How many times can you retry a declined card?
Visa allows 20 reattempts per card per 30 days on soft declines, then charges $0.10 domestic or $0.25 cross-border per attempt. Mastercard allows 10 per 24 hours and 35 per 30 days, then $0.50 in the US or €0.55 in the EU. Hard declines allow zero.
In detail
Visa allows 20 reattempts per card per 30 days on soft declines, then charges $0.10 domestic or $0.25 cross-border per attempt. Mastercard allows 10 per 24 hours and 35 per 30 days, then $0.50 in the US or €0.55 in the EU. Hard declines allow zero.
Scheme limits on retries
Visa groups decline codes into four categories. Category 1, “issuer will never approve”, must not be reattempted at all since April 2022, and every Category 1 reattempt is billed from the first one. Categories 2 to 4 may be retried within a limit per card per 30 days: PayPal’s current guidance states that Visa allows 20 retries in 30 days on soft declines, with fees of $0.10 per excess domestic reattempt and $0.25 cross-border.
Mastercard counts reattempts twice: 10 in 24 hours and 35 in 30 days for soft declines, after which it charges $0.50 in the US, €0.55 in the EU and BRL 2.00 in Brazil per excess attempt. Hard declines must not be re-submitted with the same PAN and expiry.
Retry counters are per card
Scheme limits apply to the card, not to the merchant. An operator that runs hundreds of sub-merchants and several brands needs one counter per PAN or token across all of them, or one merchant’s dunning schedule can push another into fees.
More detail in our #PayDecoding episode on Soft declines.