Stripe 3D fails

[swdirect]

I am using Stripe with WooCommerce and noticing that around 5% of customers fail 3D authentication. When reviewing the logs, most failures state: 'The customer failed 3D Secure authentication.' A 5% failure rate seems quite high to me. I do offer multiple payment options including Klarna, Clearpay, PayPal, and I’ve just added Pay by Bank.

What’s a typical failure rate for 3D Secure, and should I be concerned or investigate further?

 

[dazzling]

You're right to keep an eye on this—5% failure for 3D Secure (3DS) is a bit on the high side, but it's not unheard of depending on your customer base, location, and industry.

Typically, 3D Secure failure rates fall somewhere between 1–3%, especially when using modern versions like 3DS2, which aim to be more seamless. A 5% failure rate suggests it’s worth investigating a bit further, especially if you’re seeing a pattern (e.g. certain banks, countries, or devices causing more issues).

Here are a few things you might consider:

• Check for trends in your Stripe logs – Are failures clustered by country, device type, or issuing bank?
• Mobile UX can be a problem – Some older bank apps or browsers don’t handle 3DS well.
• Customer confusion – Some people don’t recognize or complete the 3DS challenge because they don’t expect it or find it unclear.
• Offer fallbacks – Since you already support Klarna, PayPal, and Pay by Bank, that’s great. You could gently encourage customers who fail 3DS to use one of those other methods.
• Check 3DS2 vs 3DS1 usage – Stripe automatically tries to use 3DS2, but some banks still fall back to 3DS1, which can lead to more failures.

So yes, it’s a good idea to investigate. It may not be a major emergency, but if you're losing 1 in 20 customers at checkout, improving that could directly boost your conversions and revenue.