovation enabler empowering global growth and connectivity through payment orchestration. Contact him via LinkedIn at inkedin.com/in/thomas-gillan-99814547.
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