Effective June 3, 2025, Mastercard will introduce two new decline codes:
Cardholder has permanently closed their credential or underlying account. This means the issuer will not approve any further authorizations.
Authorization request received but cannot be approved - account has not been activated. This means the issuer may approve further authorizations. For example, if the cardholder has recently created their account but not activated it.
In the coming months we’ll add these decline codes to our API responses and let you know before they go live.
You can also integrate these codes with your retry automation. Mastercard will map them to their recommendation codes, helping you understand when you can or cannot retry a declined transaction.
We look forward to sharing documentation on the new response codes in the coming months. If you have any questions in the meantime, please speak to your Account Manager or raise a webform request and we’ll be happy to help.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom is the Merchant Communications leader for Checkout.com, responsible for keeping merchants aware of product changes, scheme updates, and regulations. With 12 years of payments industry experience, Tom also writes blogs on general industry topics across all the solutions we offer.