Why use Alerts
Payment performance moves fast. A single misconfiguration at an acquirer, a fraud attack, or a 3DS challenge gone wrong can silently eat into revenue before anyone notices. Alerts close that gap by continuously monitoring your payment authorization rate and emailing the right people the moment a threshold is crossed. What you get:- Faster detection — catch degradations once they happen, not at end-of-day
- Less monitoring toil — no more “refresh the dashboard” routines
- Shared awareness — route alerts to the teammates (or Payrails contacts) who need them
- Fewer false alarms — threshold and alert configuration and traffic filters prevent alert fatigue
How Alerts work
At its core, an Alert is a rule: “If this metric crosses this threshold during this time window, email these people.” Each Alert is made up of five building blocks:
Alerts are evaluated on an hourly cadence. When a rule fires, recipients receive an email and a corresponding event is written to the Alert Events log.
Quick Start (takes about a minute)
1. Open the Alerts page
From the sidebar, go to Settings → Alerts. You’ll see a list of all existing Alert configurations, with their status (enabled/disabled) and most recent events.
2. Create a new Alert
Click + New Alert in the top-right corner.3. Choose the scope
Select the workspace the Alert should apply to. Pick a specific workspace to target one business line, or choose All Workspaces to monitor across the board. Click Continue.4. Fill in the Alert details
5. Save and enable
Save the Alert. If you enabled it, Payrails starts evaluating the rule on the next hourly cycle.Recommended starting point
If you’re setting up your first Alert and unsure where to begin, use this Standard Health Alert as a baseline. It catches the most common revenue-impacting degradations with minimal tuning.
From there, layer in more targeted Alerts as you learn which dimensions matter most to your business.
Thresholds and trigger exceptions
Setting a threshold is strongly recommended. Without one, every small fluctuation becomes an alert — and your team starts ignoring them. A good threshold only fires when something is meaningfully wrong. Two controls to avoid noise:- Minimum traffic threshold — Only evaluate the rule when traffic is high enough to be statistically meaningful. This prevents false positives from a handful of transactions in the middle of the night.
- Trigger exceptions — Skip evaluation during known low-traffic windows (e.g., scheduled maintenance, off-hours for a regional business). Exceptions are defined as time ranges on the Alert configuration.
Managing Alerts
Payrails gives you three views to stay on top of your Alert infrastructure:Alert List
The entry point — every Alert configuration in one place, with its enabled/disabled state, scope, and a quick summary of recent activity.Alert Details
Click into any Alert to see its full configuration, edit fields, pause or re-enable it, or add/remove recipients.
Alert Events
The historical log — every time an Alert fired, the Alert name, and its necessary details.
Best Practices
1. Start simple, then specialise. Begin with one account-wide Authorisation Rate alert. Once you see it in action, add targeted Alerts per payment method, country, or PSP. 2. Set thresholds that reflect your normal. An 85% Auth Rate floor makes sense for most card traffic, but APMs, BNPL, and high-risk geographies often operate at different baselines. Check your last 30 days before deciding. 3. Use dimensions to reduce noise. An account-wide alert can be masked by high-volume success in one region while another is failing. Dimension-scoped Alerts (e.g., Card + US) catch regional regressions that aggregate metrics miss. 4. Route Alerts to the people who can act. Add your payment ops distribution list — not individual mailboxes that may go unmonitored. Consider adding your Payrails contact for critical rules so we can help investigate. 5. Document what each Alert means. Give every Alert a descriptive name and, in your internal runbook, note the recommended first action when it fires. Future-you will thank present-you. 6. Review and refine quarterly. Traffic mixes change, PSPs get added, thresholds drift. A 15-minute review every quarter keeps the system trustworthy. 7. Resolve events promptly. Leaving events unresolved means you lose the signal the next time the same issue occurs.FAQ
How often are Alerts evaluated?
How often are Alerts evaluated?
Hourly. This cadence balances timely detection with evaluation cost.
Higher-frequency evaluation is on our roadmap.
What happens if I don't set a threshold?
What happens if I don't set a threshold?
The Alert will still save, but we strongly recommend always setting one.
Without a threshold, the rule can fire on minor fluctuations and cause alert
fatigue.
Can I send Alerts somewhere other than email?
Can I send Alerts somewhere other than email?
Today, email is the primary channel.
Can an Alert cover multiple workspaces?
Can an Alert cover multiple workspaces?
Yes — select All Workspaces when creating the Alert. Otherwise, scope it
to a single workspace.
Will I get spammed if an issue lasts several hours?
Will I get spammed if an issue lasts several hours?
No. Once an event is open it won’t re-fire until you mark it as resolved.
Next steps
- Set up your first Alert using the Quick start above
- Review the Alert List, Alert Details, and Alert Events views
- Reach out to your Payrails contact if you’d like help choosing the right metrics and thresholds for your traffic