Hong Kong – Adyen has rolled out a major upgrade to Authenticate, a module within its Adyen Uplift payment optimisation suite, with the fintech platform saying the update can deliver double-digit conversion gains for global merchants.
According to Adyen, Authenticate now routes every transaction to the highest-performing authentication technology in real time, while simultaneously optimising the data issuers use to approve transactions. The company says this reduces friction for shoppers at checkout, while also cutting the engineering and compliance overhead merchants face when maintaining multiple authentication protocols across fragmented markets.
The upgrade replaces static 3D Secure (3DS) rules, which Adyen says treat every shopper the same way and can drive cart abandonment, with three machine learning-driven decisions applied to each transaction. These decisions determine whether authentication is needed, which method is likely to perform best, and which data should be shared to maximise the chance of issuer approval.
Adyen attributes this capability to its dual role as both authentication provider and acquirer, a position it says allows its machine learning models — trained on trillions of interactions — to learn from final authorisation outcomes rather than authentication results alone.
Moving to the compliance angle, Adyen says Authenticate combines real-time regulatory context with transaction, issuer and shopper signals, removing the need for merchants to build or maintain market-by-market authentication rules.
“Authentication is evolving from a regulatory checkpoint into a trust layer for digital commerce,” said Renan Renner, Group Product Manager for Adyen Uplift.
“The future is not about choosing one protocol, but knowing when and how to use the right mechanism for each transaction. Authenticate is built to make that decision in context, helping turn authentication into a contributor to payment success rather than another step at checkout,” Renner continued.
On the security side, Adyen says Authenticate draws on network-wide risk signals to recognise trusted shoppers before checkout begins. The company reports that for a typical retail merchant on its platform, there is more than a 90% chance a shopper has been seen before.
When a returning shopper is identified, Adyen says Authenticate’s machine learning works alongside its fraud management module, Protect, to apply true risk-based authentication, limiting checks to transactions that genuinely warrant them.
The system also selects automatically between 3DS, Google Secure Payment Authentication (SPA), Mastercard Payment Passkeys, Visa Payment Passkeys and data-only flows, according to Adyen, routing each transaction through a single integration to whichever method the shopper is most likely to complete.
“Authenticate has transformed a static step in our checkout into a dynamic engine that gets better on its own,” said Sander Kole, Fintech Engineering Director at Just Eat Takeaway.com.
“With a single integration, we’ve been able to automatically streamline the payment flow and reduce friction for our customers, driving a 12% increase in payment conversion on the eligible traffic, without requiring ongoing maintenance,” Kole added.
Turning to issuer optimisation, Adyen says Authenticate evaluates more than 150 data fields within 3DS transactions and continuously learns which combinations of data points and signals are most likely to increase issuer approval.
This can result in the authentication step being removed entirely or carried out silently, a process Adyen credits with an 11% payment conversion uplift observed in early data.
“Our payment conversion was already performing at a very strong level, so achieving a further 11% relative increase during the pilot is a meaningful result for us,” said Morten Keldebæk, CTO at Too Good To Go.
“Authenticate is helping us reduce unnecessary friction while keeping authentication simpler to manage on our side. Ultimately, that means a smoother experience for our users and stronger payment performance for the business,” added Keldebæk.
Adyen confirms that Authenticate is live globally for 3DS and issuer optimisation, with support already extending to next-generation methods including Google SPA, Mastercard Payment Passkeys and Visa Payment Passkeys. Live transactions using these newer methods are already active in the UK, with the company planning further enhancements and global expansion through 2027.
