[Veuxdo]

> To address this problem, we built decisioning models that take into account 100’s of datapoints, such as customer and payment metadata as well as internal classifiers of error codes and messages. The models determine the optimal time to retry a payment with current or backup payment methods and when to communicate with a customer.

All well and good, but doesn't Stripe have much, much more data on this? Once they start doing all of the above (assuming they don't already), their data will give them a gigantic advantage. And that's only on top of being built-in.

[mathgeek]

Some details on the Stripe solution at https://stripe.com/blog/how-we-built-it-smart-retries

[JakeVacovec]

We tailor our models specific to the Merchant as each varies in so many ways (customer demographic, transaction size, intervals, geo, payment methods, etc.). You'll also notice that their entire focus is on retries so all the 'flexibility' is pegged to retry count. In an ideal world customers don't have to do anything but the reality is that effective communication strategies are critical to recover valuable customers. The per Merchant approach and e2e flexibility will enable a continued competitive advantage.

Additionally but also very important -- Stripe and other PSPs platform strategies are to be the vault so they're enabling flexibility with forward APIs. This means having an independent decisioning engine for retries, cascading, and routing is even more important.

[aaronax]

A big company does it so no one else should try?

[Veuxdo]

Sometimes. In the face of entrenched competition, you can't be just a little bit better. You have to be a lot better. And in a way that said competition can't easily match (or exceed).

[JakeVacovec]

It's fairly easy to measure performance. For companies with 100's of thousands or millions in failed payments each month 5-10% performance gains have a huge impact. On average we're improving recovery rate by 21%. To hold ourselves accountable we offer customers a full-refund if they're not satisfied with gains. We haven't had to give a refund yet.