# Payment Metrics and Gateway Outages > Track the payment stages and their outcomes with clear denominators. Alert on unusual failures or delays, preserve customer orders and resolve existing attempts before switching payment routes. - Type: Merchant guide - Level: Intermediate - Reading time: About 4 minutes - Audience: Written for store owners, builders, and designers refining high-performance ecommerce stores. - Last updated: 2026-11-04 - Canonical page: https://academy.getzenbasket.com/merchant-questions/payment-metrics-and-gateway-outages/ - Part of: [Merchant Questions](https://academy.getzenbasket.com/merchant-questions/) on ZenBasket Academy --- ## What you need to know ### What payment metrics should ecommerce merchants monitor? Monitor attempted payments, authorisations, final successes, failures, pending duration, authentication outcomes, duplicates, refunds, disputes and payout exceptions. Define each metric so the team knows whether it counts attempts, customers or orders. ### What is payment authorisation rate? Authorisation rate is approved authorisation requests divided by the eligible attempts under a stated definition. Repeated attempts can distort it. It is different from the share of customers who completed checkout or the funds successfully captured. ### What is payment failure rate? Payment failure rate is failed attempts divided by the relevant total attempts, with clear treatment of pending, abandoned authentication and retries. Do not classify an unknown outcome as a definite failure. Track reasons as well as the overall rate. ### Should payment success be monitored by gateway? Yes, compare like-for-like methods, countries and customer groups when possible. One gateway may handle harder transactions than another. Check provider error codes and volumes before interpreting a difference as gateway quality. ### Should payment success be monitored by country? Yes, define whether country means the card's issuing country, merchant country or shopper location. They are not interchangeable. Use enough data and check market eligibility before drawing conclusions from a small group of failures. ### Should payment success be monitored by payment method? Yes. Cards, wallets and delayed bank methods have different confirmation paths and timing. Give each a suitable completion window. A method that is still processing should not look failed merely because it completes more slowly. --- ## Frequently asked questions ### How can merchants detect a payment outage quickly? Alert on unusual error rates, unresolved attempts and missing order confirmations, alongside provider health information. Use a tested support escalation path. An outage affecting one country or account may not appear as a global provider incident. ### What should happen when a payment gateway is unavailable? Show a truthful message, preserve the cart and pause unsafe repeated attempts. Offer a tested alternative only after establishing the first attempt's outcome. When service returns, reconcile pending transactions before marking them failed or charging again. ## Related articles - **Payment Declines and Safe Retries** - **Choosing Payment Gateways and Comparing Fees** - **Ecommerce Payment Troubleshooting and Audit** - [ZenBasket Build Guide](https://help.getzenbasket.com/zenbasket-builder/)