How can I transition to Adyen’s new risk engine?

We’re upgrading our risk engine to a new, more advanced engine. These changes are designed to optimize your risk management strategies and enhance overall performance. The new risk engine simplifies risk profile maintenance, featuring a more straightforward user experience, machine learning capabilities, rule backtesting, and advanced profile insights.

Risk Engine (Legacy) vs. Risk Engine (Latest Version –  What has changed?

Adyen’s new risk engine is engineered to maximize conversions while minimizing fraud costs. It leverages machine learning models trained on Adyen's extensive platform data to automate and sharpen risk decision-making processes. 

Key Changes:

• Machine Learning: the new premium risk engine uses machine learning models to evaluate the risk of each transaction. This approach enhances accuracy, reduces false positives, and minimizes the blocking of legitimate shoppers, resulting in a better shopper experience and less fraud.
• Outcome-Based Rules: Instead of manually assigning risk scores, the new risk engine allows you to create rules based on outcomes—Allow, Block, or Review—simplifying the process and improving accuracy.
• Enhanced User Interface: The new interface is more user-friendly, making it easier to manage and adjust risk profiles. Profile and rule-level analytics help you spot underperforming rules and allow you to stay on top of profile performance. 
• Rule Backtesting: This feature enables you to test new risk rules against historical transaction data to predict their future impact, ensuring they perform well before going live.

Recognizing the New Version:

To verify whether your account has been upgraded, log in to your Customer Area and navigate to Risk > Risk Profiles. Select a risk profile and then Risk rules. If you see the tabs Allow, Block, and Review (for Premium users) or Allow and Block (for Basic users), you're using the new version.

Transition Details:

Adyen’s latest risk engine is being gradually introduced and will be available to all users by the end of 2025. The transition will occur automatically, and we'll notify you before the exact date. While we are automating the process to minimize operational overhead, you will still be required to take some actions.

Actions Required 

If you've previously set up custom risk rules, manual review rules, or Dynamic 3DS rules tied to a risk score, you might want to replicate these in the new version. First, review your existing profile by going to Customer Area > Risk > Risk Profiles, and selecting the old Risk Profile to see if this is the case for you. 

Here's a checklist to guide you:

• Custom risk rules from the old profile won’t automatically be transferred to the new profile because the new risk engine operates with different parameters and capabilities. As a result, the old custom rules may not align with the new framework and could potentially affect performance if carried over without adjustment. If these rules are crucial to your strategy, manually recreate them and use the backtest feature to simulate their impact on historical data. This helps you identify underperforming rules that don't require recreation and confirm the effectiveness.
  Tip: to find this on your old profile, go to Customer Area > Risk > Risk Profiles > Select the old Risk Profile > Risk Rules > Custom Rules.
• Manual Review Rules should be reconfigured for the new engine, which now uses actions instead of risk scores.
  Tip: to find this on your old profile, go to Customer Area > Risk > Risk Profiles, select the old Risk Profile > Risk Rules, and check each individual risk rule. Check if a toggle labeled “Send to case management” is on. 
• Referral Lists: The latest risk engine includes a set of default referral lists that are enabled by default. Be sure to review these lists and ensure that those relevant to your business remain enabled.
  Tip: to find this on your old profile, go to Customer Area > Risk > Risk Profiles > Select the old Risk Profile > Risk Rules > Referrals. 
• Post-authorisation Rules like AVS & CVC mismatches or Liability shift status need to be reconfigured
  Tip: to find this on your old profile, go to Customer Area > Risk > Risk Profiles > Select the old Risk Profile > Standard Rules > Consistency.
• Dynamic 3DS: Once you’ve recreated your custom risk rules, reconnect them to Dynamic 3DS rules as explained in the documentation. Note that old Dynamic 3DS rules based on risk scores or legacy risk engine checks will no longer work. You can recreate these logics in custom rules and reconnect them to Dynamic 3DS if needed.

These steps ensure that your risk management strategy remains effective and tailored to your business needs under the new risk engine.

Further Action

Aside from the above adjustments, you don’t need to take any more action. However, we encourage users to explore the new features, such as adjusting machine learning model thresholds  to learn more about enhancing data quality to get the most out of the tool.

To support your transition, we’ve created a range of self-service resources, including:

• Public documentation
• Monthly webinars where an expert will walk you through our product and answer your questions.