Launchpad phase two: Acquisition & decline
Optimize your subscription growth funnel by mastering your subscriber acquisition rate and sign-up decline rate. Learn how to pinpoint checkout friction, detect card-testing fraud, compare gateway performance, and leverage Recurly Analytics to maximize your transaction approval rates.
Launch · Launchpad Phase Two
Acquisition & decline
Subscriber acquisition & sign-up decline rate tell you how effectively you're growing, and how much friction is getting in the way of subscribers who want to sign up but can't.
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Acquisition & decline
Growth starts at the funnel top
Acquisition rate and sign-up decline rate are your growth-layer metrics. Together they show how fast your subscriber base is expanding — and how many potential subscribers are lost before completing their first payment.
Trail guide: acquisition & sign-up decline rate
~5 minAcquisition rate
Measures how effectively you're bringing in new paid subscribers each month. A rising rate means your growth strategy is working. A declining rate signals a need to investigate marketing, pricing, or checkout conversion.
How it's calculated
Sign-up decline rate
The percentage of transaction attempts during sign-up that are declined. A high rate means real customers are trying to sign up and failing — these are missed conversions. Recurly excludes retries from this metric to give you a clear approval signal.
How it's calculated
Deep dive: spotting fraud & early friction indicators
Fast-forward to the Sign-Up Decline Benchmarks section. Strategic CSM Dan Shipley demonstrates how to use this report to spot card-testing fraud attacks (look for sudden spikes in decline codes) and how to compare gateway performance side-by-side to optimize checkout approval rates.
Watch "Stack up against the competition" on demand →What to do if sign-up declines are high
Check for fraud patterns
Sudden spikes — especially with specific decline codes — may indicate card-testing activity. Review with your CSM and gateway team to consider fraud tools or CAPTCHA implementation.
Compare gateway performance
Different gateways approve card types at different rates. If your decline rate is high, compare approval rates by gateway to see whether a routing change or multi-gateway strategy could help.
Check payment method coverage
Are you accepting the methods your customers prefer? Adding PayPal, Apple Pay, or localized payment methods can reduce checkout friction — especially for international subscribers.
Review 3DS and checkout UX
Confusing 3DS authentication flows often lead to abandonment, which registers as a failed attempt. Always test your checkout UX from a subscriber's mobile perspective.
Check chargeback & fraud ratios
Merchants experiencing high chargebacks may have higher controls put in place at the issuer level, resulting in more declines.
Consider multi-currency or localized processing
Using gateways with local acquiring relationships and accepting local currencies can reduce declines significantly. Local currency support alone has been shown to decrease decline rates by 5–10%.
Wallet automatically retries a failed charge on a designated backup payment method — no subscriber action required. It's one of the most direct ways to recover sign-up and renewal declines that would otherwise be lost. Note that Wallet requires enablement and has additional fees.
Mid-month rates can fluctuate significantly before traffic volume dilutes them. Always use full prior-month data in the Benchmarks Dashboard for the most accurate trend analysis.