Average Transaction, Viva Payments

Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Payment Gateway

At a glance

The arithmetic mean amount of a successful Viva Payments transaction in the period, Total Revenue ÷ Successful Transactions. The single-customer-paid figure that pairs with revenue and transaction-count to triangulate growth shape.


What it counts	`SUM(Amount) ÷ COUNT(transactions)` over rows where `StatusId = F` (Successful), grouped per `CurrencyCode`. Every successful capture contributes equally.
API endpoint	`GET /api/transactions` Smart Checkout + POS feed; both online and card-present captures contribute.
VAT / tax treatment	Inclusive. Whatever the customer was charged at terminal or online. Viva is a payment institution, not a tax engine.
Currency	Multi-currency arithmetic mean WITHOUT FX conversion. Multi-currency stores get a per-currency mean, not a single rolled-up figure. Use Revenue by Country for cross-currency reconciliation.
Fees / processing cost	Gross. Viva interchange + scheme fees not deducted (typically 0.8, 1.4% blended for EU intra-EEA cards).
Refunds	NOT deducted. A refunded EUR 80 transaction still contributes EUR 80 to the average. For a net-of-refund average use Net Revenue ÷ Successful Transactions manually until the Net Avg Transaction card lands.
Disputes / chargebacks	NOT deducted. Disputed transactions contribute at full Amount.
Failed / declined payments	Excluded. Both numerator (Amount sum) and denominator (transaction count) only count `StatusId = F`.
3DS 2 treatment	Frictionless and successfully-challenged transactions both count. Abandoned challenges (`StatusId = X`) are excluded from both numerator and denominator.
Channels	Online + POS unified. Smart POS card-present captures and online Smart Checkout sessions both contribute. POS averages tend to be lower than online (impulse purchases vs basket-built sessions); a heavy mix shift between channels can move this number on its own.
Time window	`30D vsP` (default 30D vs the prior 30D).
Alert trigger	`drop >10% vsP`.
Roles	owner, finance

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Viva Payments data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A French DTC home-goods brand (“Maison Olive”) runs Viva for online checkout and a single Paris flagship Smart POS. The 30-day window covers 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26.

Channel	Successful Transactions	Total Amount	Avg Transaction
Online checkout (e-shop)	1,820	EUR 218,400	EUR 120.00
Paris Smart POS	740	EUR 31,800	EUR 42.97
Recurring rebills (subscription candles)	1,150	EUR 25,300	EUR 22.00

Combined avg transaction (this card):
  Total Amount         = EUR 218,400 + 31,800 + 25,300 = EUR 275,500
  Successful txns      = 1,820 + 740 + 1,150           = 3,710
  Avg Transaction      = EUR 275,500 ÷ 3,710           = EUR 74.26

What the merchant should notice:

The blended figure hides three very different baskets. Online is EUR 120 (mid-basket DTC), POS is EUR 43 (impulse buys, single candles, cards), recurring is EUR 22 (a single SKU subscription). The blended EUR 74.26 represents none of them. When this card swings, always check whether the mix moved before assuming customer behaviour changed.
A 10% rebill mix shift can drop avg transaction by 5+ EUR. If next month the recurring program grows from 1,150 to 1,800 rebills (typical for a healthy subscription brand), the blended avg drops to ~ EUR 68, even though every customer is buying the same basket they bought before. Use viva_revenue_trend and viva_total_transactions together to disambiguate.
POS averages are structurally lower than online for most retailers. Cards-in-hand customers buy fewer items per transaction than basket-built online sessions. A POS-heavy merchant will always show a lower avg transaction than a comparable online-only merchant; this is not a problem, just a channel shape.
Rising avg transaction often masks declining customer count. If avg transaction goes up but viva_total_transactions goes down, you are selling more to fewer people, that’s a retention story, not a growth story. Cross-check with the upstream commerce platform’s New vs Returning metric.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Card	Why pair it with Avg Transaction
`viva_total_revenue`	The numerator. Avg × Successful Transactions = Revenue.
`viva_total_transactions`	The denominator. Rising avg with falling transactions = selling more to fewer people.
`viva_revenue_trend`	Trend the numerator daily; helps detect mix shifts.
`viva_payment_methods`	Card-type mix moves average. Premium cards (Amex, World Elite) carry larger baskets.
`viva_revenue_by_country`	Country mix moves average. Northern-EU baskets often higher than Mediterranean.
`viv_top_payment_methods`	Companion view of methods driving the mix.
Stripe `stripe_avg_transaction` / PayPal `pp_avg_transaction`	Cross-PSP comparison. Different card mixes drive different averages on the same merchant.
Commerce platform `shopify.aov`	The upstream view. Commerce-platform AOV includes orders paid via non-Viva methods; Viva avg is a subset.

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in the Viva Payments Dashboard: Sign in at viva.com/business/account/login. The closest comparable view is:

Viva Business → Sales → Reports → Transactions (filter “Successful only”, pick the same date range)

The headline tile on Sales overview also exposes an “average transaction” figure for the active period. Other Viva views that look similar but answer different questions:

Settlements view: nets fees and reserves; produces a settled per-transaction figure that’s structurally lower than this card.
Per-terminal POS reports (Devices → Terminals): same metric for one POS device only, useful for benchmarking individual stores against the blended average.
Marketplace Splits view: shows per-split residuals, not customer-paid amounts.

Why our number may legitimately differ from the Viva Dashboard:

Reason	Direction	Why
Time zone	Boundary days off	Viva Dashboard renders in account timezone (Athens EET / EEST for Greek merchants). Vortex IQ uses UTC. The 30D window averages out; “today” / “yesterday” cards can shift.
Multi-currency	Ours arithmetically wrong as a single number	Viva Dashboard offers a “convert to EUR” toggle using day-FX; this card preserves native currency. Use `viva_revenue_by_country` for FX-converted view.
Refund netting	Theirs lower if “net” view selected	Some Viva report views show net avg after refunds; this card is gross.
3DS late completion	Small drift	A challenge completed hours later flips a `pending` to `F`; the Dashboard updates retroactively.

Cross-connector reconciliation:

Comparison	Expected relationship	When divergence is legitimate
`viva_avg_transaction` ↔ `shopify.aov` (Mediterranean store with Viva primary)	Within ±10% if Viva covers most checkout volume	If commerce platform also accepts PayPal / Klarna / Cash on Delivery, those raise / lower the commerce AOV without touching Viva avg.
`viva_avg_transaction` ↔ `stripe.stripe_avg_transaction` (multi-PSP merchant)	Often differ by 5, 30%	Different card-brand mix routes differently. Premium / Amex traffic often defaults to Stripe; debit and local-issuer traffic to Viva. The split mechanically separates basket sizes.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is my Viva avg transaction lower than my Shopify AOV? Two reasons. (1) Shopify AOV includes PayPal, Klarna, and any other-method orders that don’t touch Viva. If your premium / wholesale customers default to PayPal, Shopify AOV is dragged up by those orders while Viva avg is not. (2) Viva avg is per successful transaction, while Shopify AOV is per order. A multi-instalment order (Klarna, instalment-on-Viva) is one Shopify order but multiple Viva transactions, so Viva avg comes out lower mechanically. Why does Viva show me a different avg in their Dashboard? Time-zone boundary effects, multi-currency rolling vs native, or you’re looking at the net (post-refund) view in their Dashboard. Walk through the reconciliation table above. For Greek merchants the most common cause is the 3-hour Athens-vs-UTC offset on “today” cards. My avg transaction dropped 12% but revenue is flat, what happened? Almost certainly a mix shift, more transactions, smaller baskets. Three usual culprits: (1) launched a low-price SKU that’s selling well, (2) recurring rebill program scaled (small monthly charges drag the average down), (3) POS volume rose vs online (POS averages are structurally lower). Does Smart POS card-present count the same as online? Yes, both are Type = Capture in Viva’s API and both contribute. Viva’s selling point is omnichannel-unified; the Dashboard exposes a Channels breakdown if you want online-only. 3DS challenges that the customer abandoned, do they pull avg down? No. Abandoned challenges end as StatusId = X and are excluded from both numerator and denominator. They show in viv_threedsecure_abandon_rate. My multi-currency Viva account, what does this card show? A per-currency average. A merchant with EUR + GBP + RON traffic will see three separate averages, not a rolled-up single figure. Use viva_revenue_by_country for the FX-rolled view. Why does this not match my POS terminal’s end-of-day average? The terminal’s end-of-day report covers one device for one day in your local time. This card aggregates all devices + online + recurring across UTC days for the full window. They almost never match by design; both are valid views. JP Morgan acquired Viva, does that change my fees or reporting? No, ownership change has not propagated to merchant agreements as of dd MMM yy. The Smart Checkout API, fee schedules, and Business Dashboard continue under existing Viva entities. Your avg-transaction reporting and the rates you pay are governed by your existing merchant contract.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Average Transaction is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Viva Payments and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.

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The AI OS

At a glance

Calculation

Worked example

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

​At a glance

​Calculation

​Worked example

​Sibling cards merchants should reference together

​Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

​Known limitations / merchant FAQs

​Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

At a glance

Calculation

Worked example

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre