Hard decline

Hard declines come from problems that cannot clear on their own: the card was reported lost or stolen, the account was closed, the number is invalid, or the cardholder revoked authorization for recurring charges.

Retrying them is pointless and can be harmful: networks limit reattempts, and issuers may treat repeated attempts as suspicious. Stripe, for example, does not automatically retry payments that return hard decline codes such as lost_card, stolen_card or revocation_of_authorization.

The only path to recovery is the customer: ask them, quickly and clearly, to add a new card or another payment method. An account updater or network token can sometimes supply new details for a reissued card before the customer has to act.