Sales plummeted shortly after activating Shopify Payments

[Jbabb]

Around may or june 2025 I activated Shopify payments, little after that, they updated their fraud prevention process, after that, starting the end of july and all through todey, my sales plummeted, I lost 46% sales but my traffic is 22% up, add to carts is fine and checkout dropped significantly.

This makes me assume that Shopify payments is the culprit, I know that stripe is behind Shopify payments and I have heard before that their decline rate was higher than others, I was using paypal’s credit and debit card processing before.

Has anyone had this problem too?

[nayeem99]

I noticed something similar after activating Shopify Payments.

If your traffic is up and add-to-cart is normal, but checkout completion dropped, it usually points to a payment issue, not a marketing problem.

When Shopify updated their fraud system (powered by Stripe), many stores experienced stricter approval rules. That can mean:

• More card declines
• More 3D Secure verification
• More automatic fraud blocks

Preorders can also look riskier to payment processors because customers pay now and receive later.

Before assuming, check your authorization rate and decline codes in Shopify Payments. That will tell you if more transactions are being rejected.

A good step is to enable PayPal or another gateway alongside Shopify Payments and compare conversion rates.

[Jbabb]

Hello, Apparently there is no easy way to get the auth rates or the decline codes, I contacted support and asked them for a copy of the logs but still no luck. The only way is to go through all the abandoned carts one by one.

I did enabled more gateways and even re-sorted the payment methods in checkout but customer still use shopify payments because its probably easier than other gateways, I may have to deactivate it altoghether.

What did you do to deal with this? Did you changed any settings in Shopify payments?

I had always decided against stripe because of this, and now I am certain that their engine is too harsh, I much rather use paypal’s engine to process cc’s

Thanks you for the answer!

[Jbabb]

Hello, thanks for the reply! I am considering removing shopify payments but I’ll lose multi-currency checkouts.

I am debating removing it and making a second store for another currency/market

Thanks!

[nayeem99]

I didn’t change any settings inside Shopify Payments.What I checked was: enabled additional gateway, then reviewed failed payment orders in the timeline to spot patterns, making sure billing address validation was enabled etc.

Unfortunately, Shopify Payments doesn’t give merchants deep control over fraud thresholds Those are managed on their side.

You can add paypal and disable using shopify payments for a week and check the result.

But before that, please:
Check for 3D Secure friction,
Check your at order timeline events,
Consider your preorder model

[tim_1]

Have you looked at any reports, like these – those seem relevant.

[darongmean]

@Jbabb Fraud rules might be triggered because:

• static fraud rules like Address Verification System
• new or unrecognized customers

You can try disable the AVS rule, https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/configuring-shopify-payments#fraud-prevention-settings. But make sure to keep 3D Secure enabled.

I helped merchants that have high declines rate. To recover and reduce the declines rate, there’s no shortcut. You need to contact customers. You can ask them to contact their banks, or provide alternative payment methods.

I built the app PayPager Card Decline Recovery - Enable direct outreach when customer cards are declined. | Shopify App Store to help merchants contacts customer in real-time. If you give it a try, please let me know how it works out for you.

[Jbabb]

Hello, thanks for the reply, I went through those but they are no good, Acceptance rate report shows every month 100% which clearly it is not. Still looking!