Strategic Analytics Tool · Subscription Payments

The Payments Stack
Audit

A complete diagnostic for subscription businesses. Billthrough is the primary metric — whether you collected payment across all retry attempts and all payment methods over a billing window. Auth rate tells you whether a single attempt succeeded. Billthrough tells you whether you got paid. Every lever has a cost, every PSP has a verdict, every trade-off has a number.

Your Stack Profile

Configure your business fundamentals. These inputs cascade through every module and weight every recommendation.

Annual Volume$180M
$100M threshold matters for direct acquiring viability
Monthly Billing Attempts1.2M
Subscription recurring billing attempts per month
Avg Transaction Value$14
Higher ATV amplifies every basis point of auth rate
Current Auth Rate82%
First-attempt success rate. Billthrough over the full retry window will be higher.
Current Billthrough Rate88%
% of subscribers billed successfully across all retries. This is the metric that maps to revenue.
Passive Churn from Failed Billing65%
% of billing failures leading to subscriber churn
Subscriber LTV15 mo
Average subscriber lifetime in months
Markets4–6
Cross-border complexity amplifies routing lever value
Engineering CapacityMedium
Internal payments engineering depth

Billthrough & Auth Rate Analysis

Auth rate tells you whether a single attempt succeeded. Billthrough tells you whether you got paid across the full retry window. Both matter, but billthrough is what maps to revenue. Score your optimization across the four levers that move both.

Routing Sophistication3/10
Local acquiring, dynamic routing, network selection
Retry Intelligence3/10
Decline taxonomy, timing optimization, cost-aware retries
Signal Enrichment2/10
3DS 2.0 completeness, ISO 8583 fields, tokenization
Message Experimentation2/10
Format A/B testing, issuer-specific optimization
Tokenization Coverage30%
% using network tokens (+4.6pp auth rate per Visa)
3DS MaturityBasic
How strategically 3DS is deployed per issuer

Auth Rate Gap by Lever — Revenue Opportunity

Fraud & Chargeback Balance

The central tension in payments: tightening fraud controls improves chargeback ratios but suppresses auth rate. The optimal balance is the point where the marginal cost of a decline exceeds the marginal cost of fraud.

Fraud Rate (bps)28
Basis points of volume. Visa VAMP threshold: 100bps
Chargeback Rate (bps)35
All chargebacks incl. friendly fraud. VAMP: 30bps above-standard
False Decline Rate (%)18%
Estimated % of declines that are false positives
Friendly Fraud % of Chargebacks45%
Legitimate customers disputing known purchases
Fraud ModelRule-based
Sophistication of current fraud decisioning
Issuer Data SharingNone
Direct data sharing with issuers to reduce false positives

Fraud vs. False Decline Cost Balance

Login & Identity Friction

Too much friction loses customers before billing triggers. Too little widens account takeover exposure. Find the right balance for your subscriber base.

MFA EnforcementOptional
How strictly multi-factor authentication is enforced
Login-to-Billing Friction5/10
Friction between login and first billing attempt
Account Takeover Rate (bps)12
ATO incidents per 10,000 accounts
Passkey / Passwordless Adoption10%
% of accounts using passwordless auth
Device IntelligenceBasic
Device fingerprinting and behavioural signals at login
Identity at SignupEmail only
Verification depth at account creation

Friction vs. Security Trade-off

PSP Rationalization Audit

Running 4–7 PSPs bolted on to solve specific corridors, none of them talking to each other, inflates transaction costs 15–40%. Score each PSP and receive a keep / consolidate / exit verdict.

Your Current PSPs

PSP Verdict Matrix

Payment Method Rationalization

Adding logos at checkout is not a strategy — it is a Christmas tree. Every payment method must justify its place with measurable conversion increment, manageable reconciliation complexity, and viable unit economics.

The Christmas Tree Problem

Without a rationalization framework, every new payment method fragments the user experience, adds reconciliation complexity, and quietly erodes margins. The question is not which method to add next. It is which ones are earning their place.

Method Value vs. Complexity — Rationalization View

Stack Verdict

Your complete payments stack assessment. The single most important action is shown first. Everything else follows in priority order.

Revenue at Stake — All Actions by Estimated Annual Impact

Executive NarrativeScenario-matched briefing

Click Generate Narrative for a scenario-matched executive briefing based on your configuration.