Payments
Excessive retry fees
Updated
Excessive retry fees are charges Visa and Mastercard apply when a merchant keeps retrying declined card payments beyond the networks' reattempt limits.
Retrying a declined card costs the networks and issuers work, so both cap it. Visa's October 2026 rules say a merchant must never resubmit after a category 1 decline (lost, stolen, closed, invalid) and may reattempt up to 20 times in 30 days after category 2, 3 or 4 declines. PayPal's guidance says Visa charges a per-transaction fee for excessive retries.
For Mastercard, PayPal's guidance gives 10 retries in 24 hours and 35 in 30 days on soft declines before fees, plus a fee when a retried request is declined again with merchant advice code 03 or 21, codes that tell the merchant to stop retrying.
PlatformDTC counts declines per card, not per subscription, before every renewal attempt and stops before the network ceiling: 20 in 30 days for Visa, 35 in 30 days and 10 in 24 hours for Mastercard, and the stricter of the two for other brands. Hard declines are never retried at all.
Frequently asked questions
- How many times can I retry a declined Visa card?
- Never after a category 1 decline such as lost, stolen or closed account. Up to 20 times in 30 days after other declines, under Visa's October 2026 rules.
- What are Mastercard merchant advice codes 03 and 21?
- Codes a Mastercard issuer sends with a decline to tell the merchant not to retry. PayPal's guidance says a request declined with either code within 30 days of the same decline draws a Mastercard fee.