Not every decline is final. Distinguishing recoverable declines from permanent ones — and retrying only the recoverable ones sensibly — protects both revenue and your relationship with the networks.
Every decline comes back with a response code from the issuer. Soft declines, such as insufficient funds, a temporary issuer outage or a request for extra authentication, can succeed on a later attempt. Hard declines, such as a stolen, closed or invalid card, will not, and retrying them repeatedly can draw attention from the card networks.
Decline recovery is the practice of winning back the recoverable share: retrying soft declines at sensible intervals, asking the customer to update their card, using account updater services for expired cards, and routing a payment through a backup processing connection when one path is down.
Common questions
- What is decline recovery?
- Decline recovery is the set of steps a merchant takes to turn a declined payment into a completed one: retrying soft declines on a schedule, prompting the customer to update their payment details, refreshing expired cards and, where available, sending the payment through a backup processor.
- What is the difference between a soft decline and a hard decline?
- A soft decline is temporary and may succeed if retried later or with extra authentication. A hard decline is permanent, for example a closed or reported-stolen card, and should not be retried. The response code on the decline tells you which one you have.
- Should I retry every declined payment?
- No. Retry only soft declines, and space the attempts out rather than retrying instantly. Repeatedly retrying hard declines wastes attempts and can be flagged by the card networks.