Netherlands-based Adyen has announced an upgrade to Authenticate, a component of its Adyen Uplift payment optimisation suite. The update allows Authenticate to determine in real time which authentication technology is best suited to each transaction, while also optimising the data shared with card issuers to support approval decisions.
Conventional online checkouts typically apply fixed 3D Secure (3DS) rules uniformly to all shoppers, which can create friction for legitimate customers and contribute to abandoned purchases. Authenticate replaces this approach with a machine learning model that makes three decisions for each transaction: whether authentication is required, which authentication method is most appropriate, and what data should be shared with the card issuer to support approval.
Adyen said this is possible because the company operates as both the authentication provider and the acquirer for a transaction, rather than working with a separate 3DS provider. This allows its machine learning models, which Adyen said have been trained on trillions of interactions, to learn from final authorisation outcomes rather than authentication results alone.
Risk-based authentication decisions
Authenticate draws on risk signals from Adyen's network to identify shoppers it has encountered before. For merchants already using the platform, Adyen said there is more than a 90% likelihood that a given shopper has previously transacted through its network. When a trusted shopper is recognised, Authenticate works with Protect, Adyen's fraud prevention module, to apply risk-based authentication, adding an extra authentication step only when required.
Where authentication is needed, Authenticate selects among several available methods, including 3DS, Google Secure Payment Authentication (SPA), Mastercard Payment Passkeys, Visa Payment Passkeys, and data-only flows, routing each transaction to the option considered most likely to result in a completed payment. In addition, Adyen said the single integration allows businesses to adopt new authentication technologies as they become available, without additional development work. The approach is also intended to simplify international expansion, as Authenticate combines current regulatory requirements with transaction, card issuer, and shopper data, reducing the need for companies to build separate authentication rules for each market.
For 3DS transactions specifically, Authenticate analyses more than 150 data fields and continuously assesses which combinations of data are most likely to be approved by card issuers. In some cases, this allows the authentication step to be skipped or completed without shopper interaction.
Availability and rollout
Authenticate is available worldwide for 3DS transactions and card issuer optimisation. Support for newer authentication technologies, including Google SPA, Mastercard Payment Passkeys, and Visa Payment Passkeys, is already live for transactions in the UK, with further improvements and wider global availability planned for 2027.
