"Declined" or "Not Authorised"

planteria

in what circumstances are these two rejection messages produced?

can anyone tell me which would appear if a cardholder would be going over their limit by completing a transaction? and which would appear if a card had been cancelled?

thebritishbloke

When a credit limit has been reached.
When fraud is suspected.
When a card has been cancelled.

There's probably a million more reasons. I'd guess it would say Declined if over limit, and the same if the card had been cancelled.

Thrugelmir

Why has the transaction been declined (not authorised)?

There a number of reasons why a transaction may be refused for payment. The most common reasons are:

• Do not honour
• Insufficient funds
• CVV2 value missing/incorrect
• Cannot process - card faulty
• Lost/stolen card
• Expired card
• Invalid card number

Authorisation is the process. Decline is the outcome.

Whiner

This is the correct version of what happens...

Decline - Chip and pin machine connected successfully with bank, and the cardholder does not have enough money to buy the item(s).

Not authorised - Chip and pin machine cannot connect to bank, item is over the merchant (shop) floor limit and thus the sale cannot be authorised at this time.

Retain card - Chip and pin machine connected successfully to bank, and card is stolen, massively overlimit, customer is suspected of money laundering, other miscellaneous reason.

Whiner

planteria wrote: »

can anyone tell me which would appear if a cardholder would be going over their limit by completing a transaction?

Declined

planteria wrote: »

and which would appear if a card had been cancelled?

Declined (or possibly Retain card)

planteria

thank you to all three of you. Thrug and TBB, i hadn't made myself entirely clear: i was trying to find out the difference between the two messages: ie. what can be determined by the actually printed message coming out of the terminal. which Whiner has done.. i am used to seeing 'Decline' every now and again.

so, i have a 'Not Authorised' which i know for certain connected to the bank via the network, and Barclaycard were aware of the precise details. but i don't know why it would be over the merchant limit.

dktreesea

"Declined" doesn't always mean you have insufficient funds. The bank may have a daily limit for usage for your card. I know ours does. So you could have a couple of thousand pounds credit available, but if you are shopping all day and exceed their daily limit, then the transaction can be declined. Sometimes that limit is as low as £300 a day.

There are subtleties to this, for instance how many transactions you do with a particular shop or retailer in a day. Sometimes the shop will then have to ring the bank for authorisation. I usually tell them not to bother, and use a different card.

The other thing that can happen, and it's good to keep an eye on this if you like to operate near your limit, is that the bank may allow you to spend up to your limit plus a certain percentage or fixed amount in any given day. this is to prevent you from being embarrassed at the till and at the same time, if you are not micromanaging your account, can provide a windfall for the bank when tye charge you their overlimit fee.

You can, of course, object to them levying this fee on the basis that your credit card limit shouldn't be allowed to be overdrawn, but I would hesitate before doing that. The fact that they let a cardholder do this is a reflection of the cardholder's good standing with the bank. I wouldn't disrupt this for the sake of a paltry fee.

planteria

good stuff, and interesting final point.
i tend to be clear where my own card spending is, in relation to limits..so never had that problem. but if i were to be in that situation, yes, i can see a logic in swallowing the fee. with Amex, i would like to think i would be able to get the fee back & not have any 'damage' done.

agrinnall

planteria wrote: »

so, i have a 'Not Authorised' which i know for certain connected to the bank via the network, and Barclaycard were aware of the precise details. but i don't know why it would be over the merchant limit.

Well, if you got a 'not authorised' and you know for sure that the terminal did connect to the bank, that suggests an issue with Barclaycard's authorisation process at that time such that it was unable to successfully complete the authorisation. Whiner's reference to 'over the floor limit' only comes into effect when the connection cannot be made, so if you are right then it is not applicable in this situation.

dktreesea

planteria wrote: »

thank you to all three of you. Thrug and TBB, i hadn't made myself entirely clear: i was trying to find out the difference between the two messages: ie. what can be determined by the actually printed message coming out of the terminal. which Whiner has done.. i am used to seeing 'Decline' every now and again.

so, i have a 'Not Authorised' which i know for certain connected to the bank via the network, and Barclaycard were aware of the precise details. but i don't know why it would be over the merchant limit.

I've had that. It's probably, if you had sufficient funds, because the card was being used in a place it isn't usually used. That's not related to the limit.

If the retailer were to contact the bank, they would usually then want to speak to you and go through security to confirm you were the owner of the card. In my experience, this works, but is a tedious and long winded process. I just use another card if this happens. It's irritating, and can happen to people when they just pop abroad to somewhere like Calais or Dublin (i.e.just a short ferry ride away so do-able for a day trip) to do a bit of shopping.

There was a Lloyds customer down in London ahead of us just recently who had this happen to him. He was most annoyed and insisted on the retailer ringing the bank. They must have told him it was because it was a purchase outside the area he normally shops in, because he raised his voice, so the whole shop could hear, saying: "Yes, this is my card, and yes I am down in London for the day! Do you mean to say some of your customers aren't allowed to use their card if they're over 10 miles from HOME!" He was not best amused.