The auth rate dashboard everybody wants
Authorisation rate is one of those numbers that feels obvious until you try to put it on a dashboard. Auth rate by what? Card brand, region, plan, attempt number, time of day? All of those splits are interesting and most of them are misleading on their own.
The version we build with clients tends to settle on five views. Headline auth rate as a single trend line. Auth rate by card brand to catch the moment Visa quietly changes a rule. Auth rate by attempt number to separate first-charge problems from retry problems. Decline reason mix as a stacked area to make trends visible. And finally a regional breakdown for businesses selling across borders.
More than five views and the dashboard stops being looked at. Less than five and the team ends up cutting the data themselves in spreadsheets. Five is uncomfortable and roughly correct.
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