Last year, we analyzed 3D Secure (3DS) trends in unregulated markets, where we found that US issuers often declined transactions that requested 3DS, viewing the request itself as a fraud signal. Since then, customers have told us they want to understand similar trends in markets where multifactor authentication is required, so they can fine-tune their own authentication strategy.

That’s where we can help. We analyzed authentication and conversion data across businesses in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom (UK), and Japan. We found that:

• French issuers challenge transactions at twice the rate of other EEA markets, but still maintain high conversion rates.
  
• The UK has the highest authentication and challenge success rates among regulated markets.
  
• Since Japan’s mandate, 3DS transactions quadrupled, but payment performance has not suffered.
  

This reveals a surprising paradox: even with very high two-factor authentication trigger rates—which traditionally add friction to the checkout flow—France, the UK, and Japan still maintain high conversion rates. This challenges the conventional wisdom that authentication flows always impact conversion. Instead, our data suggests that the implementation quality of authentication flows, not the quantity of usage, determines business impact.

To learn more about our analysis, read our blog post.