Failed Card Transactions
Uncovered and resolved a hidden payment workflow issue by surfacing failed card transactions directly to providers — pairing each failure with a clear reason and recovery path, reducing failed card transactions by 25% and improving payment stability.
↓ 25%
Failed transactions
Payments workflow
Core surface
Recoverable revenue
Outcome
Overview
Tuition payments are the financial lifeblood of early childhood education providers, yet card failures were happening quietly in the background with no clear signal or next step. I led the effort to make these failures visible and actionable, giving providers the context to recover revenue and reducing the support burden created by confusing, opaque payment outcomes.
The problem
Prior to the release, users could only see failed ACH transactions in the application. To understand when a parent had attempted a card payment that failed, they had to log in to another system and generate a report. The problem was made worse because autopay commonly re-attempted cards that were failing for different reasons — resulting in delayed tuition payments for the centers and missed payment-processing revenue for the business.
The solution
We carefully sorted through the payment logic and successfully started including these transactions across the billing sections of the app, along with the details as to why each payment failed. We found that many parents had balances going unpaid because of resolvable issues like "Expired Cards" — and simply exposing the failures and their reasons allowed parents and centers to take the necessary actions. This led to a 25% decrease in failed card transactions, ultimately increasing revenue collected through a stronger card-to-ACH ratio and decreasing the resources spent attempting to process card transactions that could easily be resolved.
My approach
Instrumented and analyzed the payment flow to quantify failure volume and isolate the most common, addressable failure reasons.
Designed a clear in-product view that surfaces each failed transaction alongside its specific decline reason and recommended recovery action.
Prioritized the highest-impact failure categories so providers could resolve the issues that recovered the most revenue first.
Closed the loop with support and success teams to confirm the change reduced escalations and improved payment trust.
Measuring success
The metrics I'd instrument to know this work is paying off — spanning business outcomes, user behavior, and the technical signals that catch problems early.
Business impact
- Failed card transaction rate — the headline 25% reduction.
- Recovered tuition revenue and improved card-to-ACH processing mix.
- Reduction in payment-related support tickets and escalations.
Behavior change
- Share of surfaced failures that lead to a parent or center action (card update, retry) within a set window.
- Median time-to-resolution from a failure being shown to the balance being paid.
- Adoption: percentage of centers viewing the failed-transaction detail in billing.
Technical health
- Coverage and accuracy of decline-reason mapping across processor response codes.
- Autopay retry rate against known-failing cards, which should trend down.
- Latency and error rate of surfacing transaction status across billing sections.
Tools & methods
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