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Q: What is the difference between a Soft Delcine and a Hard Decline?

  • A hard decline is when the issuing bank does not approve the payment. In other words, hard declines are permanent authorization failures and should not be retried. These failures may be caused by:

Stolen Card
Invalid Card
Closed Account
When a hard decline occurs, the problem originates with the issuing bank or the processor.

The problem with hard declines is that retrying the card number doesn’t work, even if the decline happens on a renewal. With hard declines, the only guaranteed way to prevent losing the payment is to have the customer fix the problem. Which most likely means they’ll have to give you a new credit card.

A soft decline occurs when the issuing bank approves the payment, but the transaction fails at some other point in the process. Some typical reasons for a soft decline are:

Insufficient Funds
Processor Declined
Card Activity Limit Exceeded
Expired Card
The Purchase is Unusual
The Billing Address and the IP Address Do Not Match
The Card is Being Used Abroad
The good news about soft declines is that the transaction failure is temporary. So, you can retry the card in one or two days after the decline occurs and hope for valid authorization.

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Notes:

When using Order Entry any new attempted card becomes the new default.

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