Back in August last year, we released the AG Traffic Light System (TLS) 2.0.

Not because merchants needed more technical jargon.
Not because they wanted more processor codes.

But because messages like “Address check failed” simply weren’t good enough anymore.

Payments should make sense.

That was the entire idea behind the AG Traffic Light System (TLS).

We wanted WooCommerce merchants to stop guessing what happened during a payment attempt and start understanding it.

TLS 2.0 helped merchants quickly identify:

• Failed payments
• Security issues
• AVS/CVV mismatches
• 3D Secure problems
• System errors
• Customer payment mistakes

All directly inside WooCommerce. And it changed how merchants troubleshoot payments.

But there was still one problem.

Merchants still had to piece the story together manually

Even with improved fail reasons and clearer guidance, merchants still found themselves jumping between:

• Order notes
• Gateway responses
• Webhook updates
• Redirect events
• Status changes
• Customer emails
• Support conversations

Trying to answer one simple question:

Did the customer leave checkout?
Did they fail 3D Secure?
Did they come back and change delivery details?
Did the payment authorise before the webhook arrived?
Did they retry with a different card?

WooCommerce showed fragments of the journey.

But not the full picture.

That changes today.

Welcome to TLS 3.0

TLS 3.0 introduces something we’ve wanted to build for a long time:

Payment Story

A complete visual timeline of the customer’s payment journey, directly inside WooCommerce.

No external dashboards.
No searching through order notes.
No trying to reconstruct the sequence manually.

Just the full payment story.

What is Payment Story?

Payment Story transforms the AG Traffic Light System from a payment status tool into a complete payment journey timeline.

Every important event during checkout and payment processing is recorded and displayed visually inside a dedicated modal directly on the WooCommerce order screen.

This means merchants can now see:

• When checkout started
• Which payment option was selected
• When the customer was redirected
• Whether 3D Secure was triggered
• When the customer returned to checkout
• If checkout information was changed
• When the payment provider responded
• When webhooks arrived
• Whether the payment was authorised, declined, cancelled, or captured
• How long each step took
• Whether payment retries occurred

All in one place.

And all written in plain English.

Built directly into WooCommerce

There’s nothing new to learn.

Payment Story lives directly inside the AG Traffic Light System on the WooCommerce order screen.

Open an order, and you’ll see:

• A payment summary
• Latest payment activity
• Timeline preview information
• A “View Payment Story” button

Click the button and the full payment journey open.

No separate reporting portal.
No leaving WooCommerce.

Different payment journeys tell different stories

Every payment journey is different.

Some customers complete checkout in seconds.

Others return to checkout to update delivery details, retry payment, or switch payment methods before successfully completing their order.

Payment Story visualises that entire process directly inside WooCommerce.

In the example below, the customer:

• Started checkout
• Selected card payment
• Was redirected to the payment provider
• Returned to checkout
• Updated billing information
• Retried payment
• Successfully completed 3D Secure

For merchants, this provides valuable context that would normally be hidden inside fragmented order notes and gateway responses.

Pre-authorisation and capture, now much clearer

Pre-authorisation payments are one of the most common areas of confusion for merchants.

A payment may appear approved, but the funds have not yet actually been captured.

Payment Story now separates these stages clearly.

In the example below, you can see:

• The payment was pre-authorised successfully
• Funds were placed on hold
• A capture request was later made
• The transaction then completed

This gives merchants a much clearer understanding of where the order currently sits within the payment lifecycle.

Failed payments now tell the full story

Failed payments are no longer reduced to a single “Failed” message.

Payment Story now shows where and why the payment failed.

In the example below, you can see:

• The customer was redirected to the payment provider
• 3D Secure authentication failed
• The gateway returned a failed response
• The webhook confirmed the failure
• WooCommerce updated the order to Failed

This makes it dramatically easier for merchants and support teams to understand what actually happened without digging through logs.

Smart merchant insights

TLS 3.0 doesn’t just show events. It helps explain them.

Payment Story includes contextual insights such as:

• Customer returned to checkout
• Shipping or billing details changed
• Payment method changed during checkout
• Payment authorised but capture still required
• Multiple retry attempts detected
• Webhook delay detected
• 3D Secure challenge failed
• Customer cancelled during redirect

This follows the same philosophy that powered the original TLS system:

Technical details – only when you need them

Most merchants don’t want raw processor responses cluttering the order screen.

But support teams and developers sometimes need deeper visibility.

TLS 3.0 includes an optional technical details toggle, which can display:

• Gateway response codes
• Transaction references
• Processor statuses
• Payment providers response details
• Technical fail codes
• Additional payment metadata

This keeps the default experience clean and merchant-friendly while still giving technical users the information they need when troubleshooting.

Designed around real support conversations

Payment Story wasn’t built in isolation.

It was built around the types of support conversations we handle every single day.

Questions like:

• “Did the customer complete 3D Secure?”
• “Did they come back to checkout?”
• “Did they retry payment?”
• “Why is this still pending?”
• “Was the payment actually captured?”
• “Did the webhook arrive?”

Previously, answering those questions often meant manually piecing together multiple systems.

Now the timeline tells the story for you.

For merchants, that means faster answers.

For support teams, it means dramatically improved visibility into what actually happened during checkout.

Authipay today. More gateways next.

Payment Story launches first inside AG Authipay for WooCommerce.

This is the first official release of TLS 3.0.

But this is only the beginning. Our goal is to bring the TLS 3.0 experience across the wider AG plugin family so that merchants have one familiar way to understand payments, regardless of gateway provider.

One timeline.
One experience.
One payment story system.

Across all AG plugins.

This is what TLS was always meant to become

The AG Traffic Light System started with one simple goal:

Make payment understandable.

TLS 3.0 takes that even further.

Because merchants no longer just need statuses.

They need:

• Context
• Sequence
• Visibility
• Clarity
• Confidence

And most importantly, they need to understand the story behind the payment.

Available now

Payment Story is now available in the latest version of AG Authipay for WooCommerce.

Update today and open any Authipay order to experience TLS 3.0 for yourself.

Because “Failed” should never be the whole story.