what is your average credit card approval ratio?
 

I just ran some numbers so far this month... On average for every 50 approved transactions I get 36 denials.

Is a reasonable number? What is your average?

I was hoping to get a good discussion going on this since I can't seacrh for it. Maybe I should just post pics of models and celebs, spam my program, or talk about random shit to make a few dollars with a sig.

What are the good boards now to talk about this business?

Wow I get about 97% with mainstream.

JPV,

You should check out http://www.123bill.com for the credit card declines. It's unfortunate that to stay in business so many good transactions are getting scrubbed. I invented this new billing methodology to help pick up new sales and to turn some of those declines into deposits. I think you'll find that your numbers are similar to what many other merchants are experiencing.

Cheers,

Brad

Turbo, offline or online mainstream?

Brad, I don't think that is what I want. I would rather get my own merchant account.

nonya

why?

I only took a quick look 123bill but so far... full addresses and part of SS# needed. In my experience if the address is asked for sales are a little bit lower. I would think asking for part of someone SS# for a porn site would lower that number even further.

Who's your processor. I'm really curious.

My program has been roughly a month a luckily I am only declining, about 10%. The bigger problem lies in fraudulent check users, you can blatently tell when someone is using fake names, I got one once from a "Scooty McRooty." The fucked up part is they get about 3 days access before they are booted.

Rick, I am using paycom. Today I had low sales so I checked the declines. There were almost twice as many declined transactions as approved transactions. Altough since Paycom put up the new system I can't tell how many times a specific user attempted to sign up. So looking at just one day can be deceiving but %200 is crazy.

Anyone else averaging about 40% delined transactions?

RedMonkey, who is your processor?

I get a lot of declined transactions with CCBill. I'd say maybe 25% of people attempting to join my site are declined, but they could all just be people being stupid and entering fake names, etc.

When CCBill scrubs, I can get up to 65% of declines.

I then send them an Email and shout out loud here.

As soon as I do this, I can see a big difference in their srcubs:
They suddenly accept 90-100% of my transactions.

They are very unpredictable :

This week, one day I had 17 new sales in a day, next day, with the same traffic, I had 4 new sales ! and 70% of refused transactions ! Now, when this happens, I know that there is a scrubbing problem.


Normaly, they accept 85-100% of my new transactions.
Seems like the rebills are oftenly declines though... But I don't have numbers on this, just an impression. I don't get as many rebills as I did when I was with Verotel.

But as I am getting my merchant account next week, I'll be processing my own transactions, I will know EXACTLY what the normal should be.

Processors often turn the scrub on high when their overall chargeback ratio gets to dangerous levels. My suggestion to you is to setup cascading billing and change the primary whenever you see the scrub getting out of control. You'll find yourself changing the primary once or twice a month like I do.

We have 75-80% of CC approval ratio ( amount of approved sales / amount of total submits on join page) on long distances (when I compare monthly stats) with Ibill.

I don't count these numbers for small periods (e.g. from day to day) of time.

There're always good and bad days for sales, but approval ratio is always about the same from my experience.

Do the numbers you guys are giving me from ccbill and ibill include the users getting declined several times. On paycom's old system I could see the breakdown of all of the declines. It was common to see the same person get declined 3-4 times and sometimes get approved on the 4th-5th try. This is from people using bad cards, not confirming their email correctly, or whatever. I would have to guess with the new sytem since I can no longer see these numbers. So I would guess I would be around 75% approved like some of you. But including all the declines it is at 60% approved.

CHMOD, getting 100% approved in adult over almost any period of time is impossible unless you are talking about a few transactions.

Rick, I don't believe paycom does that. I think it was rand who stated here that they have not touched scrubbing in awhile. Yesterdays delines are not what I am curious about. I can understand fluctuations in a period of 12 hours even at that extreme. But I am more curious about having an average of 60% approved this month.

jpv, yes I believe my stats include all the declined transactions.

We use decline billing, so when surfer get decline with Ibill, he's forwarded to CCbill. So in most cases there's small amount of decline transactions from the same person for primary billing.

You should compare your numbers with other guys who use Epoch or just wait and see what will happen with your own numbers.

I've seen several people claim this, but corvett has pointed out that it's impossible to change the scrub in real time, since chargeback levels are based on transactions from literally months ago.

As to the original question, Verotel only has click:buy ratio statistics (where clicks are people who load the signup form, and buy is a successful sale). You can't work out concrete decline stats from this, but as it's displayed as a graph you can easily see any remarkable changes relative to other days.