Merchants today rely on multiple Merchant IDs (MIDs) across acquiring banks and payment providers. This setup provides flexibility, redundancy, and access to better approval rates, but only if traffic is managed effectively. Without intelligent routing, merchants risk misallocating transactions, overloading specific MIDs, and missing out on revenue opportunities. That’s why we’ve introduced smart routing for MID optimization, a feature designed to give merchants greater control and efficiency in how their traffic flows across MIDs.
Early pilots show merchants gaining 3-7% uplift in approval rates, with near-zero downtime during PSP outages, demonstrating the magnitude and potential of this smart routing enhancement.
What is MID Optimisation?
MID optimization ensures each transaction is dynamically directed to the best-performing MID at the moment it is processed. Instead of relying on static rules, our smart routing engine evaluates:
- Card type (credit, debit, prepaid)
- Customer location and currency
- Live MID performance data (approval rates, latency, cost)
- Acquirer-specific rules and limits
The system then routes payments to the most appropriate MID in real time, maximising approvals while keeping costs in check.
Many merchants still rely on static or manual traffic allocation between MIDs. The result is:
- Revenue leakage when transactions are sent to a lower-performing MID.
- Compliance risks if acquirer thresholds are exceeded.
- Higher processing costs when routing doesn’t account for fee variations.
- Poor customer experience from failed or delayed transactions.
Static setups simply can’t react to live performance shifts or acquirer behavior, leaving merchants vulnerable to failure points they are unable to control.
Benefits of MID Optimisation for Merchants
Maximise approval rates
By sending transactions to the MID with the highest live success rate, merchants recover approvals that would otherwise be lost. Early pilots have shown 3–7% uplift in approvals from MID optimisation alone.
Lower processing costs
Traffic is dynamically balanced to account for fee structures and interchange costs. That means fewer high-cost transactions and better protection of margins.
Balance acquirer exposure
Smart Routing automatically manages MID volumes to keep merchants within acquirer thresholds, reducing the risk of penalties or sudden restrictions.
Reduce downtime risk
If a MID or acquirer experiences issues, transactions are seamlessly rerouted, keeping checkout live and uninterrupted.
Deliver a better checkout experience
Customers benefit from smoother, faster approvals and fewer retries, building loyalty and reducing cart abandonment.
Smarter payments, equals stronger outcomes
Unlike basic routing tools that only work at the PSP level, Paysecure delivers granular, MID-level optimization. This gives merchants:
- Real-time data-driven routing decisions.
- The ability to balance traffic intelligently across multiple acquirers.
- Hands-off automation that reduces operational overhead.
- A clear focus on business continuity and revenue protection.
At Paysecure, our smart routing engine uses an explore and exploit model. It continuously tests dynamic routing paths across PSPs and MIDs, measuring live approval rates, latency, cost, and BIN behavior. Once the best option is found, it automatically pushes more volume through that path, ensuring merchants capture maximum revenue in real time.
MID optimization isn’t just about technical efficiency, it’s about unlocking more revenue, lowering costs, and safeguarding merchant-acquirer relationships.
With smart routing for MID optimisation, merchants get a powerful tool to ensure their payments strategy works harder, smarter, and more profitably.
This is more than just routing, it’s about putting every MID to work in the most effective way possible.
If you want to find out more about our smart routing for MID optimisation feature at Paysecure, get in touch with the team today.
