Glossary
Payment cascading
Cascading means automatically retrying a declined payment through another provider or MID.
If the first acquirer declines, the cascading system tries the next route — another bank, country or MID — without the buyer re-entering details. This rescues part of the payments that would otherwise be lost.
Cascades follow rules: card country, amount, decline code, route cost. Do not retry transactions declined for suspected fraud or insufficient funds — issuers dislike it and it raises the risk of fines.
Cascading needs several connected providers and a router, so it usually comes from payment orchestration platforms and PSPs with multiple acquirers.
Related terms
Payment gatewayA payment gateway is the technical service that passes payment data from the merchant's checkout to the acq…Approval rateThe approval rate is the share of payment attempts the bank approves out of all attempts.MID (merchant ID)A MID is the unique number under which the acquirer registers a merchant and processes its payments.
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