Manage subscription retries
This guide is for developers who want to understand and to be compliant with subscription retries.
Efficient and compliant retry logic on subscriptions
One of the most common reasons for a transaction rejection is insufficient funds. However, there are also other reasons a subscription might not be charged.
By analysing the data from each transaction, you can increase your chances for success and remain compliant with retry policies from payment schemes like Visa and MasterCard.
For example:
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If the decline is due to a technical issue, you would like to retry the charge, later or during the next few days.
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If the decline is due to insufficient funds, you can retry a few days later or even identify main pay day in your market and retry accordingly.
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Alternatively, if the decline is due to a card tagged as lost or stolen by the issuer, there is no point retrying the payment.
An optimised retry mechanism is therefore necessary, and for each charge attempt, Checkout provides you with the decline response codes that you need to consider.
Re-attempt can be forbidden
You should never re-attempt transactions whenever you get the below response code. Retrying charge could lead to fines from Visa or MasterCard.
See the following response codes in the table below:
| Category | Response code | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Issuer will never approve | 04 | Pick up card (no fraud) |
| Issuer will never approve | 14 | Invalid account number (no such number) |
| Issuer will never approve | 15 | No such issuer (first 8 digits of account number do not relate to an issuer identifier) |
| Issuer will never approve | 41 | Lost card, pick up |
| Issuer will never approve | 43 | Stolen card, pick up |
| Issuer will never approve | 46 | Closed account |
| Issuer will never approve | 54 | Expired card or expiration date missing |
| Issuer will never approve | 57 | Transaction not permitted to the cardholder |
You will need to update your subscription agreement with a new card before attempting on any new charge attempt.
You can read more about it here on how to update it.
Re-attempt limitations
In addition, for all other response codes you should not attempt more than 15 retries for one failed charge within 30 days. You will have to wait for 30 days before you can retry if the limit of retries have been exceeded.
Checkout may blacklist the card and block all future retry attempts.
Where to get the response code?
You can get the decline reason (response code) via either:
- looking into the Checkout portal (Declined payments – Decline reason – Action code)
