Merchant Advice Codes (MAC) & Response Codes

Overview

In recent years, the card schemes introduced rules for transaction retries intended to create transparency and improve payment performance. Some of these rules could result in noncompliant merchants incurring fees.

The rules and fees are designed to:

• Reduce fraud & operational costs
• Improve authorization approval rates
• Ensure authorization consistency
• Enhance decline code management

To support the scheme rules, Bill1st returns up-to-date acquirer Response Codes and Merchant Advice Codes (MAC). Merchants should use this response data to determine the appropriate retry logic.

VISA Decline Response Categories

Visa's decline code rules are grouped into the following Categories:

Category 1 - Issuer Will Never Approve: Codes in this category indicate that the card is invalid, never existed, or blocked.

• 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 authorization

Retry Strategy
Do not attempt to reauthorize these transactions. Cardholders can be advised to contact their bank for further information.

Category 2 - Issuer Cannot Approve at this Time: Codes in this category can indicate several reasons that the Issuer cannot authorize the purchase at the time. However, they may authorize it at a later time. Examples might include credit risk, Issuer velocity controls of the consumer, or temporary system outages.

• 03 - Invalid merchant
• 19 - Re-enter transaction
• 39 - No credit account
• 51 - Insufficient funds
• 52 - No checking account
• 53 - No savings account
• 59 - Suspected fraud
• 61 - Exceeds withdrawal amount limit
• 62 - Restricted card
• 65 - Exceeds withdrawal frequency limit
• 75 - Allowable PIN-entry tries exceeded
• 78 - Blocked, first used or special condition
• 86 - Cannot verify PIN
• 91 - Issuer or switch is inoperative
• 93 - Transaction cannot be completed - violation of law
• 96 - System malfunction
• 5C - Transaction not supported/blocked by issuer
• 9G - Blocked by cardholder/contact cardholder
• N3 - Cash service not available
• N4 - Cash request exceeds issuer limit

Retry Strategy
Reattempt permitted (up to 20 attempts in 30 days)

Category 3 - Data quality – Revalidate payment information: Codes in this category indicate that the Issuer cannot approve based on the details provided, such as an incorrect Card Verification Value 2 (CVV2) or expiration date.

Authorization Codes

• 54 - Expired card
• 55 - Incorrect PIN
• 82 - Negative online CAM, dCVV, iCVV, or CVV results
• 6P - Verification Failed [Cardholder Identification does not match Issuer records]
• N7 - Decline for CVV2 Failure

Retry Strategy
Reattempt permitted (up to 20 attempts in 30 days)

Category 4 - Generic Response Codes: All other Response Codes, many of which are technical and limited value/meaning to merchants. Issuers will be subject to enforcement actions when not following rules to use codes in Categories 1-3 and limiting codes in Category 4.

• All other Decline Response codes

Retry Strategy
Reattempt permitted (up to 20 attempts in 30 days)

Mastercard New Response Code Mapping

Mastercard’s new authorization decline program starts by consolidating decline codes into three buckets:

79 - Lifecycle Declines

• 14 Invalid Card Number
• 54 Expired Card

82 - Policy Declines

• 03 Invalid Merchant
• 13 Invalid Amount
• 57 Transaction Not Permitted
• 61 Exceeds Withdrawal amount
• 62 Restricted Card
• 65 Exceeds Withdrawal Count

83 - Security Declines

• 41 Lost Card
• 43 Stolen Card
• 55 Invalid Pin
• 63 Security Violation

Merchant Advice Codes

Merchant Advice Codes (MasterCard), also known as Recurring Payment Cancellation (Visa) is used by issuers to clearly communicate to merchants the reason for declining a MasterCard and Visa recurring payment transaction, and the actions merchants can take to continue to serve their recurring payment customers.
MasterCard issuers use the Merchant Advice Code (MAC) in authorization request responses to communicate with merchants about a cardholder’s account. MasterCard will map these three Authorization Response Categories to one of four Merchant Advice Codes (MAC) depending on the underlying decline code.
MasterCard supports the use of Merchant Advice Codes for issuers to communicate clearly with the merchants:

• The reason for approving or declining a recurring payment transaction.
• The actions merchants can take to continue to serve their recurring payment customers.

Mastercard codes are as follows:

• 01 - Updated information needed. Check Account Updater if the decline code is 79 or 82. Retry using EMV 3DS if decline code is 83
• 02 - Try again later
• 03 - Do Not try again
• 04 - Token requirements not fulfilled for this token type.
• 21 - Payment canceled
• 22 - Merchant does not qualify for product code

VISA codes are as follows:

• 02 - Cardholder only wishes to stop one specific payment in the recurring payment relationship.
• 03 - Cardholder has requested to stop all recurring payment transactions for a specific merchant.
• 21 - All recurring payments have been cancelled for the card number requested.

Transaction Processing Excellence

Mastercard Introduced two new fees as part of its Transaction Processing Excellence (TPE) Program to drive positive processing behavior:

• Excessive Authorization Attempts Fee: Excessive account testing of a single account number, from the same card acceptor, within a 24-hour period.
• Nominal Amount Authorization Fee: An approved nominal amount authorization with a subsequent renewal for transactions with the equivalent of 1 USD, 1 EUR, or under one full until of currency. This is for CNP transactions.

Gateway Merchant Advice Codes