Understanding Your Declined Authorizations

There are a variety of reasons that authorizations are declined. The following information should help you understand why this happens, how you are affected, and what you can do to minimize the incidence of these declined authorizations.

• Review and understand your declined authorization details
• How are declined authorizations handled by API and Hosted Solutions?
• Best practices for minimizing declined authorizations

Review your declined authorization details

You can review all of your declined authorizations in the Declined Auth Details report.
To view your report, in your Merchant Portal, go to Reports > Payout > Declined Auth Details.

This report provides a list of declined authorizations (including the transaction type and the shopper details) with a clear description of the reason it was declined and the fees involved, including the fee for the declined authorization.

Understand the reasons for declined authorizations

Use the Declined Auth Details report to analyze the authorization declines you have and to understand where those declines are coming from. You can then use that information to determine the best ways of minimizing declined authorizations.

When you are reviewing the report, refer to our Card Transaction Errors information to better understand the meaning of the errors that you receive.

For example, if you receive:

• EXPIRED_CARD — You should not try the card again until you correct the card expiration.
• DO_NOT_HONOR — Another attempt to charge the card, without resolving the issue, will likely result in another decline.

How are declined authorizations handled by API and Hosted Solutions?

API

With our API, you control the retry attempts. You should monitor the API responses you get and, if you receive a response with a failure message, review the content to determine if you want to retry.

For example, here is a DO_NOT_HONOR response:

{
  "message": [
  {
    "errorName": "DO_NOT_HONOR",
    "code": 14002,
    "description": "Transaction failed because of payment processing failure.: 530 - This transaction has been declined. Please check card details and try again, or contact your bank for assistance"
  }
 ]
}

<message>
   <error-name>DO_NOT_HONOR</error-name>
   <code>14002</code>
   <description>Transaction failed because of payment processing failure.: 530 - This transaction has been declined. Please check card details and try again, or contact your bank for assistance</description>
</message>

Hosted

If you are using one of our hosted solutions, declined authorizations are handled for you with our Intelligent Payment Routing. We will manage the reattempt and you will only be charged once, when you you receive the final decline.

Best practices for minimizing declined authorizations

No one can predict and prevent all declines. However, you should proactively communicating with your shoppers to make sure they know what to do, before they make another charge attempt.

Use the CC_CHARGE_FAILED or SUBSCRIPTION_CHARGE_FAILURE IPN to trigger a communication to your shoppers based on the failure reason field. For example:
failureReason=This+transaction+has+been+declined. +Please+check+card+details+and+try+again+or+contact+your+bank+for+assistance.

📘

If you need more assistance with declined authorizations, contact Merchant Support.