Adyen updates Authenticate: reading the conversion claims

On 22 September 2026, Adyen announced an Authenticate upgrade. In the release, Too Good To Go reported an 11% relative increase in payment conversion during a pilot. That is a customer-specific result, not an eleven-percentage-point improvement or a forecast for every merchant.

The change concerns how authentication paths are selected. The product combines 3DS, passkeys and other flows, considering risk, available technology and issuer data. Adyen says its combined role as acquirer and authentication provider allows it to learn from the final payment decision rather than authentication completion alone.

Where the economic benefit could arise

An authentication-focused view asks whether the shopper completed the check. A merchant needs the next answer: was the payment approved and the order completed? If a customer verifies their identity but the bank subsequently declines the transaction, the successful check has not produced a sale. Connecting those stages is the useful proposition behind the upgrade.

The reported percentage also needs careful interpretation. In an illustrative example, conversion rising from 70% to 77.7% is an 11% relative improvement, but a 7.7-percentage-point increase. Those are hypothetical numbers, not Adyen customer results. Without the baseline, a large percentage alone cannot establish the number of additional orders or the product's payback.

Performance will also depend on which traffic entered the test and which alternative methods shoppers could use. Comparisons should therefore use consistent segments and include final declines and subsequent losses. Authentication completion on its own is an incomplete measure of the commercial outcome.

The announcement separates global availability of 3DS and issuer optimization from further expansion of newer technologies through 2027. A single integration should not be interpreted as every issuer and device already supporting every route. The news is significant because it connects more of the payment funnel. The unresolved question is how well one pilot's improvement transfers to a different merchant portfolio.

What it means for merchants and PSPs

For merchants, the main lesson concerns measurement. A team that reports only the share of completed 3DS challenges cannot properly judge any authentication provider. A more useful view follows the whole funnel: checkout attempts, authentication requests, frictionless and challenge flows, issuer declines after a successful check and completed orders. That is where lost revenue becomes visible.

For PSPs and orchestration platforms, the signal is different. Linking the authentication decision to the authorisation outcome is becoming a competitive argument. Where those functions sit with separate suppliers, providers will probably need to show how final-outcome data flows back into the logic that selects a flow.

What to check

• Whether reports separate conversion by stage: check completed, transaction approved, order paid.
• Whether there is a segmented baseline (issuer country, card type, device, basket size) against which a pilot can be compared.
• Which methods, including passkeys, your customers can actually use today, and which belong to later expansion.
• How fraud liability shifts across different authentication routes.
• Whether a split test on part of the traffic is possible instead of switching everything at once.
• Which final-decision data the provider uses, how often the logic changes and what reporting the merchant receives.

It also helps to agree who owns this metric internally. If fraud owns authentication and finance owns approvals, an improvement at one stage can easily disappear in the other team's reports.

Sources: Adyen Authenticate launch; Adyen Authenticate product description