Transaction declines can occur for a variety of reasons that can range from keying in the wrong expiration date to attempting a transaction with a counterfeit account. Often transaction responses don’t provide a clear description of the decline reason, which can be frustrating to both consumers and merchants looking for a frictionless payment process.

How do PayNearMe Decline Messages Work?

PayNearMe structures its decline messages around the specific decline codes that are returned by the card processing network and/or PayPal/Venmo. That’s why most PayNearMe decline messages have a number at the end of the message. For example, There are insufficient funds on this card to complete this payment (51). The 51 is the code that was returned to PayNearMe by the processor.

Multiple codes may be returned with the same vague decline message (e.g., This card is not permitted to make this payment). Vague messaging helps to prevent scammers from getting around fraud prevention guardrails and internal business rules. Including the network or decline code enables merchants to pinpoint the precise issue with the transaction and then decide whether to retry the payment again (for soft declines) or cancel the transaction with that account (for hard declines).

What’s the Difference Between a Hard Decline and a Soft Decline?

Hard declined transactions cannot and should not be retried. Often hard declines are associated with fraud prevention but can also be caused by a card issuer’s internal business rules or account limits. Soft declines are typically caused by data issues and/or communication errors/malfunction. These transactions can be retried once the issue is corrected but should not be retried more than three times in quick succession.