Risk

Hard decline

A terminal decline (e.g. lost/stolen, pickup card, invalid account) that must not be retried.

Hard declines mean the card cannot or must not be charged again. Retrying triggers scheme integrity fees and can damage the merchant's standing with the issuer. Hard-declined cards should be removed from the vault and the customer prompted for a new method.

Related terms

Card decline

An authorisation response refusing to fund a transaction, returned by the issuer with a reason code.

Soft decline

A transient decline (e.g. insufficient funds, do-not-honour, generic) that can usually be recovered with retries.

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