Cards
Issuer
The bank that issues a payment card to a cardholder and authorises or declines transactions on it.
Issuers underwrite the cardholder, fund authorisations, set credit limits, run fraud models on inbound auth requests, and own the customer relationship. When a transaction is declined, it's almost always the issuer (not the acquirer or merchant) saying no, usually for fraud, balance, or risk reasons.
Related terms
The licensed bank or financial institution that holds the merchant's MID and settles card transactions on the merchant's behalf.
An authorisation response refusing to fund a transaction, returned by the issuer with a reason code.
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.
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