1. Introduction

Following the introduction of the PSD2 guideline, 3-D Secure is mandatory for online transactions. Nevertheless, SCA exclusions/exemptions allow you to skip SCA altogether for some transactions. However, there is always a chance that your customers’ bank insists on 3-D Secure, resulting in a declined transaction.

Our Soft Decline mechanism is a great way to recover these declined transactions. It allows you to resend the transaction once more to our platform after a first rejection due to missing 3-D Secure. Sending the authentication data in the second request will raise the chance that your transaction is accepted after all.

2. Implement Soft Decline

A typical flow of a Soft Decline transactions goes like this:

1. For requests via Hosted Checkout Page, send CardPaymentMethodSpecificInput.ThreeDSecure.SkipAuthentication=true and cardPaymentMethodSpecificInput.threeDSecure.exemption with the appropriate value in a standard request, but no further authentication parameters
   
   For requests via Server-to-server, send CardPaymentMethodSpecificInput.ThreeDSecure.SkipAuthentication=true together with the mandatory parameters for 3DSv2
   This way you indicate that you wish to skip 3-D Secure with the appropriate cardPaymentMethodSpecificInput.threeDSecure.exemptionRequest in a PSD2 compliant way. Two scenarios are possible:
   a) The issuer accepts the transactions without 3-D Secure. We submit the actual financial transaction to the acquirer to process it. We receive the transaction result, ending the flow
   b) The issuer insists on 3-D Secure. The flow continues at 2) 
   
   
2. In our response, the property CreatedPaymentOutput.StatusCode=2 indicates that issuer declined the transaction, insisting on 3-D Secure. The transaction’s error code is errors.errorCode=40001139
3. Our platform automatically resubmits the transaction, this time rolling out 3-D Secure v2
4. Your customer will have to pass the 3-D Secure authentication during this second request. Finally, the transaction will reach either CreatedPaymentOutput.StatusCode=2 or CreatedPaymentOutput.StatusCode=9. This depends on whether your customer passed the authentication and both your acquirer/your customers' issuer accept the transaction

3. Perform tests

Use the following test data to simulate a full Soft Decline cycle. Add them to a standard CreateHostedCheckout/CreatePayment request during the first step.

{ 
  "cardPaymentMethodSpecificInput": { 
    "card": { 
      "cvv": "451", 
      "cardNumber": "4874970686672022", 
      "expiryDate": "1220", 
      "cardholderName": "Wile E. Coyote" 
    }, 
    "isRecurring": false, 
    "paymentProductId": 1, 
    "transactionChannel": "ECOMMERCE", 
    "threeDSecure": { 
		"skipAuthentication": true, 
		"skipSoftDecline": false 
    }, 
  }, 
  "order": { 
    "amountOfMoney": { 
      "currencyCode": "EUR", 
      "amount": 1604 
    }, 
    "customer": { 
      "billingAddress": { 
        "countryCode": "NL" 
      } 
    }, 
    "references": { 
      "merchantOrderId": 123456, 
      "merchantReference": "oGPc8xJURfpFitBa6ORrpkBuPoGpvD" 
    } 
  } 
}