Metrics6 min readUpdated October 15, 2026

What Is Payment Conversion Rate and How Do You Calculate It?

Payment conversion rate formula, how it differs from checkout conversion and authorization rate, where payments are lost, and a worked funnel example.

Nick Bonnassies, CMO at Tagada · checked against 6 sources

Article summary

TL;DR

Payment conversion rate is the percentage of payments that succeed out of those your customers start. Formula: successful payments ÷ payment attempts × 100, or successful payments ÷ checkout sessions that reached the payment step × 100. It is wider than authorization rate: it also counts failed 3D Secure, blocked payments and, in the session version, shoppers who quit the payment form.

Payment conversion rate = successful payments ÷ payment attempts × 100. A wider version divides by checkout sessions that reached the payment step.
It sits between checkout conversion (all checkouts started) and authorization rate (only attempts the issuer saw). Each has a different denominator.
Losses happen in three places: the payment form, authentication (3D Secure) and the issuer's decline. Each one has a different fix and a different owner.
Write down your definition: raw or deduplicated, with or without insufficient-funds declines. The same traffic can show very different rates.
No card network or regulator publishes a benchmark. Compare your own rate by segment and over time.

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On this page

Payment conversion rate tells you how many of the people who try to pay actually pay. It is the payment step's own metric: narrower than your store conversion rate, wider than your authorization rate. This page gives the formulas, how it compares with the metrics it gets confused with, where each loss happens, and a worked example.

What is payment conversion rate?

Payment conversion rate is the percentage of payments started that end in a successful payment. dLocal, a payment provider, puts the question it answers simply: "Out of all payment attempts, how many became successful payments?"3 Stripe calls the same idea payment success rate.1

Two formulas, two denominators

Attempt-based: successful payments ÷ payment attempts × 100

Session-based: successful payments ÷ checkout sessions that reached the payment step × 100

The attempt-based version starts when the customer clicks Pay. It counts failed 3D Secure, payments blocked by fraud rules and issuer declines. Stripe's version divides charges authorized by unique payment attempts and excludes only invalid API calls.1 The session-based version starts earlier, when the payment form loads, so it also catches shoppers who saw the form and left.

Two choices change the number on the same traffic:

Raw or deduplicated. A purchase that fails twice and then succeeds is 33.3% raw and 100% deduplicated in Stripe's example.1
With or without insufficient funds. dLocal reports both: 880 approved out of 1,000 attempts is 88% raw, and about 94.6% once its 70 insufficient-funds declines leave the denominator.3

Adyen warns that providers measure "at what point in the payment flow" they choose, and "the two figures can diverge significantly."5 Write your definition down before you compare anything.

Payment conversion vs checkout conversion vs authorization rate

Four metrics, four denominators. The numerator is the same: successful payments, or paid orders.

Metric	Formula	Denominator starts at	What it catches
Store conversion rate	Orders ÷ sessions × 100	Any visit	Traffic quality, product pages, price, checkout and payment together
Checkout conversion rate	Orders ÷ checkouts started × 100	First checkout step	Shipping costs, forms, account creation, plus every payment loss
Payment conversion rate	Successful payments ÷ payment attempts (or sessions at the payment step) × 100	Payment step	Payment form exits (session version), 3D Secure failures, fraud blocks, declines
Authorization rate	Approved ÷ attempts sent to the card network × 100	Authorization request	The issuer's decision only

Verdict

The later in the funnel the denominator starts, the higher the rate and the narrower the diagnosis.

Checkout conversion is the mirror of checkout abandonment, covered in our guide to checkout abandonment rate. Store conversion has its own playbook in how to increase ecommerce conversion rates. For the issuer side, see authorization rate.

Where payment conversion is lost

Between the payment form and a successful payment, buyers drop out at three points.

Payment formThe shopper saw the form and never clicked Pay: missing method, too many fields, distrust, a page errorAnalytics: payment step reached vs payment submitted
Authentication3D Secure challenge abandoned or failed, or the payment blocked by fraud rulesProcessor: challenge rate, challenge success rate, blocks
Issuer decisionSoft decline (funds, limits) or hard decline (lost card, closed account)Processor: decline codes

Baymard Institute's survey of US online shoppers shows the first and last points from the buyer's side. Leaving out the 42% who were "just browsing", 17% abandoned because the "website had errors / crashed", 10% because "the credit card was declined" and 9% because "there weren't enough payment methods" (page last updated September 22, 2025).4

Authentication has its own metrics. Stripe reports a challenge rate (challenges out of all 3D Secure attempts) and a challenge success rate (completed challenges out of challenges). A failed challenge covers both a customer who abandoned and a bank that rejected.2 Wallet payments such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are left out of those reports because they authenticate on the device instead of through 3D Secure.2

Worked example: one month, five rates

An illustrative store, one month, deduplicated attempts.

10,000 store sessions, of which 1,200 start checkout.
700 reach the payment step. The payment form loads.
620 click Pay. 80 leave the payment form without submitting.
570 reach the issuer. 20 are blocked by fraud rules and 30 abandon or fail 3D Secure.
520 succeed. The issuer declines 50.

Illustrative example. Retried purchases are grouped, so each buyer counts once.

The same 520 payments give five rates:

Store conversion: 520 ÷ 10,000 = 5.2%
Checkout conversion: 520 ÷ 1,200 = 43.3%
Payment conversion, session-based: 520 ÷ 700 = 74.3%
Payment conversion, attempt-based: 520 ÷ 620 = 83.9%
Authorization rate: 520 ÷ 570 = 91.2%

Of the 180 buyers lost at the payment step, 80 never clicked Pay, 50 stopped at authentication or a fraud block, and 50 were declined. Each group has a different owner: product for the form, risk for blocks and 3D Secure, payments for declines. Stripe's own worked example shows the same gap between its two rates: 93% payment success rate against 94.9% authorization rate, the difference being 1,000 failed authentications and 1,000 blocked payments.1

Recent weeks look worse

If declined payments are still being retried, a deduplicated rate for the last month dips until the retries have run. Stripe flags this in its own reports.1 Compare complete periods.

What is a good payment conversion rate?

No card network, regulator or processor publishes an official benchmark. The most quoted figure, Baymard's 70.22%, is an average of 50 cart abandonment studies, not a payment metric.4 Vendor figures use their own definitions, raw or deduplicated, with or without blocks.

What processors do document is which segments usually succeed more. Stripe says domestic cards beat cross-border cards, credit beats debit, debit beats prepaid, and wallets beat typed cards because they are "tokenized and device-authenticated."1 So segment first: by card country, card type, payment method, device and new versus returning customer. A drop in one segment tells you more than any industry average.

How to improve it

This page is the definition. The fixes live in our guides:

For the payment form and checkout design, see ecommerce checkout optimization.
For declines and retries, see payment acceptance rate, plus hard decline and smart retry.
For authentication, see 3D Secure and our guide to payment authentication.

How Tagada helps

The payment step, in one place

Tagada's checkout supports one-click upsells, order bumps, A/B tests, and Apple Pay and Google Pay. TagadaPay runs native 3DS2, device intelligence and a rules engine. Payments route across TagadaPay and processors such as Stripe, NMI and Airwallex with one logic, with a cascade to another processor when one is down or times out.

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Updated on October 15, 2026

Nick Bonnassies

CMO at Tagada

CMO at Tagada. Before Tagada, Nick built direct-to-consumer brands that generated over $115M in sales, raised over $25M in crowdfunding and sold two of them. He also works as a fractional CMO on marketing operations and AI systems.

Frequently asked questions

What is the payment conversion rate formula?

Payment conversion rate = successful payments ÷ payment attempts × 100. With 520 successful payments out of 620 attempts, the rate is 83.9%. A wider version divides by checkout sessions that reached the payment step, which also counts shoppers who left the payment form without submitting. State which one you use and keep it.

What is a good checkout conversion rate for ecommerce?

No card network, regulator or analytics vendor publishes an official one. The most quoted number, Baymard Institute's 70.22% (last updated September 22, 2025), is an average cart abandonment rate from 50 studies, not a checkout benchmark. Vendor figures use their own definitions. Compare your rate with your own history, by device, market and payment method.

What is the difference between payment conversion rate and authorization rate?

Authorization rate only counts attempts that reached the card issuer: approved ÷ sent for authorization. Payment conversion rate also counts payments that failed 3D Secure or were blocked by fraud rules before the issuer saw them. In Stripe's own example, the same data gives a 93% payment success rate and a 94.9% authorization rate.

What is the payment conversion index?

There is no standard metric by that name. The closest is the PYMNTS Checkout Conversion Index, a benchmark PYMNTS says it developed in 2016 to measure how much friction exists in the online path to purchase, scored from 0 to 100. It rates merchants' checkout experiences. It is not a formula you can apply to your own payments.

Why do some payment flows convert better than others?

Because each flow loses buyers at different points. Stripe's data shows patterns: domestic cards succeed more often than cross-border ones, credit more than debit and debit more than prepaid, and wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay more than typed cards, because they are tokenized and device-authenticated. Fewer fields and fewer challenges also mean fewer exits.

How do you measure the impact of payment security on checkout conversion?

Track the security steps as their own funnel. Stripe reports a challenge rate (challenges ÷ 3D Secure attempts) and a challenge success rate (completed challenges ÷ challenges). Add payments blocked by fraud rules. Then compare payment conversion with and without those steps, on the same segment and period, and watch fraud disputes at the same time.

Sources

Checked October 15, 2026

Tagada

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