Riskified has partnered with Marqeta to add pre-authorisation risk intelligence to Marqeta's card issuing platform, helping issuers make more accurate transaction approval decisions.
Under the arrangement, Riskified's data will feed into Marqeta's Real-Time Decisioning product before an eCommerce card transaction reaches the authorisation stage. The added merchant and consumer context is intended to help issuers distinguish legitimate purchases from fraud more precisely than with transaction data alone.
The deal targets a longstanding issue in online payments: false declines, where legitimate purchases are rejected as suspicious. Research cited by the companies from PYMNTS Intelligence and Nuvei estimated that false declines put USD $157 billion in US eCommerce sales at risk, with USD $81 billion ultimately lost even after shoppers made further attempts to complete purchases.
Issuers often make approval decisions with only a limited view of a transaction, leaving them unable to assess the broader relationship between a merchant and a customer. Riskified says it draws on a wider network of merchant transaction data to provide pre-authorisation signals before a bank or issuer decides whether to approve a payment.
Issuer focus
Marqeta, which provides card issuing infrastructure, said the integration adds another source of information to its existing risk tools. It strengthens the company's Real-Time Decisioning offering by feeding richer merchant data into its predictive risk scoring system.
That matters for card issuers because better approval accuracy can affect both revenue and customer experience. A legitimate transaction that is wrongly declined can mean a lost sale for the merchant, frustration for the cardholder, and lower payment volume for the issuer.
Riskified pointed to earlier issuer partnerships as evidence of the model's impact. In one 30-day period, a large US card issuer using data from Riskified's merchant network increased authorisation rates at a ticketing merchant by 5.9%, at a gaming merchant by 1.4%, and at an online retailer by 1.6%.
The same issuer also reported a 25% reduction in false declines with certain Riskified merchants. The figures point to the commercial appeal of adding merchant-side risk data to issuer-side approval systems, particularly in sectors where fraud controls are tight and mistaken rejections are frequent.
Merchant impact
The companies also cited merchant-side results. Athletic apparel retailer Lorna Jane saw its bank authorisation rate rise from 82% to 95% after implementing Riskified's pre-authorisation decisioning, alongside a reduction of more than 90% in chargebacks.
The example highlights the dual nature of payment fraud controls. Retailers want to prevent fraud and chargebacks, but they also want to avoid turning away genuine customers, especially in eCommerce where abandoned purchases can be hard to recover.
For Marqeta, the partnership adds another data layer to a business that processed nearly USD $400 billion in annual payments volume in 2025 and operates in more than 40 countries. For Riskified, it extends the company's reach from merchants deeper into the issuer decision process, where much of the remaining friction in online payments still occurs.
Jeff Otto, Chief Marketing Officer at Riskified, described the tie-up as a way for issuers to improve approvals without giving up fraud controls.
"Marqeta built the modern platform that category-leading card issuers actually want to issue on: flexible, API-first, built for speed. Pairing that with Riskified's global risk intelligence means issuers on Marqeta's platform don't have to choose between saying yes to good customers and managing risk effectively. This is how payment success gets built at scale," Otto said.
Anthony Peculic, Interim Chief Product Officer at Marqeta, said the integration should give issuing customers a broader set of risk tools.
"By teaming up with Riskified, we're able to leverage their global merchant network and smart decisioning to help maximize payment success for our customers," Peculic said. "Marqeta is constantly sharpening our risk management tools to stay ahead of fraud, and layering Riskified's pre-authorization risk intelligence into our Real-Time Decisioning offering gives our customers a sharper risk management toolkit, which has been demonstrated to increase authorization rates, cut false declines and reduce chargebacks."