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Understanding card declines and order errors

Shopify Checkout integration Custom BigCommerce Recharge Checkout on Shopify
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When you have a customer with an error in the status, you can see more details for this error by checking the Charge errors tab in your Orders section. This guide provides an overview of how to manage card declines and order errors in Recharge. 

 

Understand card declines

  • Cards can be declined for a variety of reasons that depend on the customer's bank or credit card. If a customer gets a card decline error, they will get an automatic email asking them to update the card.
  • When a customer updates their card, the card decline error updates to error type: CARD_UPDATED_NOW_PENDING_NEXT_ATTEMPT. This error type sets the retry date to the next day and sets the number of retry attempts to one.
  • Card declines are flagged by the cardholder's institution. These banks never share detailed information regarding these declines with Recharge. A typical cause is that the bank did not recognize the company and flagged the charge as a precaution, in hopes that the cardholder will contact them in the event that this was not in error.
  • To find more detailed information about why a payment was declined, ask your customer to get in touch with their bank to confirm the reason for the decline. If a customer periodically gets card decline errors even after updating their card, the customer should contact their bank to determine the cause. There may be something specific to their account that is blocking transactions from happening.

Set up automatic retry settings

By default, Recharge retries the most common charge errors after the customer updates their payment method. For a full list of charge errors that get automatically retried, see Managing max retry order errors.

When a customer updates their card, the card decline error updates to the error type: CARD_UPDATED_NOW_PENDING_NEXT_ATTEMPT. This error type sets the retry date to the next day and sets the number of retry attempts to one. 

You can adjust your retry logic to retry card declines at your preferred interval.

Note: For merchants using the Recharge Checkout on Shopify or the Shopify Checkout Integration, when a customer with a current card decline error updates their credit card in Shopify, Recharge will automatically retry the charge on the following day. This retry happens independently of your store's retry schedule.

Adjust your automatic retry settings

  1. Open the Settings page in your merchant portal and select Payment. 
  2. Under Failed charges, select Recharge will retry failed charges.
  3. From the Retry charge interval dropdown, select the interval between each retry attempt. 
  4. Under Maximum number of retries, select the number of retry attempts that should occur before the system stops retrying the charge. 
  5. Click Save.
Note: Refer to Managing max retry order errors to learn more about the retry process and adjusting your settings in Recharge.

View and explore charge errors

When a customer has a charge error, click Orders and select Charge errors to view details. Hover over the tooltip in the Error column to see more details.

Recharge orders page showing the charge errors for subscription orders

Search charge errors

You can seamlessly find the charge error you're looking for based on the data you already have. 

  1. Click Orders in your merchant portal and select the Charge errors tab.
  2. Click the dropdown menu next to the search field and select the option to search for a specific charge error. Choose between the customer email, the Recharge charge ID, or customer ID, as defined below. 
  3. Enter your information in the search field and press Enter.  

Recharge orders page showing the charge errors

Search options

Search option

Definition
Customer email The customer’s email address associated with the order.
Recharge charge ID A unique string of numbers given to each charge in Recharge. Find charge IDs in Recharge via the Orders - Processed export, or by unfurling the order in the Charges section.
Recharge customer ID

A unique string of numbers that identifies a specific customer and is tied to their email address. Find customer IDs in Recharge via the Customers export.

You can also manually find the customer ID of an individual customer. Click Customers in your merchant portal, and search and select the customer to open their account page. Click View more information under the customer's name. 

Filter charge errors

  1. Click Orders in your merchant portal and select the Charge errors tab.
  2. Click Filters and choose your filter options. Choose the charge error type, or the first try date, as defined below. 
  3. Click Apply filters. 

Recharge orders page showing the charge errors for subscription orders

Filter options

Filter option

Definition
Charge error type Choose the type of charge errors you want to see. Use the radio button to select Closed max retries reached or Other error. 
First try date 

Filter your charge errors based on the date the order was first tried. 

  • Last 7 days
  • Last 30 days
  • Last 90 days
  • Last 12 months
  • Choose a custom date range 

Handle max retry orders

If an order is still declined after the last retry attempt, it is marked as Closed/Max Retries Limit Reached. You can specify how Recharge will handle orders after the last retry attempt. For more information, visit Understanding max retry errors.

Understand the dunning process and card declined notification

Recharge's dunning process will only count payment related charge errors as charge attempts. Customers receive the card declined email the first time the card declines and the order cannot be processed. However, the card declined notification is not sent after every retry attempt. Instead, it is sent after any attempt following a seven-day period after the last notification was sent. 

For example, if you set your retry logic to retry a failed charge every five days, an initial card declined email will go out on the first day. The next retry attempt will occur on the sixth day, but since a card decline notification went out within the last seven days, no email will be sent to the customer. However, on the next retry attempt on the 11th day, a card decline notification will be sent to the customer. 

Note: At this time, you cannot adjust the notification logic in Recharge. For more advanced notification logic, consider the Churn Buster integration.

Customize the Card declined notification

When a customer gets a card error, Recharge sends an email with a link to update their card. You can make adjustments to the content of this notification:

  1. Open the Settings page in your merchant portal and select Notifications. 
  2. Under Customer Notifications, click on Card declined.
  3. Make adjustments to the notification in the textboxes. You can also use variables in your notifications.
  4. Click Save.

Common error messages

If a customer gets a card decline error, they will get an automatic email asking them to update the card. As the store owner, you get additional details for the error message.

Error

Solution
Your card was declined. Contact and inform the customer.
Cannot charge a customer that has no active card. Contact and inform the customer.
Customer needs to update their credit card. Contact and inform the customer.
Your card has insufficient funds. Contact and inform the customer.
Shopify rejected

This error indicates that the charge was successful but Shopify rejected and voided the order for some reason. When this occurs, Recharge actions the charge to be refunded until the order can be re-attempted and marked successful in Shopify. The retry attempt occurs during the regular dunning process set on your store. If you'd like to manually retry the order, visit Retry a failed charge.
INSUFFICIENT_INVENTORY Update inventory in Shopify or BigCommerce.
Variant or option not found on your eCommerce platform for... Previous variant was deleted and needs to be updated. See Fixing removed variants.
CARD_UPDATED_NOW_PENDING_NEXT_ATTEMPT

This error indicates the customer has updated their payment method to resolve a charge error. The next charge attempt automatically takes place one business day after the card is updated. 


The charge can also be manually processed immediately if necessary.

Fix removed variants

If you delete a product or variant in your store that customers are still subscribed to, it will cause the error Variant removed from Shopify or Variant removed from BigCommerce. This can also happen if you change your variant options, as existing customers that point to the old variant ID will not have orders generated.

To deal with these errors individually, you can swap to the current version of the product. If you have more than 50 to update, the Recharge support team can help with a bulk update. In order to perform this bulk update, you must do the following: 

Update the Subscriptions - All CSV

  1. Open the Exports page in your merchant portal.
  2. Click Create export and choose the Subscriptions - All export.
  3. Enter your email to receive the export and click Create export. 
  4. Create three new columns in the downloaded CSV and label them as follows:
      • NEW Product Title
      • NEW Variant Title
      • NEW Variant ID
  5. Fill in the appropriate data in these new columns for your existing subscriptions.
  6. Send the completed CSV file to the Recharge support team. Notify the support team of the correct number of rows that should be changed. The CSV file must be sent at least five days in advance.
Note: When changing the ID and title, this will not update other product attributes. If you do need to adjust other attributes, such as price, notify the Recharge support team and they can advise on the other columns or exports you will need to include.

Reach out to your payment processor

For more information on failed charges, declined charges, and fraud filters, reach out to your specific payment processor:

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