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2026 benchmarkHigh-risk payment approval rates by vertical.
Card approval rates vary enormously by industry - a low-risk SaaS business and a high-risk iGaming operator live in different worlds. Below are indicative approval rates by vertical for 2026, and the levers that move them.
Figures are indicative PlatinumEdge benchmarks and depend on traffic quality, geography and configuration.
How to read these numbers
Approval rate is the share of attempted card transactions that succeed. The gap between high-risk and low-risk verticals isn't about business quality - it's about how issuers and acquirers treat the merchant category code (MCC). High-risk MCCs face more automatic scrutiny, so the same traffic converts at a lower rate unless it's routed well.
What lifts approval rates
The levers that close the gap for high-risk merchants:
- Dedicated MIDs and intelligent routing to the best-performing route
- Decline cascading to instantly retry soft declines across MIDs
- 3-D Secure to authenticate and shift liability
- 200+ payment methods so customers can pay locally
- Chargeback and fraud tooling to protect MIDs and ratios
These are exactly what a high-risk payment gateway should deliver. See approval by vertical: iGaming, forex, crypto.
Free to reference with attribution to PlatinumEdge Technologies, linking to this page (https://platinum-edge.ca/high-risk-approval-rates). For media enquiries or vertical-specific data, contact sales@platinum-edge.ca.