Hard & Soft Card Declines: What They Are & How to Reduce Them
Blog post from Basis Theory
Payment transactions can be declined by gateways, processors, or issuing banks for fraud-prevention, account, or authorization reasons, with decline codes helping merchants distinguish between hard and soft outcomes. Hard declines, such as reports of stolen cards, closed or nonexistent accounts, or serious account violations, indicate that a transaction cannot proceed and should not be retried, while soft declines, including insufficient funds, partial approvals, address mismatches, or invalid CVVs, may be resolved through corrected information, additional funds, or a later retry. Merchants can reduce soft declines by using automated card-updater services, maintaining current customer payment details, and employing decisioning or routing systems that determine when to retry charges or request updated information. Reducing hard declines depends largely on preventative controls, including compliance monitoring and transaction limits that identify risky accounts and constrain suspicious activity before transactions reach card networks.
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