At a glance
The percentage of attempted Viva Payments transactions that succeeded. The complement of decline rate + 3DS abandon rate (success% + decline% + abandon% = 100%). The single cleanest health indicator for the rail; deteriorations show here before they hit volume.
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 pan-EU subscription beauty box (“Mediterranean Glow”) on Smart Checkout, recurring rebills monthly. Window 26 Apr 26 to 02 May 26 (7-day).- Recurring at 96.2% is healthy. Tokenized rebills against on-file cards generally succeed at 95 to 98% (network tokens via VTS / MDES improve this further). Below 94% suggests stale tokens (cards expired without auto-update) or issuer-side risk-flag changes. Smart Retry recovers 30 to 50% of initial failures over 3 to 7 days, dragging this number up retrospectively.
- Online new at 91.0% is at the lower edge. EU intra-EEA card-not-present typically runs 90 to 95%. Below 90% triggers investigation: top decline reasons, BIN-range outages, 3DS friction, fraud-filter tightening. Open
viv_top_decline_reasonsfirst. - Blended at 94.0% is in healthy range but not great. Note the recurring channel structurally lifts the blended rate; if recurring share dropped, blended rate would drop with no real change in performance. Channel mix is always the lurking variable.
- 3DS abandon at 1.3% is excellent. Frictionless rate around 80 to 85% on online traffic, abandon-on-challenge around 10%. The 96 abandons are a UX cost, not a fraud or issuer cost.
- Pay-by-link at 94.7% is normal. Low volume so the rate is volatile; one declined B2B link at EUR 1,200 ticket can swing it. Don’t over-react to short-term moves on small denominators.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the Viva Payments Dashboard: viva.com/business/account/login. Closest comparable view:Viva Business → Sales → Reports → Transactions (success-rate tile on the overview)Why our number may legitimately differ:
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
“Success rate dropped 3pp overnight, what to check?” In order: (1)viv_top_decline_reasons for the dominant reason code (sudden cluster of DO_NOT_HONOR from one BIN range = issuer-side fraud filter triggered); (2) Viva status page for incidents; (3) recent merchant-side changes (new fraud rule, 3DS configuration, payment-form JS deploy); (4) channel mix (did online share grow vs POS, dragging blended rate down); (5) traffic source (a campaign sending high-risk buyers).
“What’s a good success rate for EU stores?”
Online-only: 90 to 95% is healthy, above 95% is excellent (often network-token-backed recurring), below 88% needs investigation. POS-only: 98 to 99.5%. Blended depends on mix; 92 to 96% is typical for Mediterranean SMBs running both.
“Smart Retry, does it lift this number retroactively?”
Yes. A failed rebill counts as E initially. When Smart Retry succeeds 1 to 7 days later, the new attempt is F and the success rate computation includes both the original failure and the eventual success. The retried success counts in the numerator and denominator, lifting the rate compared to a no-retry baseline.
“Why does Viva often beat Stripe on success rate for Greek issuers?”
Domestic routing. Viva connects directly to Greek and Cyprus issuing banks; Stripe usually routes via a non-Greek acquirer for those issuers, which adds an extra hop and 1 to 3pp of issuer rejection. Same logic applies in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania to varying degrees.
“3DS exemption strategy, how does it affect success rate?”
Properly configured exemptions (low-value, MIT, recurring, trusted-merchant) skip 3DS entirely on those flows, eliminating the abandon-on-challenge cost and lifting blended success. Misconfigured exemptions (claiming when not eligible) result in 3DS_REQUIRED issuer pushback, dragging the rate down. Audit your exemption claims quarterly.
“PSD2 SCA, what’s the impact?”
SCA forces 3DS challenges on EEA card-not-present payments above EUR 30 unless an exemption applies. The structural floor for EU CNP success rate is therefore around 88 to 92%; above that requires either strong frictionless rate (good risk data feed) or aggressive exemption use.
“My JP Morgan acquisition concerns, did anything change here?”
No. Viva risk engine, issuer-routing relationships, and 3DS handling are unchanged post-acquisition.
“PSP comparison, can I A/B test Viva vs Stripe on the same traffic?”
Yes, via dynamic-routing tools or by splitting checkout method-of-payment options. Most multi-PSP merchants find 1 to 3pp difference by issuer-region. The split usually doesn’t justify the complexity unless volume is large.