Need Statistics on Percent of Credit Cards Declined.

Credit Card Decline Percentages and Averages

[dzyner]

I'm looking for statistics on the percentage of credit card transactions per day (average) that end up being declined. I scoured the net and cannot find anything on this. For example, if you receive 100 credit card orders per day, and 5 are declined, that equates to a 5% decline rate.

I've always wanted to know what other online retailers experience so I thought this would be the perfect place to post the question.

Thanks!
Dzyner

[gpilling]

less than 1% for me, based on phone orders. Don't know the stats for credit decline for web orders.

[dzyner]

Thanks gpilling. I would think its probably at least a little higher for web orders since there is nobody there live to troubleshoot and fix the issue, don't you think? Maybe I'm wrong. Would love to hear from some more people about their experience.

[MrHard]

Happens all the time. Declined due to fraud dept. Customer calls and clears it then it goes through the second time.

Continual battle.

[dzyner]

I'm really looking for a real number; an actual average in the form of a percentage of total orders. There has to be an industry average somewhere, but since I can't find one I'm hoping we can create one here with this post.

MrHard, do you have a percentage figure?

[rros]

This analysis might be incomplete if there is no itemization by industry. Gambling and adult probably have much, much higher decline ratios compared to shopping for books, for example, as what may change is the scrubbing by processors (the lists). I don't think it is realistic to expect an across the board, average figure. Not useful anyway.

[dzyner]

I agree rros. Lets limit to retail only (books, clothes, electronics, etc). I'm not looking for 100% scientific. That being said, I personally don't think the rate will be dramatically different from one industry to the next, but more based on checkout process error or other programming factors perhaps that are going to vary from one merchant to the next.

[HRoth]

Over the past couple of years, my decline rate has been about 6%.

[dzyner]

Thanks for the info HRoth! That's exactly what I'm looking for. Do you mind sharing your industry? If not that's fine since numbers is what matter most as far as I'm concerned.

[mattb]

We save all of our declines from the web and call the customer back. This includes customers that type in the incorrect cc data. Instead of showing them a decline notice, we just show the receipt as normal. Later someone calls the customer back. For us the number of declines is less than 1%. We process 300+ orders each day.

[sleepy_eye]

Ours is less than 1%, excluding call backs that went through due to customer typos, we don't use automated processing. If we charged the fraud orders it would be higher of course.

[HRoth]

I retail occult supplies, about half of which I make. The other half is natural products used in witchcraft. I've noticed that a goodly portion of my declines are people who input their three-digit code wrong and then put it in right, sometimes after 2 or three tries, each one a decline. Others are folks using a debit card who don't have enough on there (so they'll try with lower amounts and then it will go through). Most are not fraud. Very occasionally I get someone on a stolen credit card spree who tries one after the other, getting declines for all of them. Since I started banning by country ip address, that has stopped (although one fellow has repeatedly called me). Customers interact directly with the gateway for authorization. Then I capture each transaction by hand so I can check out the validity of the order. That allows me to void it if I am suspicious.

[MrHard]

What good is separate businesses stating their average?

It's going to vary depending on a whole host of factors (i.e. average sales amount, in-person sale/mail order/online etc). Cards don't all get declined at the same rate. Fraud risk factors in a whole host of conditions.