Why Excessive Retry Controls?

To help avoid negative impacts to cardholders and processing systems, the networks have instituted integrity programs with penalties such as excessive retries to dissuade merchants from initiating these transactions.

TabaPay has developed a robust set of rules following network requirements for clients interested in avoiding excessive retry fees, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Excessive Retry Control Rules

Network	Rule
Visa	Block a transaction if the associated card (Payment Account Reference (PAR)) has received a Category 1 decline response code at the merchant level.
Visa	Block a transaction if the associated card (PAR) has received more than 20 consecutive declines for the same transaction amount within a rolling 30-day timeframe, after receiving an initial VISA category 2-4 decline response code.
Mastercard	Block a transaction if the associated card (PAR) has received more than 10 declines within a calendar day at the merchant level.
Mastercard	Block a transaction if the associated card (PAR) has received more than 35 declines with the same transaction amount within a tumbling 30-calendar-day timeframe at the merchant level.

What are VISA Category Codes?

Category 1

Category 1 decline response codes indicate the Issuer will never re-approve an attempt and any reattempt to authorize will be assessed a fee. These response codes indicate the account never existed or is permanently blocked. This category also includes decline codes that indicate the transaction is not permitted due to permanent product/regulatory restrictions or transaction errors:

04 (Pickup card)
07 (Pickup card, special conditions)
12 (Invalid transaction)
14 (Invalid account number)
15 (No such issuer)
41 (Pickup card, lost card)
43 (Pickup card, stolen card)
46 (Closed account)
57 (Transaction not permitted to cardholder)
R0 (Stop payment order)
R1 (Revocation of authorization order)
R3 (Revocation of all authorizations)

Categories 2-4

Category 2 - Excessive decline re-attempts, such as 51 insufficient funds
Category 3 - Data quality, such as expired cards and CVV failures
Category 4 - Generic response codes not included in Categories 1-3

For a full list of Visa decline codes, refer to Visa Category Codes

Mastercard

Mastercard uses a transaction processing excellence program to help ensure transaction integrity.

Rule Configuration

Rules can be enabled for merchants participating in TabaPay’s Real Time Monitoring and Blocking service

The default configuration is to enable all 4 rules listed above

Clients can enable or disable individual rules (just Visa, Visa Cat 1, Mastercard, and so on)

The VISA Category 1 rule can be configured to the response code level. The default is all Category 1 codes, but clients can choose a subset of category 1 codes.

The default configuration is to block transactions meeting rule criteria. Clients can also use shadow mode which alerts instead of blocks transactions.

Get Started!

Please contact your account manager or email [email protected] to get started today.

If you aren’t ready to start, here are some best practices to limit excessive retries in the interim:

Avoid repeated authorizations after you encounter a failure
Use Account Updater to prevent declines and remove cards/tokens that can’t be updated
Guide customers as they interact with your application to prevent accidental or repeat authorizations
Obtain consumer consent and send notification before any authorization request
Excessive retry controls are designed to follow network requirements, but it is still possible to incur an excessive retry fee using this service. TabaPay cannot guarantee zero excessive retry fees.