Retailers lose revenue after the customer says yes.
Retail Payment Leakage is the measurable loss of earned or earnable revenue between customer purchase intent and final retained settlement. The RECLAIM™ Framework helps retail teams identify where that leakage happens, measure its impact, and prioritize practical interventions.
Created by Wesley Almeida, digital commerce and payments product leader.
Retail payment leakage occurs when a customer intends to buy, but revenue is lost, delayed, reduced, or later reversed because of payment, fraud, authentication, loyalty, settlement, fulfillment, or operational failures.
Most payment metrics are too narrow.
Authorization rate does not tell the whole story. Fraud rate does not tell the whole story. Checkout conversion does not tell the whole story. RECLAIM connects the full revenue path from customer intent to retained settlement.
One practical map for nine types of payment leakage.
RECLAIM stands for Retail Commerce Leakage Assessment and Intervention Model. It organizes retail payment leakage into nine practical pillars so product, payments, fraud, finance, engineering, loyalty, and operations teams can work from a shared map.
Intent Leakage
Customers willing to buy never reach payment.
KPI: payment-step abandonmentTender Fit Leakage
Customers cannot use their preferred or expected payment method.
KPI: tender selection failureAuthorization Leakage
Legitimate payments are declined or misrouted.
KPI: false decline estimateAuthentication Leakage
Good customers fail trust, login, or step-up flows.
KPI: 3DS completionRecovery Leakage
Failed payments are not recovered through retry, alternate tender, or cart recovery.
KPI: recovery valueFraud & Abuse Leakage
Bad transactions are accepted or good transactions are blocked.
KPI: fraud loss and false positivesLoyalty & Stored Value Leakage
Points, gift cards, promos, and stored value leak margin.
KPI: suspicious redemptionSettlement & Fee Leakage
Captured revenue is not fully retained due to fees, capture, refund, or reconciliation issues.
KPI: fee varianceOmnichannel Operations Leakage
Payment breaks across store, app, ecommerce, fulfillment, refunds, and inventory workflows.
KPI: BOPIS cancellationThe RECLAIM Leakage Chain™
Retailers do not lose payment revenue at one point. Losses compound across a chain of small, poorly owned failures.
A shared language for teams that rarely share one dashboard.
Executives
Quantify leakage in dollars, assign ownership, and prioritize the highest-value interventions.
Product leaders
Identify friction in checkout, wallet, authentication, and failed-payment recovery flows.
Payments teams
Improve tender fit, routing, authorization performance, processor governance, and recovery.
Fraud teams
Reduce fraud losses without blocking good customers or overloading manual review.
Finance teams
Find settlement, fee, refund, reconciliation, and retained-revenue leakage.
Operations teams
Address omnichannel payment failures after authorization, including pickup, delivery, and refunds.
Use RECLAIM inside your organization.
The framework, scorecard, workbook, and benchmark survey are designed as open practical tools for the retail payments ecosystem.
RECLAIM Framework
The full model, pillars, maturity levels, scoring method, and role guidance.
WorkbookSelf-Assessment
A practical worksheet for product, payments, fraud, finance, and operations teams.
DiagnosticExecutive Scorecard
A 15-minute diagnostic for identifying high-risk leakage areas.
BenchmarkAnnual Survey
Contribute to the Retail Payment Leakage Benchmark.
WebinarOn-Demand Intro
Watch a practical introduction to the framework and its use cases.
CitationCite RECLAIM
Suggested citation language and usage permissions for articles, decks, and internal strategy.
Built for the realities of modern U.S. retail commerce.
U.S. retailers operate across complex payment environments that include ecommerce, mobile apps, wallets, stored credentials, loyalty programs, fraud controls, pickup and delivery, marketplaces, refunds, and processor relationships. RECLAIM provides a practical operating model for teams trying to protect revenue, improve customer experience, and reduce avoidable payment-related loss.
Start with three questions
Can you quantify payment leakage in dollars? Does one team own the total leakage view? Can you trace loss from purchase intent to retained settlement?
Explore the Framework