Risk
Soft decline
A transient decline (e.g. insufficient funds, do-not-honour, generic) that can usually be recovered with retries.
A soft decline is a temporary authorisation failure issued by the card issuer, suggesting that the transaction could succeed if resubmitted at a later time or under different conditions. Unlike hard declines caused by stolen cards or closed accounts, soft declines often stem from insufficient funds, technical timeouts, or the requirement for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) under PSD2 regulations. When an issuer returns a response code indicating a soft decline, the merchant or payment service provider may attempt a retry strategy. This often involves resubmitting the request after a specific interval, routing the transaction through a secondary acquirer, or triggering a 3D Secure challenge to verify the cardholder. Effective management of these declines is critical for maintaining high authorisation rates and reducing churn in subscription billing models. However, merchants must remain mindful of scheme rules from Visa and Mastercard, which may impose fees or penalties if a transaction is retried excessively after a final decline signal.
Frequently asked
How many times can a soft decline be retried before violating scheme rules?
General industry standards and scheme mandates typically permit up to 15 retries within a 30-day window for a single transaction. Exceeding these thresholds can lead to excessive retry fees or being flagged by the card schemes for non-compliance.
What is the difference between a soft decline and an SCA-related soft decline?
A standard soft decline might be due to a temporary lack of funds, whereas an SCA soft decline specifically occurs when an issuer rejects a transaction because it requires 3D Secure. In the latter case, the merchant must restart the payment flow to include the necessary authentication step to satisfy regulatory requirements.
Related terms
An authorisation response refusing to fund a transaction, returned by the issuer with a reason code.
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.
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