Card network retry program

What are retries?

When a customer tries to make a card purchase in your store, the transaction may be declined for several reasons. Subsequent attempts to complete the transaction with the same card are called retries.

Fees and limits by network

Each card network sets specific fees for retries, and the number of attempts allowed before fees apply also varies by network.

Card present and card not present

The networks define distinct rules for card present and card not present transactions, such as online sales.

Penalties for exceeding the limits

E-commerce merchants that do not follow the retry rules may be penalized with additional fees for exceeded transactions, according to each network's program.

Reversible and irreversible declines

Aiming to improve the purchase experience, the payments industry, in partnership with ABECS, standardized the response codes for declined card transactions. Retry attempts were classified into two types, irreversible and reversible.

Irreversible: never retry

This type of decline indicates that the card is canceled, was lost or stolen, there is confirmed fraud, or the transaction is not allowed for the specific product. In any of these situations, the issuer will never grant an approval. If an authorization attempt occurs after an irreversible decline, without changing any data in the request, the transaction will continue to be declined.

Reversible: retry allowed

In this case, the issuer may eventually approve the transaction, but does not do so at that moment due to temporary problems such as a system failure, insufficient available limit, suspected fraud, or an excessive number of incorrect PIN entry attempts. These declines are temporary and may change over time, allowing approval on a new attempt.

Visa, Mastercard and Elo adjusted their rules to limit the number of authorization attempts on declined transactions. These changes establish fees when the number of attempts exceeds the allowed limit. See below the specific rules for each network.

Mastercard

Mastercard has the Transaction Processing Excellence (TPE) program, which covers two categories:

1. Excessive Attempts: monitors retries of declined transactions in card present and card not present environments. Valid for both reversible and irreversible decline codes.
2. Merchant Advice Code Transaction Excellence (MAC): monitors retries of declined transactions in card not present environments that are irreversible. Fees apply only to MAC 03 and 21.

Excessive Attempts

These are charges applied when the merchant exceeds the transaction retry rules.

The network also monitors any nominal-amount authorization, approved, with a subsequent refund, for transactions below 1 whole currency unit or the equivalent of US$ 1.

Monitoring applies to retries of declined and approved purchase transactions, made in card present and card not present environments.

Excessive Attempts table:

• All payment transactions on the same card and same merchant number are considered retries;
• Mastercard postponed the effective date of the new Excessive Attempts program rules to 01/02/2023, previously scheduled to start on 01/11/2022. Here are the changes:

1. The excess considered in the program will start from the eighth retry within the assessment month; the amounts charged were changed.
2. Mastercard is also introducing a limit of 35 declined attempts on the same card and same merchant number over a continuous 30-day period. Even if the store does not exceed the limit of seven retries within 24h, but exceeds the monthly limit, the fee will be applied.

Merchant Advice Code Transaction Excellence (MAC)

These are charges applied when the merchant retries an authorization request for irreversible response codes with the same card, valid for card not present.

Within this retry program, there are programs specifically targeted at the "Do not retry this transaction" scenario. For those cases, Mastercard identifies the transactions with the values MAC 03 and MAC 21, for example.

The MAC program includes several values, but only MAC 03 and 21 carry a specific fee. The other MACs do not fall under this fee.

The other MAC codes (01, 02, 04, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 40 and 41) are not part of the MAC fee program, but they do count toward the Excessive Attempts program fee if the limits are exceeded.

Since 14/10/2022 Mastercard introduced new MAC codes (24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30) when an issuer declines a transaction with response code 51 (insufficient funds) followed by one of the MACs in the table below, so the merchant can take the best action.

Table with the full list of MACs:

In addition, some return codes will no longer be sent:

• 04 (Capture card)
• 14 (Invalid card number)
• 43 (Stolen card)
• 54 (Expired card)
• 57 (Transaction not permitted)
• 62 (Restricted card)
• 63 (Security violation)

Mastercard return categorization

Mastercard may consolidate some issuer response codes, which often do not tell the merchant whether a retry is allowed, into three Mastercard-exclusive codes:

• 79 (Lifecycle);
• 82 (Policy);
• 83 (Fraud/Security).

The original codes will be replaced by the Merchant Advice Code (MAC), which will accompany codes 79, 82 and 83 to determine whether the transaction can be retried.

For example:

MAC 03 and MAC 21 retry program

Assessment method:

• Card not present transactions are considered;
• All payment transactions on the same card and same merchant number are considered retries;
• Retries in the MAC program with values MAC 03 and MAC 21 are counted;
• Valid for any response code;
• The excess counted in the program starts from the 1st retry within the assessment month;
• The counter resets after the 30-day period;
• Retries can be charged under MAC 03/21 and under Excessive Attempts if the limit of each program is exceeded;
• The fee was R$ 1.25 and, starting January 1, 2023, the amount listed below took effect.

Fee table:

Visa

The retry program established by Visa generates charges when the merchant exceeds the retry rules.

The goal is to create balance in the transaction ecosystem to ensure that acquirers and merchants provide accurate information about retries and reduce unnecessary new attempts.

The network requires issuers to use correct, non-generic response codes to make it easier to identify the reason a transaction was declined.

Visa splits these codes into reversible and irreversible, valid for both card present and card not present transactions:

• Reversible codes: up to 20 attempts to approve the same transaction are allowed (with the same card, transaction, expiration date, amount and merchant) within a 30-day period. After 30 days, counted from the first attempt, any retry will be charged. Once the 30-day period has passed, if a retry of the same transaction is sent, the fee will already be applied. Thus, the 20-attempt rule no longer applies and the 30 consecutive-day period takes effect.
• Irreversible codes: only the 1st attempt to approve the transaction is allowed (with the same card, transaction, expiration date, amount and merchant). On the second attempt, the transaction will already be charged, regardless of when it occurs.

Fees have applied since April 2021.

Visa grouped the return codes into four categories:

• Category 1: issuer will never approve. Indicates that the card was canceled or never existed, or that the decline is the result of a permanent restriction or error condition that will prevent a future approval.
• Category 2: issuer cannot approve at this time. Indicates that the decline is the result of a temporary condition such as credit risk, issuer velocity controls or other card restrictions that may allow a retried transaction to be approved. In some cases, the decline requires an action from the cardholder or issuer to remove the restriction before an approval can be obtained.
• Category 3: data quality. When a data error is identified by the issuer, the transaction is declined as a consequence. Merchants must revalidate payment data before retrying. Merchants and acquirers must monitor these decline codes due to the potential fraud exposure. Note: category 3 has, in addition to the limits considered in category 2, a different limit that is cumulative. A merchant can perform up to 25,000 transactions in a 30-day period (in this case considering only the merchant number and decline codes). If the limit is exceeded, all transactions declined under category 3 will be charged.
• Category 4: generic response codes. Category 4 includes all other decline response codes not in categories 1, 2 and 3, since there may be circumstances where no response code value exists for a specific decline condition. Issuers may use other response code values defined in the VisaNet Technical Specifications; however, their use must remain minimal.

Issuers must use response codes that most accurately reflect the reason for the declines. That is, focus on categories 1 (the issuer will never approve), 2 (the issuer cannot approve at this time) and 3 (data quality) and avoid using 4 (generic response code). Issuers must limit this category as much as possible. The Category 4 fee is charged to ensure that no more than the regionally approved percentage of the issuer's total declines are categorized as Category 4. Issuers that exceed the regionally defined limit will receive the Generic Response Code Fee on a per-transaction basis for each decline in excess of the defined limit.

Table with the rules and decline codes. The rules in the table below are valid for both purchase transactions and Zero Auth transactions:

Elo

The rules presented below took effect in January 2025.

The goal of the change is to ensure that merchants and acquirers reduce unnecessary new approval attempts.

Transactions are assessed monthly, counted from the 1st to the last calendar day of the violation month.

Fee amounts:

Charging rules by group

The network will consider reversible and irreversible codes according to groups split into three categories. Below are the changes that took effect:

Group classification:

Other networks

• Reversible codes: new retries will be allowed for the same customer and card. There is no pre-established limit or period. Important: before making a new attempt, follow the guidance received in the declined transaction response.
• Irreversible codes: no authorizations will be allowed for the same card or merchant after receiving the 1st decline response from the issuer.

Retry by return code

The table below maps the codes returned in returnCode to their meaning, the recommended action, and whether a retry is allowed.