Challenge

Since launching in 2010, the Auckland-based online retailer Trade Tested has become a national brand that offers everything from patio furniture to power tools through its ecommerce website. But that growth exposed limitations and technical issues with its legacy payment provider. For example, when customers experienced failed redirects for 3D Secure payments, it was difficult to determine the cause. In fact, the company often couldn’t even detect the failure, which impacted the customer experience and led to lost sales. Compounding these problems were poor visibility into its payments performance, making it difficult to identify and resolve issues.

“We needed a more modern infrastructure so we could keep up with the fast-moving payments landscape and give customers a better experience,” said Richard Humphries, founder and managing director of Trade Tested.

In 2024, Trade Tested began searching for a developer-friendly platform that could support rapid implementation, enhance payments performance, and make it easy to offer new payment methods. The team also wanted to reduce the operational burden of managing fraud for curbside pickup orders, which required staff to manually verify the physical card used for online purchases.

Solutions

Trade Tested updated its ecommerce experience by implementing Stripe Payments. It was able to implement Payments with just one developer thanks to Stripe’s easy-to-use APIs and documentation. The company also had support from Stripe’s Accelerate program, which provided dedicated implementation guidance with tailored project planning and proactive technical support throughout the integration process.

The company took advantage of several Stripe features to upgrade its payment processing system. For example, by relying on Stripe’s built-in support for 3D Secure, Trade Tested no longer had to manually manage and troubleshoot authentication flows. The company also elected to use built-in optimization features such as network tokens—which help keep card credentials up-to-date—and Adaptive Acceptance, which helps boost authorization rates and capture more revenue by optimizing retries.

To modernize its checkout experience, Trade Tested used Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite, a set of prebuilt components designed to create fast, flexible, and secure checkout experiences. The team also used the Payment Element to quickly replace its legacy card input solution without rebuilding the rest of its custom-built checkout flow. With no additional coding, Trade Tested added modern payment methods such as Apple Pay and Afterpay to reduce friction for customers making lower-value purchases.

Trade Tested also adopted Link, a wallet built by Stripe, as a way to accelerate the checkout process for returning customers and reduce hesitation at the point of purchase—especially for those reluctant to enter card details on their phones.

To improve fraud prevention, Trade Tested implemented Radar for Fraud Teams. The team uses custom rules and real-time risk scoring to detect potentially fraudulent transactions, such as those with products that have high fraud rates or email addresses with limited history on the Stripe network.

Results

Trade Tested implemented Stripe in four weeks

The company integrated Stripe into its ecommerce website in about four weeks with just two developers. The team credits the rapid development experience to Stripe’s detailed documentation, the Accelerate program’s targeted support, and the ability to test using Stripe’s sandbox before going live.

Authorization optimizations alone boosted sales 1.5%

Using Stripe’s built-in authorization optimizations to increase success rates at checkout, Trade Tested experienced an immediate 1.5% boost in sales with no additional development effort. The team also now defers 3D Secure decisions to Stripe, reducing the risk of conversion loss, while improved visibility into payments performance now makes it easier to identify and resolve issues quickly.

“Digging into payment issues has become a lot easier,” said Humphries. “The Stripe Dashboard makes it easy to see and review payments, which gives us more confidence in how everything is working.”

Link now powers payments for a quarter of guest users

Link quickly became a popular payment method for Trade Tested’s customers, with 24% of users without a Trade Tested account relying on one-click checkout within the first 6 months of implementation.

“I love the product, and the usage rate indicates that customers do too,” said Humphries. “It reduces hesitation around entering your card details at payment, which can only increase conversion.”

Trade Tested reduced fraud by 50% with Radar for Fraud Teams

Since implementing Radar for Fraud Teams, Trade Tested has reduced its manual fraud review from about 80 transactions per month to less than 20, while cutting its fraud rate by 50%. With less risk of fraud, the company felt comfortable eliminating the requirement to verify physical cards at pickup for click-and-collect orders, which helped improve the customer experience.