Merchant Advice Code

Merchant advice codes are returned by credit card issuers and payment service providers (PSPs) to communicate the reason for declining a transaction. As well as indicating the reason for declining the transaction, the code includes information on how a merchant should proceed, i.e. whether and when the merchant should resubmit the transaction. Merchants should pay close attention to merchant advice codes, as failing to follow them (e.g. resubmitting the transaction immediately despite the code indicating “try again in 10 days”) can result in fines.

What are merchant advice codes?

Merchant advice codes are codes returned by card issuers and PSPs that indicate why a transaction was declined and include information for the merchant on how to proceed with the transaction. For example, the merchant advice code may indicate that more information is needed, the transaction should never be retried, or the transaction should be tried again in 2 days. If a merchant fails to take into account the information supplied by the code (e.g. wait 2 days before retrying the transaction), the merchant may be fined.

What types of merchant advice codes are there?

Broadly speaking, codes returned by card issuers and PSPs can be divided into 3 categories:

• Retry the transaction, but include additional information in the request, such as any missing SCA (strong customer authentication) data. These declines are often referred to as soft declines.

• Retry the transaction at a later date, e.g. in 4 days. This code may be returned if the cardholder has reached their monthly credit limit for example.

• Do not retry the transaction, as it will never succeed. This may be the case because the card has been reported as lost or stolen.

The following table lists the codes used by Mastercard. Other card schemes or PSPs may use different merchant advice codes. You can read more about Merchant Advice Codes in our blog article "Understanding Merchant Advice Codes"