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Nerve Centre KPIs · Audit Profile · Sentiment Settings Afterpay state matters when it’s tied to captured BNPL revenue, settlement cash flow, and refund/dispute exposure. This audit answers four questions: (1) is the API credential + region/environment config healthy, (2) is Pay-in-4 approval holding and what’s driving declines / 3DS friction, (3) are refunds, chargebacks and settlement timing under control, and (4) does Afterpay volume reconcile to the commerce sibling’s order revenue (and do refund spikes track commerce returns).

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What this audit checks

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Authentication & configuration

  • Basic credential valid (auth on GET /v2/configuration) - Merchant ID + Secret Key accepted
  • Region host correct (global api.us.afterpay.com / anz api.afterpay.com) and environment matches (sandbox vs production)
  • BNPL minimum/maximum order limits returned by /v2/configuration cover the merchant’s basket range

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Approval & checkout health

  • Success (approval + capture) rate below 90%
  • Decline rate above 8% (and which decline reasons dominate)
  • 3DS challenge abandonment above 30% (added friction / lost conversion)
  • Approval-rate drop during a campaign push (paying for traffic Afterpay won’t approve)

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Refunds, disputes & settlement

  • Refund rate above 8% of captured volume, or a refund spike > 50% vs 7-day baseline
  • Chargeback rate above 1% (Visa/Mastercard programme threshold)
  • Dispute response overdue (respondBy passed with status OPEN / UNDER_REVIEW)
  • Oldest pending payout aging above 5 days vs the typical 1-3 day schedule (cash-flow risk)

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Cross-channel: payments-to-revenue (the killer area)

  • Afterpay captured volume vs commerce-sibling Afterpay-paid order revenue mismatch > 2% (reconciliation gap; sibling = shopify / bigcommerce / adobe_commerce)
  • Afterpay refund spike correlated with a commerce-sibling returns / cancellation spike (product / fulfilment issue, not a payments glitch)
  • Declined-Afterpay shoppers re-attempting on a card gateway sibling (recoverable basket signal)
  • Afterpay AOV-lift erosion vs commerce-sibling card AOV (BNPL value proposition weakening)

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Severity thresholds

SignalWarnCritical
success_rate_pct9590
decline_rate_pct58
threedsecure_abandon_pct1530
refund_rate_pct38
chargeback_rate_pct0.50.9
dispute_rate_pct0.51
payout_age_days25
reconciliation_gap_pct12

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Data sources

  • GET https://api.us.afterpay.com/v2/configuration - Auth probe + BNPL config / order limits
  • GET https://api.us.afterpay.com/v2/payments - Volume / approval / decline / 3DS / payment-method mix
  • GET https://api.us.afterpay.com/v2/payments/{id}/refund - Refund value + reasons per payment (refund rate / volume)
  • GET https://api.us.afterpay.com/v2/settlements - Payout status + age (pending payouts, settlement timing)
  • GET https://api.us.afterpay.com/v2/disputes - Chargeback / dispute inventory + response deadlines