Glossary
Hard decline
A hard decline is a final refusal about the card or the cardholder: the card is reported lost or stolen, the number or expiry is invalid, the account is closed, the funds are insufficient, the authentication failed or the cardholder's bank has blocked the merchant category. Another acquirer will get the same answer, and the schemes penalise merchants that reattempt such transactions, so a hard decline ends the cascade and the payer is asked for another method.
Why reattempts are penalised
Visa and Mastercard count reattempts of declined transactions: a merchant that keeps retrying a stolen card looks like a fraudster testing cards and generates fees and declines for everyone. Their rules allow a limited number of reattempts within a period for some reason codes and none for others, with fees for excessive attempts; a platform must know which code is which.
Insufficient funds
Insufficient funds is hard for the moment but may clear later: a recurring payment declined for funds on the first of the month may succeed on the fifth. That is a scheduled retry under the subscription’s rules, not a cascade to another acquirer in the same second, and it still counts toward the schemes’ limits.
On the platform
Tranzify classifies hard declines in the adapters, stops the cascade on them, caps attempts per payment and keeps the issuer’s reason in the journal; a merchant that charges a stored card again later does so within those limits.
Updated: 2026-11-08