Acquiring
Issuer decline code
Also: response code, ISO 8583
Two-digit ISO 8583 response (05 Do Not Honour, 51 Insufficient Funds, 54 Expired Card) explaining why an issuer refused an auth; drives retry logic.
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.
Hard decline
A terminal decline (e.g. lost/stolen, pickup card, invalid account) that must not be retried.
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