1. What is Cascading? 

1.1. Definition and benefits


Cascading is the ability to automatically reattempt soft-declines with a view to getting them into an authorised or captured state.  Cascading is only attempted on card payments - other payment methods (e.g. Open Banking, Direct Debit, or APMs) are excluded.



Benefits from a customer’s point of view

The customer may still know the original declined due to a banking app notification, but they will see a reattempt go through almost immediately (milliseconds), without having to re-enter their details.



Benefits from a merchant’s point of view

Cascading allows declined transactions that may not have been reattempted by the customer to be retried automatically, thus enabling the merchant to recover lost revenue and fight basket abandonment. 

Cascading is designed via routing rules after extensive decline analysis is performed. There are several ways in which your Cascading logic can be set-up. For example you could choose to retry the same transaction using the exact same request and routing. In this case, the exact same request, including the external authentication, from the original transaction can be sent to the same gateway, the same MID, the same acquirer again up to 4 times. Or alternatively, the transaction could be retried using a different routing and the request would be sent to a different MID, different acquirer or gateway. There is great flexibility in the way that Cascading is set-up to ensure maximum success rates.



 KEY INFO 

  • A transaction can only be cascaded up to 4 times

  • Cascading is only used on non-fraud declines

  • Cascading only applies to card payments


1.2. Which reasons codes can be cascaded?

Cascading is only performed on transactions that were soft-declined (i.e. for non-fraud reasons). It is never attempted against transactions that were declined for fraud reasons (hard declines).


In order to ensure transactions are being cascaded in an optimal manner, consideration needs to be given to the types of declined transactions that a re-attempted with an alternative acquirer. For example, a transaction declined for insufficient funds is not going to achieve success elsewhere where as some of the less prescriptive decline codes (e.g. Do Not Honour) could. 


There are a number of very common decline codes that would be likely to offer an increased acceptance rate if attempted elsewhere - please check the example list below:

  • 5 - Do not honor (by far the most applicable to Cascading)

  • 6 - General error

  • 12 - Invalid transaction

  • 15 - No such issuer

  • 20 - Invalid response

  • 22 - Suspected malfunction

  • 30 - Format error

  • 57 - Transaction not permitted to cardholder

  • 58 - Transaction not allowed at terminal


2. How does it work?


There are different ways in which Cascading can be implemented - this is reliant on your business requirements and needs. Cascading is set-up via routing rules in our Intelligent Routing Engine by our Payment Optimisation team after in-depth analysis is performed to identify the most optimal route. Every routing rule that is created for a merchant can have Cascading enabled. 



To allow the maximum flexibility, Cascading can be enabled at parent-level or organisation-level - this depends on your set-up with APEXX. For example, you could choose to enable Cascading for your entire hierarchy, or only for a select number of organisations within your hierarchy. You could also choose to enable a Cascading 


3. What does a Cascaded transaction look like in the Atomic Portal?

A Cascaded transaction will be identified by the Cascade logo which is visible next to the transaction status.




You can check the Cascading path and the different stages of a transaction in the Routing tab of the transaction. In the example below, you an see that the transaction was first declined via Cardstream with a Decline Reason code of 1, before being Cascaded over to Dalenys, 




4. How can I enable Cascading?


If you are interested in enabling Cascading, please talk to your Relationship Manager or contact relationshipmanagement@apexx.global.