A single approval rate tells you something is off. It doesn't tell you what to fix. Here are the six cuts a monthly decline report should show, and how to read each one before peak season.
A US customer's card works at a US store and gets declined at yours. Nothing about the card changed. What changed is where your transaction is processed, and how the issuer reads it.
Most merchants treat every issuer decline the same way: retry until something sticks, or write the order off. But decline codes already say which of three buckets a failed payment is in, and the card networks now charge for getting it wrong.
