Case Study: Bolt unlocks additional revenue and higher authorization rates with Adyen's Network Token Optimization

How Bolt unlocked additional revenue with pioneering payments

Bolt, the Estonian mobility “super‑app” operating in 500+ cities and serving over 100 million customers, faced growing payment challenges as it scaled: regulatory requirements (like PSD2 SCA), rising digital fraud, false declines, low authorization rates and interrupted recurring payments that drove cart abandonment and revenue leakage. To maintain a fast, secure and frictionless customer experience, Bolt needed a payments solution that improved approvals and reduced friction across markets.

Bolt partnered with Adyen and Visa to implement Visa Token Services, Adyen’s Network Token Optimization, EMV® 3DS and Visa Account Updater. By sharing richer transaction data, applying SCA only when needed, automatically updating card credentials and intelligently choosing tokens or PANs (with immediate PAN retries on decline), Bolt saw higher authorization rates (tokens ~95.9% vs PAN ~90.8%), fewer false declines and interrupted payments, improved fraud protection, stronger customer experiences and an ROI that exceeded expectations.

Bolt

Karin Kase

Head of Global PR