How Payment Analytics Can Improve Business Performance and Revenue

By 2030, digital payments are projected to surpass $38 trillion in transaction value.^[1]Statista.com. “Payments-Worldwide.” Accessed June 11, 2025. As digital commerce continues to evolve, payment analytics are more crucial for businesses striving to gain insights, optimize operations, and meet customer expectations. In this guide, we’ll look at how payment analytics and reporting can play a key role in improving customer satisfaction, cutting down on fraud, making smarter use of resources, and guiding stronger business decisions.

• Payment analytics involves collecting, storing, and analyzing payment data to extract insights into financial patterns, supplier relationships, and operational efficiency. 
• Core metrics include transaction volume and value, payment method usage, chargeback and decline rates, and refund and dispute trends. Together, these metrics provide a clearer picture of customer behavior.
• Your business can use payment analytics enterprise-wide to inform finance, operations, marketing, resource allocation, fraud detection, and risk management.

What Is Payment Analytics?

Recent advances in payment technology now allow businesses to accept a wide range of payment methods, including credit and debit cards, online and mobile payments, ACH transfers, and eChecks. Payment analytics enable businesses to assess which methods are more effective and where improvements are needed.

Reviewing transaction data helps you understand what customers want and find ways to cut costs. This is especially important for high-risk businesses, where using analytics can help prevent fraud and chargebacks, both of which often lead to higher processing fees.

How Does Payment Analytics Work?

Payment analytics involves examining historical payment-related data and leveraging that information to make data-driven decisions about current and future payment operations. Centralizing transaction data across systems gives you a holistic view of what customers buy, how they pay for it, and where issues arise. These quantifiable customer insights give you valuable information that you can use to update systems offerings, customer experience, and business forecasting. 

Key Payment Data Sources

To build an effective report, businesses may aggregate payment data analytics across the following sources:

• Point-of-Sale (POS) Systems: Capture in-store transaction activity.
• eCommerce Platforms: Track website traffic, sales, customer behavior, conversion metrics, and shopping cart abandonment rate.
• Accounts Payable/Receivable Systems: Highlight details regarding supplier payment amounts, dates, and trends.
• Payment Gateways: Gain insights into online transactions and fraud-related security measures.
• Mobile Payment Apps: Leverage analytics about payments made via mobile apps, including transaction volume, payment methods, and even customer locations.

These key payment processing data sources can help your business form a comprehensive payment analysis.

What Are the Key Metrics in Payment Analytics?

Here are the key metrics offering clear payment insights, making them essential in payment analytics and reporting.

1. Transaction Volume and Value

Understanding what is selling, when, and in what volume will give your business the information it needs to detect seasonal trends, identify growth opportunities, and improve business forecasting. Transaction volume and value can also help you develop uniquely targeted customer offers to bolster growth and revenue.

2. Payment Methods Breakdown

From digital transactions to old-fashioned cash, payment methods breakdown metrics highlight the most popular payment methods by region, time, and demographic. When you study your business’s payment instrument analytics, you can determine the return on investment (ROI) for each payment type and streamline options, if necessary.

3. Chargebacks and Refunds 

Chargebacks — when a customer disputes a payment from your business — are on the rise and are increasingly used by fraudsters. Global chargeback volume is expected to grow by 42% from 2023 to 2026, reaching 337 million transactions.^[2]Ethoca by MasterCard. “Chargeback Trends and Outlooks 2023 Report.” Accessed June 11, 2025.

On top of revenue, product, and time loss, chargebacks typically incur fees. By analyzing chargebacks or refunds, you can better determine why sales are unsuccessful and develop steps to address it.

4. Declines

Tracking decline codes gives you a clear view into why payments fail — whether it’s due to fraud, insufficient funds, or other issues. By analyzing these codes, you can see if customers are abandoning their purchases or simply trying a different payment method. This insight helps pinpoint where and how your business might be losing revenue.

How Businesses Use Payment Analytics Across Functions

Savvy businesses can use payment analytics across the entire organization. If you are looking to add or enhance your payment analytics, you can transform the following functions with data-driven insights:

• Finance and Accounting: Payment analytics can improve business forecasting, reconciliation, cash flow management, and overall financial health with detailed insights.
• Operations and Resource Allocation: Your organization can optimize staffing, logistics, and inventory decisions based on transaction trends and demand cycles to advance efficiencies.
• Sales, Marketing, and Customer Loyalty: By better identifying purchase trends, churn patterns, and high-value customer segments, you can shape targeted campaigns with improved ROI.
• Fraud Detection and Risk Management: Analytics can spot anomalies, track chargeback rates, and flag potential fraud risks. Your risk management team should also focus on data privacy, one of the most critical issues businesses face when it comes to collecting data.^[3]Kearney by Visa. “The Powerful Role Payments Data Can Play in the Public Sector.” Accessed June 11, 2025.

Ultimately, you can utilize payment analytics within nearly every department of your business to enhance efficiency, financial health, and customer experience.

How To Set Up Payment Analytics for Your Business

To start using payment analytics and reporting effectively, follow these steps:

1. Identify Key Payment Metrics: Every business has different key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter the most to their business goals. Evaluate your current data landscape and decide which metrics to track, knowing you can update this analysis as you grow.
2. Select Analytics Tools: The next stage is choosing the tools to collect and analyze your business’s payment data that integrate with your current systems. 
3. Connect Data Sources: As per your metrics and tools, connect all relevant platforms — payment gateway, eCommerce, customer relationship manager (CRM), POS — to get holistic insights from this robust business payment analytics. 
4. Configure Reporting: You can configure payment analytics and reporting once your data sources are connected. This step will ensure you receive real-time information in formats accessible to shareholders.
5. Analyze Your Data and Take Action: While most businesses want to use data for better customer insights, many fail to create actionable plans to use the data they collect meaningfully.^[4]AWS Smart Business Blog. “Forrester Insights: The Competitive Advantage of Data and Analytics for Small and Medium Businesses.” Accessed June 11, 2025. This last step is necessary: Use the payment analytics you collect to drive better customer experiences, streamlined operations, optimal payment options, and support organizational growth.

Maximize Business Value with Payment Analytics

Payment analytics gives you a clearer picture of your customers, helps you run things smoother, and keeps you ahead of issues like fraud and chargebacks. If you want an all-in-one credit card processing solution that can help you make sense of your payment data, PaymentCloud might be a good fit. We can help you get the most out of their payments and make smarter decisions.

If you’re curious about how payment analytics can help your business, PaymentCloud is here to help you get started.