# Acceptance analytics

Use the _Acceptance_ view in the Dashboard's _Payment lifecycle_ section to track your acceptance performance over time and review your acceptance analytics.

To access your acceptance analytics in the Dashboard:

1. Sign in to the [Dashboard](https://dashboard.checkout.com/).
2. Go to _Payments_ > _Analytics_ > _Payment lifecycle_.
3. Select the _Acceptance_ tab.

You can use the Analytics Assistant on the acceptance analytics page to:

- Translate natural language into SQL queries for data filtering.
- Ask questions about your acceptance performance.
- Retrieve data across the entire payment lifecycle.
- Generate charts.

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## Acceptance rate

Your acceptance rate reflects the percentage of payments that successfully make it through the following key stages of the payment flow:

- For card payments, a payment is considered accepted if it's successfully authorized.
- For alternative payment methods (APMs) that support automatic payment capture, a payment is considered accepted if it's successfully authorized.
- For APMs that do not support automatic payment capture, a payment is considered accepted if it's successfully captured after authorization.

> **Information**
>
> Acceptance rate is a performance metric, not a business metric. To see the percentage of funds successfully captured after authorization, see your capture rate instead.

Your _Acceptance rate_ is calculated using the following formula:

`successfully requested payments - (risk-blocked transactions + authorization declines + authentication drop-offs)`

> **Information**
>
> Some PSPs refer to this metric as their approval rate. To benchmark PSP performance, use our acceptance rate for comparison instead of our authorization rate.

You can use the filters to view your acceptance rate for specific issuing countries, issuing banks, and issuing bank identification numbers (BINs).

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## Improve acceptance rate

Your acceptance rate is a reflection of your success across all stages of the payment lifecycle. To improve your acceptance rate, you should follow the guidance to improve your success rate at each stage of the payment lifecycle:

- [Optimize payments](https://www.checkout.com/docs/payments/optimize-payments.md)
- [Improve authorization rate](https://www.checkout.com/docs/business-operations/monitor-payment-performance/authorization-analytics.md#Improve_authorization_rate)

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## Key metrics

Your acceptance analytics data on the Dashboard includes the following key metrics:

| Metric | Definition |
| --- | --- |
| Amount | The total value of payments reported in the specified time frame and currency. |
| Authorized payments | The total number of authorized payments in the specified time frame and currency. |
| Authorization rate | The percentage of successfully authorized payments out of all payments submitted to the card network for authorization.<br><br>Calculated by dividing the number of successfully authorized payments by the total number of payments submitted to the card network for authorization. |
| Count | The total number of payments reported in the specified time frame and currency. |
| Decline code | A code that indicates why a payment was declined. |
| Declined payments | The total number of payments that were declined during authorization in the specified time frame and currency. |
| Issuing bank | A financial institution that provides payment cards (such as credit or debit cards) to consumers on behalf of card networks like Visa or Mastercard. |
| Issuing BIN | The issuing bank identification number (BIN) is the first six to eight digits of a payment card number. It identifies the financial institution that issued the card. |
| Issuing country | The country where the financial institution that issued a customer's payment card (such as a credit or debit card) is located. |
| Payment method | The way a customer chooses to pay for goods or services.<br><br>Card payments are categorized by the card scheme (for example, Visa), and alternative payment methods (APMs) are categorized by individual methods (for example, Klarna). |

> **Information**
>
> For definitions of other terms used throughout the payment lifecycle, see [Terminology](https://www.checkout.com/docs/business-operations/terminology.md).

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## Related topics

**[Authorization analytics](https://www.checkout.com/docs/business-operations/monitor-payment-performance/authorization-analytics.md)**

Track your authorization performance over time and review your authorization analytics.