Merchant Performance Analytics

Gain deeper visibility into your payment performance with the Merchant Performance Dashboard. Track success rates, identify decline patterns, and discover insights to help improve your revenue.

Overview

The Merchant Performance Dashboard presents analytics that enable subscription businesses to follow their payment performance via payment success rates, decline reasons breakdown, and other KPIs. It helps businesses understand why some subscribers had their payment rejected. The dashboard also provides insights into areas of strength and potential improvement. By visualizing key metrics over time and comparing them to industry benchmarks, businesses can identify trends, optimize processes, and improve overall payment success rates.

Dashboard Metrics and Features
 

The Merchant Performance Dashboard features two main pages, each offering specific insights and metrics related to your payment ecosystem:

Merchant Overview

This page allows you to assess the payment acceptance efficiency for both recurring and initial payments.

• Recurring Success Rate
  • Description: The ratio of successful recurring payments to total recurring payment attempts, regardless of the number of retries.
  • Example: If a transaction takes 5 attempts to succeed, its Recurring Success Rate will be 100%. If a transaction never succeeds, the Recurring Success Rate will be 0%.
  • Format: Presented as a percentage for the selected period, and for the same period in the previous year. A graph visualizes daily recurring success rates and the number of successful recurring transactions, along with the industry range.
• Recurring Transactions Decline Reasons Breakdown
  • Description: The count of recurring transactions categorized by specific decline reasons (e.g., insufficient funds, expired cards).
  • Format: A table lists decline reasons, their percentage of total declines, and the count of transactions declined for that reason. Reasons are ranked by frequency, with only those gathering more than 5% of all declines shown.
• Initial Success Rate
  • Description: The ratio of successful initial payments to total initial payment attempts, regardless of the number of retries.
  • Example: If a transaction takes 5 attempts to succeed, the Initial Success Rate will be 100%. If a transaction never succeeds, the Initial Success Rate will be 0%.
  • Format: Presented as a percentage for your specific publisher for the selected period and for the same period in the previous year. A graph visualizes daily initial success rates and the number of successful initial transactions, along with the industry range.
• Initial Transactions Decline Reasons Breakdown
  • Description: The count of initial transactions categorized by specific decline reasons (e.g., insufficient funds, expired cards).
  • Format: A table lists decline reasons, their percentage of total declines, and the count of transactions declined for that reason. Reasons are ranked by frequency, with only those gathering more than 5% of all declines shown.
• Industry Range
  • Description: A comparison of your payment success rates against the industry average for subscription businesses selling digital content similar to Cleeng’s customers.

Retried Payments 
 

This page provides detailed information on how payment retries are working, including success rates, recovered revenue, and outcomes across each retry attempt during the dunning schedule.

• Retry Success Rate
  • Description: The percentage of payments that were initially declined on the first renewal attempt but eventually succeeded during the retry schedule, thanks to our dunning settings.
  • Format: Presented as a percentage for the selected period and for the same period in the previous year. A graph visualizes the daily retry success rate and the revenue recovered during the retry schedule, along with the industry range.
• Recovered Revenue
  • Description: The total revenue collected during the retry schedule (from the 2nd attempt onwards). This revenue would have been lost without the retry logic.
  • Format: Presented as the total amount of recovered revenue (in the customer’s payout currency) for the selected period and for the last 365 days. A bar chart visualizes the recovered revenue per day. The x-axis displays the dates within the retry schedule, and the y-axis shows the revenue amount collected on each day.
• Cumulative Recurring Success Rate
  • Description: The proportion of successful recurring payments after each retry attempt, including all previous retry attempts, out of the total recurring payments to be renewed for the period selected.
  • Format: Line graph with attempts on the x-axis and the cumulative recurring success rate on the y-axis.
• Attempt Success Rate
  • Description: The success rate of each payment attempt during the retry schedule.
  • Format: A table detailing the success rate for each attempt during the retry schedule, including the count of successful, failed, and dropped transactions (e.g., not attempted due to excessive retry fees).
• Attempt Success
  • Description: The number of payments successfully collected at a specific attempt.
  • Format: A table column displaying values as absolute numbers.
• Attempt Fail (exclude Dropped)
  • Description: The number of payments declined at a specific attempt.
  • Format: A table column displaying values as absolute numbers.
• Attempt Fail (Dropped)
  • Description: The number of payments skipped at a specific attempt. Indeed, some subscribers may voluntarily churn or become ineligible between retries. Retries may also be skipped based on PSP settings in cases of suspected fraud or rejection reasons where retrying would be ineffective, helping to prevent excessive retry attempts.
  • Format: A table column displaying values as absolute numbers.

Key Benefits
 

The Merchant Performance Dashboard helps Merchant clients:

• Analyze their payment performance across multiple countries, payment methods, and customer segments.
• Compare their performance against industry benchmarks.
• Identify the primary reasons for declined transactions.
• Visualize how much recurring revenue was recovered during the retry logic.
• Granularly assess the retry logic performance for every retry attempt.

Getting Started

Step 1: To begin tracking your payment performance, access the Merchant Performance Dashboard from the Merchant section in the main navigation.

Step 2: Click the Merchant section to display the dashboard.

Step 3: Use filters to refine your analysis. The following filters are available:

• Date – analyze performance over a specific period.

• Payment Method – view results per payment method (e.g., credit card, PayPal).

• Region / Country – compare performance across different regions or countries.

• Offer Period – assess performance based on offer duration.

Once filtered, analyze the displayed data to identify common decline reasons and trends.

Step 4: Deep dive into certain areas of improvement, such as specific countries or specific payment methods, to better understand regional payment trends and identify areas that require optimization.

Payment Rejected Reasons

• Insufficient funds: the user does not have enough money on his bank account to pay for the transaction amount. Mostly seen in recurring transactions

• Fraud: Cleeng’s risk rules (and in some cases the AI fraud detection tool) has blocked the payment because it is seen as fraudulent. Mostly seen in initial transactions

• Declined: The issuer has declined the transaction. The reason is generally unknown, most likely related to fraud detected. Seen for both initial and recurring transactions

• CVC Declined: The CVC did not match that of the user’s card. Only seen for initial transactions since this is related to information completed on the checkout page.

• Missing payment details: some fields such as the cardholder’s name or card expiry date were not fully filled by the user, or the user has deleted some of his payment details on the subscription platform. Seen for both initial and recurring transactions. 

• Payment Agreement Cancelled: the entitlement agreement giving the user access to his subscription has been cancelled since his last payment. Only seen in recurring transactions.

• Invalid Card Number: the card number filed by the user was not correct. Mostly seen for initial transactions since this is related to information completed on the checkout page.

• Potential Fraud Detected: Cleeng’s risk rules (and in some cases the AI fraud detection tool) has blocked the payment because it is seen as fraudulent. Mostly seen in initial transactions.

• Payment Method Declined: The payment method has declined the transaction. The reason is unknown, most likely related to fraud detected. Seen for both initial and recurring transactions

• Transaction Blocked (Excessive Retry Fees): The transaction has been attempted too many times following the dunning settings set. The transaction has very little chance of being captured so the PSP declines the transaction by default. Only seen in recurring transactions.

• Expired Card: The user’s card has expired

• Unknown error: Unknown decline

• Redirect to PayPal: Issuer has declined and redirected the transaction to PayPal

FAQ

Merchant Overview

Why is my success rate in the low part of the industry range?

Success rate depends on many parameters, including the regions and countries where your subscribers pay from, the local payment method they use, etc. Your account manager can give you more insights about how you’re performing according to your specific markets. The industry range is a worldwide benchmark that does not provide a precise idea of how the industry is performing in geographical markets.

Why is "Not Enough Balance" so high for recurring transactions?

It is very common to see “Not Enough Balance” being the main decline reason for recurring transactions. For example, in the USA, payroll cycles happen every two weeks, making it common for subscribers to run out of money or use a specific payment method where they have limited funds.

Why is "Fraud" so high for initial transactions?

The vast majority of fraudulent transactions are detected and blocked on the initial payment attempt, thanks to the Merchant’s efficient security measures. Fraud is a major challenge for subscription businesses, and we are actively working to combat it right from the start.

Why are my “success rates 1 year ago” blank?

If you have launched Merchant less than one year ago, then you won’t be able to see data for 1 year.

How are the industry ranges calculated?

The industry range for both initial and recurring success rates are based on thousands of merchants' data using 1st and 3rd quartiles. The merchants used for the benchmark are all subscription businesses selling digital content similar to Cleeng's customers.

Do "Initial Success Rate" and "Initial Payment Rejected Reasons" include $0 transactions?

Yes, all metrics related to initial payments include $0 payments, for example, in the case of a free trial.

Retried Payments

Why is the number of retry attempts lower than the number of failed attempts before them?

The number of retry attempts (2nd, 3rd, etc.) can be lower than the number of prior failed attempts because some subscribers voluntarily churn or become ineligible between retries. Additionally, retries may be skipped due to suspected fraud or because of rejection reasons where retrying would be ineffective, helping to prevent excessive retry attempts.

Why is the retry success rate lower during the last few days?

The retry success rate appears lower during the last few days because many retries haven’t happened yet. The chart groups data by the date of the original failed payment, but retries are scheduled to take place over several days. So, for recent failures, there hasn’t been enough time for all retry attempts to complete.