Send a new payment once the fault clears
Nothing was decided and no funds were held. The payment simply didn't happen.
Your answers so far
- What came back from the payment?
- A failure. The platform couldn't complete the request. Change
Choose one
What to build
Don't route a failure through your decline handling. Once the fault has cleared, create the payment again under a new idempotency key. Don't rely on the Retry operation here: it's seldom offered on a failure, so read the transaction's allowedActions list rather than assuming.
What this means for PCI
This is guidance rather than a compliance determination. Which questionnaire you are eligible for depends on your full environment, so confirm it with your QSA or your acquirer before you rely on it.
Worth knowing
- A new attempt needs a new idempotency key. A create that got an answer is replayed under its key for 48 hours, so resending with the old one hands you the same refused transaction.
- A failure arrives as Transaction.Failed, not Transaction.Declined. Subscribe to both if your systems react to refused payments.
- Where the merchant has more than one processor, the platform may already have failed over before you saw the result.