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Overview
During the request for an authorisation, when the card issuer does not agree with the SCA exemption, they may return a Soft Decline.
A Soft Decline response can be returned for any Opayo Direct payment request and irrelevant of an SCA exemption being requested. Most cases where a Soft Decline is returned are for SCA Exemptions.
How a Soft Decline Works
A soft decline is not an outright refusal of an authorisation request. It advises that the card issuer wants the cardholder to perform 3D-Secure authentication. To prove that they are the cardholder, the cardholder must perform SCA (a challenge authentication).
In most cases, we will automatically manage the Soft Decline for you and perform a challenge authentication request during an authorisation flow:
- We return the 3D-Secure authentication data in response to your Direct Payment request.
- You re-direct the cardholder to their card issuers challenge page.
Following a Soft Decline message, if we are unable to perform 3D-Secure authentication for you, then it will return a Soft Decline response to your system. The value of the DeclineCode will either be 65 (Mastercard) or 1A (Visa, Diners, Discover).
Manage a Soft Decline
If you receive a Soft Decline response, then you should:
- Re-submit your Direct payment request with a new VendorTxCode value
- Request for a challenge authentication to be performed by providing the Apply3DSecure=1 field and value.
We advise you remove the ThreeDSExemptionIndicator field and value.
Example soft decline response
Status=NOTAUTHED
ExpiryDate=1221
DeclineCode=65
CV2Result=NOTPROVIDED
PostCodeResult=NOTPROVIDED
AddressResult=NOTPROVIDED
AVSCV2=DATA NOT CHECKED
VPSTxId={796EEDDA-9599-E125-67C2-59A23210FCBE}
VPSProtocol=4.00
3DSecureStatus=NOTCHECKED
SecurityKey=GCVFTDAD2M
StatusDetail=2022 : The Authorisation was Declined by the bank. SCA required. Example request after receiving a soft decline response
Amount=32.00 ApplyAVSCV2=1 BillingAddress1=23 BillingAddress2=BillAddress+Line+2 BillingCity=London BillingCountry=GB BillingFirstnames=John BillingPhone=+447700900077 BillingPostcode=10 BillingSurname=Doe BrowserAcceptHeader=text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml BrowserColorDepth=24 BrowserJavaEnabled=1 BrowserJavascriptEnabled=1 BrowserLanguage=en-GB BrowserScreenHeight=1080 BrowserScreenWidth=1920 BrowserTZ=%2B300 BrowserUserAgent=Mozilla CV2=101 CardHolder=John+Doe CardNumber=412xxxxxxx2xx71 CardType=Visa ChallengeWindowSize=01 ClientIPAddress=10.10.10.10 Currency=GBP CustomerEMail=john.doe@opayo.com DeliveryAddress1=88 DeliveryAddress2=DelAddress+Line+2 DeliveryCity=London DeliveryCountry=GB DeliveryFirstnames=John DeliveryPhone=+447700900077 DeliveryPostcode=EC1X1XX DeliverySurname=Doe Description=vendor-transaction-description ExpiryDate=1220 ThreeDSNotificationURL=http%3A//vendor.com/threeDSnotify TransType=01 TxType=PAYMENT VPSProtocol=4.00 Vendor=vendor-Name VendorTXCode=vendor-transaction-671295 Apply3DSecure=1