What’s changing?

Visa is applying new rules for reattempting declined transactions, based on the reason for the decline. From July 2021, these rules will be applied through new system integrity fees.

Download an overview of the decline reason category codes.

What does the change mean?

The new rules are:

• Reattempts of transactions declined with a Category 1 code are prohibited
• Declines within categories 2 – 4, a maximum of 15 reattempts over a period of 30 days are allowed.

Prohibited or excessive transaction resubmission will incur a fee as per the schedule shown in this table.

How will this change affect you?

To avoid charges, stop any further authorization attempts on a transaction that receives a decline response that is classified as a Category 1 decline.

Ensure that transactions that receive a decline response code that falls under Categories 2, 3 or 4 aren’t resubmitted for authorization more than 15 times over a period of 30 days.

Effective date

July 1 2021, October 2021 and April 2022