Stripe Card Velocity Exceeded Decline Code: Meaning, Stats, and How To Fix?
Card Exceeded Decline refers to when transactions are refused because customers exceeds the balance or the transaction limit (# or $). You can let the customer know and make it easy for them to enter a new card. It's a hard decline which means merchants cannot retry the payment.
What Does Card Velocity Exceeded Decline Code Mean?
A card velocity exceeded decline in Stripe refers to a situation where a payment attempt is declined because the customer has exceeded the balance, credit limit, or transaction amount limit available on their card.
This can happen with credit cards, virtual company cards, or due to transaction limits.
The decline code originates from the card issuing bank and is further grouped by card networks. Stripe, Paddle, Braintree further group these codes and return a code to you.
Common Reasons for Card Velocity Exceeded Decline Error
Common reasons for a "Card Velocity Exceeded" decline error typically relate to restrictions imposed by the card issuer.
Exceeding Transaction Count Limits: Card issuers often set a maximum number of transactions allowed within a specific time frame, such as per day or per week.
Surpassing Spending Amount Limits: Many cards impose monetary caps on the total amount you can spend within a certain period, such as daily or monthly limits.
Timing Issues: Sometimes, even if a budget transfer has been made to increase spending limits on a company card, there might be a delay in processing these changes.
Too Many Transactions in a Short Time Period: Making multiple purchases in quick succession can trigger velocity limits.
Unusual Spending Patterns: Significant changes in spending habits, such as a sudden increase in transaction frequency or amounts, can trigger card velocity exceeded decline code.
High-Risk Merchant Categories: Transactions with certain types of merchants, such as gambling or cryptocurrency exchanges, may have stricter velocity limits due to higher fraud risks.
Recent Card Activation: Newly issued cards often have lower transaction and spending limits that increase over time with regular usage. For example, a new card might have an initial daily limit of $1,000, which can be raised after demonstrating responsible use.
Card Velocity Exceeded Decline Is Rarer
There are efforts made by Visa, Mastercard, and other card networks to encourage more specific decline codes which would help merchants and customers resolve errors faster. There's been a steady industry over the years. Most banks return useful codes but depending on which geographical region you serve, it may vary.
As you can see, card velocity exceeded decline is not in the top 5 decline codes we see often.
Churnkey is a powerful churn software. We help companies save 20-40% of the revenue that they would have otherwise lost to churn. When you lose revenue due to a failed payment, we have four products that tackle it:
- Churn Metrics (Free): Get a free, visual analysis of your churn, especially the breakdown between involuntary and voluntary churn. This will help guide your churn reduction strategy.
- Dunning Campaigns: Dunning campaigns allow for a personalized, one-click payment recovery. For example, say you want people to update their cards? If Precision Retries can't recover the payment, Dunning will pick up where it left off.
- Reactivations: Reactivations target lost customers with relevant offers.
- Precision Retries: Precision Retries intelligently retry cards well within the limits and can be layered on top of Stripe's smart retries for maximum revenue boost. Precision Retries integrate natively with Stripe. Implementing it requires no code. Card Velocity Exceeded is treated as a hard decline and we don't retry this particular decline code.
Churnkey is also SOC-2 compliant and has robust security protocols to keep your data secured. We protect over $2B in revenue across our portfolio of companies.
To get started, sign up for Churnkey or book a demo.
Types of Card Velocity Exceeded Declines
Declines can be categorized into two main types:
- Soft Declines: Soft declines are temporary restrictions. They can sometimes be resolved by retrying the transaction.
- Hard Declines: If the customer's card velocity was exceeded for an entire month, they have no other option to enter a different card to continue using your service. No amount of retrying in that month will resolve the issue. You need to intervene via dunning campaigns, failed payment walls, and one-click recovery.
Learn more about types of declines:
Khushi Lunkad
How to Fix Card Velocity Exceeded Declines?
Even with all the ambiguity around the Card Velocity Exceeded Decline code, there are multiple ways to manage it if you're a subscription business. Churnkey recovers up to 89% of the failed payments with its failed payment suite of products.
1. Request Card Change
Context: Address virtual cards by asking customers to enter a different card. This requires customer action but is most likely to succeed simply because a new card is added in.
Caution: Ensure the process is seamless with no logins or multi-step verifications.
Solution: Churnkey provides a frictionless dunning (email + SMS) platform that allows customers to update their cards easily, with options for advanced personalization (plan name, subscription age, trialing, etc.).
To get started, sign up for Churnkey or book a demo.
2. Leverage Offers and Partial Payments
Context: Sometimes customers will quietly let their cards decline on purpose. Offer discounts and partial payments that auto-apply to their account.
Caution: Manage potential system abuse when offering discounts.
Solution: Implement Churnkey's Dunning Offers to entice customers to update their cards with incentives like partial payments or automatic discount codes. Churnkey has anti-abuse built in.
3. Feature Blocking
Context: Blocked product access can prompt action. Users can escalate this issue to their billing manager.
Caution: Prevent unpaid usage when doing so. Depending on your settings, users may be prevented from accessing certain features.
Solution: With Churnkey, you can dynamically block feature access for past-due accounts. And customers can update their payment details directly inline without navigating elsewhere. You can also decide whether to let users use the product or not.
To get started, sign up for Churnkey or book a demo.
4. Monitor Metrics
Context: Since decline codes are confusing, what you can rely on are metrics. Try different offers and keep a close eye on the metrics to see what changes. Is voluntary churn higher than involuntary churn? Is there a certain decline code surfacing higher than others? Is there a certain card type that declines more than others? Use metrics to gauge the effectiveness of your retention strategies.
Solution: You don’t have time to parse overloaded charts and confusing terminology. Churnkey’s best-in-class analytics speak plainly—helping you and your team track boosted revenue, offer uptake, recovery rates, and more. You can reach out to our support team for benchmarks.
Case Studies
1. Veed.io
Veed.io successfully leveraged tailored discounts and pause options, saving nearly 5,000 canceling customers. Utilizing Churnkey's Precision Retries and Dunning Offers, they recovered over 14,000 failed payments, achieving a 35% increase in their save rate. Read Veed.io's case study.
2. Sudowrite
Sudowrite boosted revenue by over six figures within a year across various churn channels by integrating Churnkey voluntary and involuntary suite into their operations. Read Sudowrite's case study.
Common Errors and Misconceptions with Card Velocity Exceeded Decline
Common errors or misconceptions when dealing with the card_velocity_exceeded code include:
- Retrying the transaction repeatedly: This can trigger alerts and further declines. It’s better to stay under the limits, contact the card issuer, or use a different payment method.
- Blaming the merchant: Customers often think the issue is with the merchant, but it's typically due to the card issuer's policies.
- Ignoring the need to contact the bank: Some users don’t realize that contacting their bank can resolve the issue, especially if it's due to security concerns or a need for additional verification. Although, this is a very manual process for both the customers and the merchants. You're better off automating it with Churnkey if AOVs aren't very high.
FAQs
What does card_velocity_exceeded mean on credit card?
Card Velocity Exceeded Decline is a decline code used by banks to indicate a customer has exceeded the balance, credit limit, or transaction amount limit available on their card. The customer needs to call the bank and learn why their payment is rejected. You could also use optimized dunning campaigns, layer on feature blocking, and a host of other involuntary churn reduction features.
What does card velocity decline error exceeded mean?
Typically, card velocity decline error refers to a declined transaction when the bank or the card issuing network (Visa, Mastercard) rejects a payment because the customer made too many transactions (either $ or #). Stripe recommends asking users to contact the bank but there are lots of ways to reduce this decline error.
