BIN and bank health
Each card BIN maps to an issuing bank. The engine reads live approval rates per issuer. It steers each payment to the route that bank clears best.
Routing & cascading engine
Send every payment to the bank
most likely to approve it
topropay scores each authorisation in real time. The payment goes to its best-fit acquirer first. If that bank soft-declines, the engine tries the next route. It cascades until one clears. All in one API call. No extra work for your checkout.
What the engine reads
Four live signals decide every route
Routing is not a fixed list. Each payment is scored on real-time signals. Then it goes to the acquirer with the best odds of clearing that exact card.
Currency and amount
Local currency, ticket size and card brand all shift which acquirer wins. High-value tickets route differently from small recurring charges.
3DS2 and SCA need
Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) applies only where required. Exemptions are checked live. Low-risk payments skip needless friction.
Local acquiring reach
A payment cleared by a local EU acquirer often beats a cross-border one. The engine prefers in-market routes when they lift the approval rate.
The path of one payment
How a soft decline becomes a sale
A soft decline is rarely final. Here is the loop the engine runs when a bank says no. It runs server-side, in one request. The same engine covers the full payment processing process. It links every connected credit card processor and acquiring bank.
- 01
Score
The payment is scored on BIN, currency, amount and live approval rates. The engine ranks every eligible acquirer in milliseconds.
- 02
Route
The top-ranked acquirer gets the authorisation first. It is the route most likely to clear for that card and market.
- 03
Cascade
If the bank returns a soft decline, the payment retries against the next ranked route. The cascade runs server-side, in the same request.
- 04
Clear
The first route that approves wins. Your checkout sees one clean result. The declines behind it stay hidden.
Why cascading wins
One fixed route leaks revenue. Scored routes plug it.
A single fixed route
One acquirer handles every payment. When that bank soft-declines, the sale is simply lost. Approval rates swing with one provider's mood.
Scored smart routing
Every payment goes to its best-fit acquirer first. Rankings update as approval rates move. The engine learns which routes clear which cards.
In-flight cascading
A soft decline is not the end. The payment retries down a ranked waterfall until a bank approves it. That recovers revenue you would have lost.
- Policy
- Declarative rules — edit routing without a redeploy
- Decision
- ~47ms scoring per authorisation
- Triggers
- Soft declines · 05 · 51 · 91 cascade automatically
- Reach
- 300+ acquirers, PSPs and local APMs
Talk to our payments engineers
See routing modelled on your own traffic.
Book a discovery call. We map your current acquirers. We model the approval-rate uplift from scored routing and cascading. We scope a single-API integration across your EU markets. No PSP renegotiation. No stack rebuild.
Related
Where routing and cascading sit in the wider platform
- Aggregation Payment aggregator overview The aggregation pattern the routing engine fans out across. Many connections in, one settlement out.
- Processors Payment processors, orchestrated Every connected processor as a routable lane behind one shared API.
- Risk High risk payments orchestration Routing tuned for licensed high-risk verticals. Chargeback-aware policies and acquirer subsets per segment.
- Acceptance Accept online payment, MID optional Routing seen from the merchant side. Accept every method through one integration, sub-merchant or direct MID.
- Entity Acquirer overview The acquirers the routing engine scores per transaction. Scheme relationships, BIN-level mechanics.
- Crypto Crypto payments orchestration Routing extended across crypto rails. Stablecoins, majors and L2 networks via partner gateways.
- Providers Payment gateway providers, consolidated The connected provider panel the routing engine ranks. One layer above traditional payment gateway providers.