Declines

Discover reasons why payments may not go through and how you can lower the rate of declines.

Payments may fail for different reasons when using Ansa, either when adding funds to your account or when making a purchase using your balance.

Apart from incorrect API calls, here are a couple of reasons why a payment might fail:

• There are problems with the API parameters or payment data.
• Ansa blocked payments due to risk assessment.
• The payment may have been declined by the card issuer or payment processor.

Incorrect API parameters and payment data

Ansa APIs offer a comprehensive guide to error codes and decline categories. Merchants can use this guide to manage payment declines and show useful messages to their customers.

Ansa blocked payments

Ansa's risk monitoring system analyzes all transactions, including adding funds and balance spends. If a transaction is deemed high risk, Ansa will proactively block it. High risk transactions can include unusual spending patterns, unusual patterns of adding funds, or activity in unusual locations.

If you believe that a payment blocked by Ansa is valid, you may request that we remove the block on the payment. Please note that this action will not attempt to process the payment again, but it will allow the customer to make future payments without encountering any further blocks.

Payments declined by card issuers and/or payment processors

Issuer Declines

When a charge is submitted to your customer’s card issuer, their automated systems and models analyze various signals to determine whether or not to authorize it. These signals include your customer’s spending habits, account balance, and card information such as the expiration date, address information, and CVC. Requiring customers to provide their CVC and postal code when checking out can significantly reduce the number of declines you experience.

Risk Declines

Your payment processor evaluates transactions and decides whether to approve or decline a charge based on the level of risk. Depending on your payment processor, you can set these risk thresholds to determine when to accept or reject a transaction.

In both cases, Ansa will try to provide as much information as possible to explain the decline. When investigating generic or Do Not Honor declines, looking at the associated data can help to understand why the card may have been declined. For instance, if there were issues with the CVC or AVS checks when adding the card, fixing those issues and then trying the charge again may lead to a successful authorization.