When Payments Fail: What Merchants Need to Know About Downtime and Declines

In digital commerce, a lot can go wrong between a customer clicking “pay now” and the funds arriving in your account. A failed payment might seem like a small technical glitch — but for merchants, it can mean lost revenue, frustrated users, and damage to brand trust.

Payment Failures: More Common Than You Think

Studies show that 5% to 15% of legitimate card payments fail — not due to insufficient funds, but because of technical errors, PSP downtime, and routing issues. These failures are a silent killer of conversions and customer retention.

Common Causes of Payment Declines

• Card Issuer Rejections: Expired cards, insufficient funds, or suspected fraud triggers
• Incorrect Payment Data: Mistyped card numbers or CVV codes
• Network Latency or Timeouts: Long processing times lead to automatic cancellations
• PSP Downtime: Outages or errors on your provider’s side

Even the largest PSPs like Stripe, Adyen, and Worldpay experience service disruptions. For example:

• Stripe Outage (March 24, 2023): Global transaction failures and webhook delays for 4+ hours
• Adyen Incident (Sep 27, 2022): Authorization delays in Europe during peak hours

These aren’t isolated incidents — they show the risk of relying on a single PSP for mission-critical payment infrastructure.

The Real Cost of Failed Transactions

• Lost Revenue: Abandoned carts and failed sales
• Customer Frustration: Declined payments often mean lost future business
• Brand Damage: Perceived checkout issues reduce trust
• Operational Overhead: More support tickets, refunds, and manual reconciliation

How FinOn Pay Prevents Payment Failures

FinOn Pay is a modern payment orchestration platform that gives merchants more control, flexibility, and resilience — through smart routing, automated failover, and modular integration.

Key Features That Help You Stay Live and Convert More:

• Smart Transaction Routing: Send each payment through the best provider based on performance, location, and cost
• Automated Failover: If a PSP fails, FinOn Pay instantly retries through a backup, preventing downtime
• Fast, Modular Integration: Use SDKs or APIs to connect in days, not months

Why Merchants Choose FinOn Pay

• Maximized Approval Rates: Turn more payment attempts into successful checkouts
• Zero Downtime Resilience: Stay operational even if one PSP goes down
• Lower Operational Costs: No more switching between multiple contracts and providers
• Global Payment Reach: Accept local methods and currencies effortlessly
• Built-In Compliance: Full PCI DSS and 3DS 2.2 support

Why It Matters More Than Ever

Your checkout is the finish line of every marketing and product effort. A payment failure at that point doesn’t just lose money — it damages trust. FinOn Pay helps merchants build resilient, scalable payment infrastructure that can adapt to real-world failures and keep the business running.

Start Orchestrating Success

Don't let downtime decide your revenue. With FinOn Pay, you get the tools to route smarter, recover faster, and convert more. Let’s build a future without failed payments — one successful transaction at a time.

Get in touch to learn how FinOn Pay can support your payment operations.