Preventing Credit Card Declines: Essential Tips to Follow 

Being a businessman or a merchant, a declining credit card can become a major issue and affect your business. Credit Card declines not only result in financial problems but also create bad relationships among the customers and the business, which also affects your reputation. Most of the time, customers who are unaware also resort to blaming the merchant instead of the card issuer for the financial loss and the card decline.

What is a Credit Card Decline?

A card decline takes place when the payment made by the credit card is not processed, which is a frequent concern for e-commerce merchants. In case your credit card declines, you will receive instant information, presenting an error or a decline code and an SMS from the bank providing the details about the same decline issue. However, as a credit card user, you must maintain your credit score by using the CIBIL score check free feature on a CIBIL score app. 

Preventing Credit Card Declines

You can implement multiple strategies in order to reduce the occurrence of credit card declines by following some effective tactics. Let us discuss the multiple ways of preventing and recovering credit card declines.

Increase Your Payment Options

You can save your declined transaction by using an alternative payment option. By functioning multiple payment methods, your transaction can be completed in no time and without any errors. Your business can recover huge funds that have been lost due to some or other reasons by offering multiple payment methods such as digital wallets, local payment methods, and e-check. 

Account Updaters and Dunning

Dunning is a process to send email alerts to individuals whenever their payment fails, as it encourages them to stay updated with the payment information, allowing a smooth transaction. Moreover, it also helps in maintaining your relationship and reputation with the other person. It assists in creating customer service that is memorable and keeps your customers on board for a lifetime.

You can also integrate some payment collection tools that work automatically to update your customers’ names, accounts, credit card numbers, and expiration dates.

Collaborate with a Fraud Management Platform

When you collaborate with a risk management platform to avoid credit card payment fraud, the fraud detecting feature picks up the fraudulent transactions. Moreover, these systems can easily identify fraud through indicators, warn you beforehand and avoid any suspicious transaction.

Routing System

A smart routing system can automatically retire other acquirers till a transaction gets approved. In case the first acquirer declares a decline, the payment is sent to the second one. When the same thing happens with the second one, the payment keeps on passing by. Hence, the transaction is repeated till it gets approved or the purchase is cancelled by the customer. To take advantage of these capabilities, you must work with a smart routing system.

Connect with Customers 

Effective communication with customers is important for decreasing decline rates. In the situation of a card decline, ensure a swift and straightforward process for updating payment credentials, offering incentives to encourage customers to update their information promptly. An even more proactive approach involves identifying approaching credit card expiration dates and reaching out to customers in advance, urging them to update details before a decline happens. Clearly communicate that their next payment is at risk of lapsing without prompt action.

Set a Recurring Billing Indicator

Integrating credit card payments is an excellent method to maintain a consistent income flow for your business. Yet, with a notable 15% of recurring card payments facing declines, it’s crucial for your business to prioritise seamless processing. If you handle recurring payments, consult your gateway provider to explore the availability of an indicator feature designed for recognising recurring payments. This feature proves beneficial in preventing false declines and expediting resolutions with processors and issuing banks.

Conclusion

Utilising a robust payment gateway is important for transaction processing, ensuring access to clear information about each transaction. Distinguishing between soft and hard declines is crucial as it allows you to identify patterns and address them for long-term improvement.

In addition, any Payment Gateway certified in PCI-DSS will provide you with storing payment data in a safe and secure way. It also allows easy identification of the buying patterns of the customers and lets you build your own payment logic so that you can always keep control and monitor your transaction status.