What Shipped in October

October was a month of fewer failed payments and less manual work. The headline releases are smart retries for soft declines, a rebuilt reconciliation view that stays fast on very large settlement files, and three new local payout corridors available in test mode. Alongside them, we shipped a set of smaller improvements across the API, routing, processing and settlement layers. Everything below is live for all accounts unless marked otherwise.

Smart retries for soft declines

A soft decline is a payment the issuer refused for a reason that may not apply a moment later: a temporary risk flag, an issuer timeout, or a "try again" response code. Until now, these declines were returned to your integration and it was up to you whether and when to retry.

Smart retries move that decision into the routing layer. When a payment receives a soft decline, PAXORA can automatically retry it once on the next best route — a different acquirer, or the same acquirer with adjusted parameters — before returning a result. Hard declines, such as stolen-card or insufficient-funds codes, are never retried.

• Retries happen within the original request, so your integration sees a single final outcome.

• Each attempt is recorded on the payment timeline with its route and response code.

• Rules are configurable per market and per payment method from the dashboard.

• The same idempotency key covers every attempt, so a retry can never create a duplicate charge.

In internal testing on sample traffic, smart retries recovered a meaningful share of soft declines that would otherwise have failed. Results depend heavily on your markets and mix, so we recommend enabling them for one corridor first and comparing approval rates over two weeks.

{
  "routing_rules": {
    "soft_decline_retry": {
      "enabled": true,
      "max_attempts": 1,
      "markets": ["DE", "NL", "BR"]
    }
  }
}

{
  "routing_rules": {
    "soft_decline_retry": {
      "enabled": true,
      "max_attempts": 1,
      "markets": ["DE", "NL", "BR"]
    }
  }
}

{
  "routing_rules": {
    "soft_decline_retry": {
      "enabled": true,
      "max_attempts": 1,
      "markets": ["DE", "NL", "BR"]
    }
  }
}

A faster reconciliation view

The match view — where settlement lines are paired with payments, fees and refunds — has been rebuilt from the ground up. Large settlement files with hundreds of thousands of lines previously took long enough to load that teams exported them to spreadsheets instead. The new view streams results as they are matched and loads around ten times faster on our largest sample files.

What else changed

The view now groups unmatched items by likely cause — missing payment, fee difference, currency rounding — and suggests a match where the ledger finds a close candidate. Accepting a suggestion records who confirmed it and when, so the audit trail stays complete.

The goal is not a prettier reconciliation screen. It is a team that opens it, sees nothing to do, and closes it again.

New payout corridors in test mode

Three new local payout routes are available in test mode, allowing you to send payouts in local currency through domestic rails rather than international transfers. Test mode includes simulated success, return and delay scenarios so you can build handling for each before going live.

Live availability will be announced per corridor once onboarding requirements are finalised. If you have a corridor you would like prioritised, let your account team know — the queue is shaped by demand.

Smaller improvements

• API: list endpoints now support cursor pagination on all resources, and every webhook includes the originating idempotency key.

• Routing: rule changes can be previewed against the last seven days of traffic before they are published.

• Processing: dispute evidence uploads accept larger files and show submission status in real time.

• Settlement: balance exports include the exchange rate applied to each conversion.

• Dashboard: saved filters are now shared across a team instead of being stored per user.

Deprecations and changes to note

The legacy reconciliation export format will be retired at the end of the next quarter. The new format contains the same fields plus fee breakdowns and is available today, so we recommend switching early. We will email account owners who still use the old format at least twice before it is removed.

No breaking API changes shipped this month. As always, the changelog lists every release with its version and date.

What is next

November work focuses on payouts: moving the new corridors from test mode to live, adding scheduled payout batches and improving visibility into payout status for your own customers. We are also expanding smart retries to more payment methods based on what we learn from card traffic this month.

As ever, the most useful input we get comes from teams running real volume. If something in this release saves you time, or does not, tell us.

Sample product update for a website template — fictional product, illustrative results.