More than half of SMEs failed payment transactions are never recovered

More than half (55.8%) of failed payment transactions among UK SMEs are never recovered, according to new research by Access PaySuite.

The survey of 250 UK SME finance and payments decision-makers found that 3.4% of transactions fail on average. Nearly 50% of SMEs experience checkout abandonment, with an average rate of 7.8%. Whilst almost one in ten lose more than £1 million annually due to payment-related issues with the average annual revenue loss stands at £159,500 per business.

Beyond the direct financial impact, operational strain is growing. Over 70% of businesses spend between five and twenty hours per week managing failed payments, retries and related customer queries, while fewer than four in ten report full visibility into the broader revenue impact of transaction failure and churn.

While transaction failure is often treated as a back-office issue, the findings suggest a deeper structural challenge: limited visibility across authorisation performance, decline patterns and recurring billing flows.

For many payments teams, this means fragmented insight into soft versus hard declines, acquirer response codes, recurring payment drop-off and customer retry behaviour – making it difficult to optimise payment journeys effectively.

Jon Reynolds, Head of Product at Access PaySuite, said “Payment failures are often treated as isolated incidents, but at scale they represent a sustained revenue drain. When more than half of failed transactions are never recovered, businesses are effectively absorbing avoidable losses.

“The real challenge for many payments teams is visibility. Without a consolidated view across authorisation rates, decline codes, recurring billing performance and checkout behaviour, it’s difficult to optimise payment flows or improve recovery rates.”

The research also signals a broader shift in strategy, with 95% of UK SMEs evaluating or planning to implement AI-driven tools to improve payment performance and reduce revenue leakage – reinforcing the growing demand for more intelligent, data-driven payment infrastructure.