Same payment request got GENERIC_DECLINE several times and succeeded after retries

Questions
1

Dear Team,

For an order in production environment, we created the same Square payment request for it with the same card from customer (of course the requests are with different idempotency keys; besides, we created a new Square order for each payment request),
it failed around 10 times (the customer just kept retrying), Square payment API POST /v2/payments returned GENERIC_DECLINE, and succeeded finally, could you please help to check whether it failed at the beginning?

below is the info related to these payments, if any more info required, please let me know.
Thanks.

application id: sq0idp-X5g7B-QAtnOvyEFik1fuSg
location id: LZ27X98TBHAZ0

below idempotency_key is for the last 2 failed payment
- 4bedd9c5-1732-4729-a8c2-2158dafe952a
- a6110b90-fdb3-423f-8349-23114fd8a53e

below idempotency_key is for the finally succeeded payment
- 54b75cd8-4fea-474b-ac66-41f0bc465750

Thanks and Best Regards,
Alfred Luan

2

:wave: I’m Square Dev AI, here to help answer your question!
Based on the information you’ve provided, the following documentation will help answer your question:

Additional Documentation

Payment API: Process Online and In-Person Payments
Troubleshoot In-App Payments SDK Problems
Refund Payments

If this documentation helped you find a solution, please check the box indicating that this reply solves the problem.
Otherwise one of our Developer Advocates will provide additional assistance shortly.

3

The error code GENERIC_DECLINE is returned when the card issuer declines the payment for an unknown reason. This error is usually out of Square’s control and is decided by the customer’s bank. The fact that the payment eventually succeeded suggests that the issue was temporary and was resolved by the bank.

It’s also important to note that each payment request should have a unique idempotency key. If you use the same idempotency key for different payment requests, you might get an error indicating that you used the idempotency key previously.

If the issue persists, it might be a good idea for the customer to contact their bank to understand why the transactions were initially declined.

This answer was reviewed by @Bryan-Square.

4

Hi Bryan,

Thanks for reply, but could you please share a few more experience on this?
such as, has this kind of failure → success ever happened before in any other applications? and would bank resolve this kind of issue actively, or it has to be the customer to contact the bank to resolve it?

For this case, is it possible to see any more details besides unknown reason in the response from bank to Square?

Thanks and Best Regards,
Alfred Luan

5

With ALL GENERIC_DECLINE errors the customer should first contact there bank to try and resolve the issue. :slightly_smiling_face: