An opportunity hidden in the data: 24% of declined purchases failed because of an insufficient card limit. A new retry experience increased recovered GMV by 20%.
Hotmart had a mechanism to recover installment purchases declined because of an insufficient card limit. The Automatic Recoverer turned these purchases into recurring charges, lowering the amount that had to be available on the card each month.
For a R$1,200 purchase in 12 installments, for example, instead of needing R$1,200 available on the card, the buyer would get a R$100 charge every month.
The switch to recurring charges happened automatically, without telling the buyer.
24% of declined purchases happened because of a lack of limit
Looking at decline reasons, I found that almost one in four declined purchases fell exactly into the group the Recoverer handled.
That opened room to rethink how these sales were recovered. Instead of changing the billing automatically, the new experience had to let the buyer choose how to try to complete the purchase.
Before redesigning recovery, I set out to understand how people reacted to a new attempt
6 moderated interviews · buyers who had already made installment purchases online
I explored past experiences with declined payments and walked through different recovery scenarios to understand how people read the charge and which alternatives they would consider to continue the purchase.
The number of installments changed the recovery strategy
When I looked at the amount that was still held, I realized the problem changed depending on how the original purchase had been split.
The Recoverer kept the number of installments chosen at checkout. A purchase in 6x became six recurring charges; a purchase in 12x, twelve.
How much could be recovered depended on the installments. At 1x, the Recoverer couldn't lower the amount needed on the card. At 12x, there were cases where insisting on the same card was no longer an option.
In the first implementation, we sent declined purchases to an experience that split the amount into 12 monthly charges. With a smaller amount per charge, we raised the chance of approval.
But this strategy created another problem. The more purchases we moved into long recurring plans, the longer the exposure to default and the more Collections had to step in.
The decision stopped looking only at getting the purchase approved and started to also weigh the risk created after it.
The Recoverer had no way to act
Since the Recoverer kept the number of installments chosen at checkout, a declined one-time purchase would still require the full amount available on the card.
The new experience started offering other payment methods, including the option to split the amount into monthly charges on the same card, without using up the full limit.
02 · purchases from 2x to 11xThere was still room to lower the amount needed per charge
In these purchases, the buyer had already chosen installments, but the card didn't have enough limit to approve the total amount.
Besides allowing a new attempt with another card or with Pix (Brazil's instant payment system), the experience offered the option to spread the payment into smaller monthly charges on the same card.
Insisting on the same card was no longer an option
If the purchase was already in 12 installments and was still declined for insufficient limit, there was no way to lower the monthly amount any further within this logic.
In these cases, we removed the option to continue with the same card and pointed recovery to paths that didn't depend on that limit.
+20% in recovered GMV
After launch, recovered GMV from purchases that went through the new experience grew 20%. The gain came from purchases that, after being declined for insufficient limit, were completed through one of the paths offered inside the checkout.
What changed beyond the metric
Recovery stopped being an automatic action and started to take into account the buyer's choice, the original installment plan and the risk of default.