At Pagos, we’re committed to providing you with the most accurate and actionable data to drive your business toward payments optimization. One of the ways we do that is by continuously improving how we categorize and harmonize your payments data. As a part of this mission, we recently expanded the set of reason codes we sort your gateway rejections into during the data-harmonization process. This update means you’ll have even more granular insights into why certain transactions are being blocked before they even get sent to an issuer.

Why Gateway Rejection Data Matters

Gateway rejections differ from typical declined transactions in that they occur before ever reaching the card issuer. Originally named after the payment gateways that sat between merchants and acquirers, these failures occur when any technology provider (e.g. gateway, acquirer, or PSP) stops a transaction early in the lifecycle. Typically, gateway rejections result from transactions not passing established authentication requirements, risk-management rules, or fraud rules designed by the merchant or their PSP. 

While gateway rejections are in their own category of declines, they’re still declines. Unfortunately, despite this fact, many processors don't factor gateway rejections into their provided decline counts or approval rate calculations, leaving you with an incomplete view of failed transactions. As you grow, if you don’t know how many of these blocked transactions you have and what’s causing them—actual fraud concerns or a setup issue—you’re going to miss out on revenue opportunities and frustrate legitimate customers.

When you connect your PSPs to Pagos and we ingest your payments data for aggregation and harmonization, we do two important things with your gateway rejections: 

1. Harmonize gateway rejections from each of your connected data sources into 19 decline reason codes, all grouped under the reason code category of blocked_by_gateway_or_merchant_rule

2. Include all gateway rejections in all decline-related analytics, including your aggregated declined transaction count and approval rate

Ultimately, Pagos provides you with a comprehensive picture of what's happening with your transactions—and more importantly, insights into why some transactions fail and where in the transaction process they were blocked.

The New Rejection Codes

Previously, we categorized all gateway rejections into broad codes such as processor_risk_rule or decline_merchant_rule. While these codes were helpful for identifying gateway decline types, they didn’t provide a deeper look into exactly where the rejection occurred. Now, we’ve added a set of new rejection codes, giving you even more specificity in your data. Examples include:

• blocked_cvc - Transaction was blocked due to CVC rule

• blocked_duplicate - Transaction was identified as a duplicate transaction

• blocked_3ds - Transaction was blocked due to missing 3DS authentication

• blocked_excessive_retry - Transaction was flagged as an excessive retry

For the full list of Pagos decline codes and their categorization, see the Pagos Product Documentation.

How to Leverage Gateway Rejection Insights

With the updated gateway rejection codes, you can unlock valuable insights into your transaction flow by flagging the types of transactions that are being blocked. For instance, in the Declines Metrics page in your Peacock Service Panel, you can filter for declines in the Blocked By Gateway Or Merchant Rule category to see a breakdown of gateway rejected transactions. Are certain payment methods more prone to gateway rejections? Is a particular stored credential (one-time, recurring, etc.) being disproportionately blocked? How are gateway rejections—both in total and as a share of overall declines—changing over time? 

Armed with this information, you can begin experimenting with your fraud and risk rules. For example:

• Are your CVC rules too strict? If you find a large number of transactions being blocked due to unmatched CVC, you might consider relaxing those rules for certain markets or customer segments. You might want to run an A/B test for six weeks to see if loosening those restrictions leads to higher approval rates without a corresponding spike in fraud or chargebacks.

• Should you use 3D Secure? If many transactions are blocked due to 3D Secure in countries where it isn’t required, ask yourself if it’s truly necessary to enforce 3DS on all transactions. While 3DS can lower fraud risk, it can also add friction to the checkout process and reduce conversion rates. Use Peacock’s data to measure the impact of 3DS rejections and find the balance that makes sense for your business.

Final Thoughts

This update is just one of the many ways we’re working to give you more control and transparency over your payment data. By understanding why transactions are being rejected at the gateway level, you can reduce friction for your customers, optimize your approval rates, and even uncover potential fraud risks.

At Pagos, our goal is to empower you with actionable insights that help you streamline your payments, reduce costs, and grow your business. If you haven’t already explored the new gateway rejection codes, now is the perfect time to dive into your Decline Metrics page in Peacock and start optimizing!

Not using Pagos yet? Contact us today to get started!