Risk
Card decline
An authorisation response refusing to fund a transaction, returned by the issuer with a reason code.
Declines fall into two buckets: soft declines (transient, try again) and hard declines (terminal, do not retry). Reading reason codes correctly is critical, because retrying a hard decline burns issuer goodwill and can trigger fraud flags or scheme integrity fees.
Related terms
A transient decline (e.g. insufficient funds, do-not-honour, generic) that can usually be recovered with retries.
A terminal decline (e.g. lost/stolen, pickup card, invalid account) that must not be retried.
Rules that re-attempt a declined transaction across time windows, acquirers, or authentication levels to recover revenue.
The bank that issues a payment card to a cardholder and authorises or declines transactions on it.
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