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A guide to optimizing 3D Secure conversion

Optimizing for 3D Secure conversion is a crucial step in enhancing your payment success rates and something often forgotten. While 3D Secure is a regulatory requirement in some regions, it is not in others. You, therefore, can optimize for both payment authorization rate as well as 3D Secure conversion. Here’s a best practice guide to effectively optimize your 3D Secure conversion:

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1. Check Primer’s 3D Secure dashboard

Primer offers a dedicated 3D Secure dashboard that provides valuable insights into your authentication rates. In the “3D Secure Authentication Rate” tab, you’ll find a comprehensive breakdown of authentication rates. Notably, this includes a list of BINs with the highest number of failed 3D Secure authentications. By focusing on the BINs that have most failed 3D Secure payments, you’ll use your time tackling the largest problem first.

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2. Identifying critical BINs

To make informed decisions about your 3D Secure settings, you’ll need to identify critical BINs. High failure rates within specific BINs indicate that it might be beneficial to remove 3D Secure for those particular payments. You can search over a longer time period if there is a limited number of payments with the default settings. Add a filter for the BINs with the most failed payments, and make sure that it is not just one or two customers causing the spike in failed 3D Secure payments in the “3D Secure Attempts” tab. You can also assess if there are any other subsets of payments that are causing the poor conversion, such as a specific currency or country.

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3. Filter out the noise

To assess whether removing 3D Secure is an option, you will also need to analyze the authorization rate for the BINs when 3D Secure is not applied. If the authorization rate when 3D Secure is not used is high, then you’ll likely see a positive impact from removing 3D Secure for these payments. Add filters for any groups of payments that you have identified as causing poor conversion (there may be none). Also, the filter for payments with “is null” in the 3D Response Code indicates that 3D Secure was not used. You’ll want to focus on only the payments where 3D Secure is relevant, so also add a filter for customer-initiated transactions (CIT).

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4. Checking Authorization Rates

Now, you’re ready to dive into the authorization rates to ensure removing 3D Secure won’t have other negative consequences. Use the “Switch Dashboard” toggle to access the Payments Dashboard with the filters applied. Within the “Authorization Rates” tab, check the authorization rate for the filtered payments. A high authorization rate suggests that removing 3D Secure from this specific BIN will likely boost your overall conversion rates.

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5. Think about the fraud impact

If you are removing 3D Secure, then you are also removing a barrier to fraudsters. Make sure that these payments have another fraud solution in place so that you are not left open to a fraudulent attack. The list of external fraud providers Primer works with is here, and some payment processors also have internal fraud tools built in.

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6. Take action

Create a new workflow route for the payments you have identified that would benefit from removing 3D Secure. Add a condition block that includes all of the filters you have applied, and update the 3DS settings in the authorized action of the payments app.