Decline code 43: Stolen Card
By Travis Steffen · Co-Founder, GTMReviewed by Calum EwingUpdated 3 min readQuick answer
Decline code 43 — “Stolen Card” — is a fraud decline from the cardholder’s issuing bank: under the ISO 8583 standard, code 43 instructs the merchant to pick up the card because the issuer has reported it stolen. It’s a hard decline, so retrying the same card never clears it. Stripe surfaces the same issuer decision as the stolen_card decline_code on a card_declined error, and NMI returns it as response code 252, “Stolen card.” Recovering it takes outreach for a new card.
What code 43 means
Never blind-retry a 43 — the issuer has flagged the card as stolen and wants it retained, so re-attempts only stack fraud declines. Recovery is customer outreach for a different payment method, not a timed retry of the same card.
Cross-processor equivalents
The same issuer decision surfaces under a different code on every processor. Here is how code 43 maps across the stacks Revatto recovers on.
Why it happens
- The cardholder reported the card lost or stolen and the issuer froze it, returning a stolen-card flag on every authorization.
- The issuer’s fraud systems detected a compromised card — testing patterns, a breach, or anomalous activity — and locked it as stolen.
- A reissued or replaced card whose old number is still on file with the merchant, now flagged stolen by the issuer.
- The recurring card-on-file was canceled by the cardholder after suspected fraud, so the stored credential no longer authorizes.
How to recover it
- 1Don’t re-run the stored card — a 43 won’t clear on retry, and repeat fraud declines inflate your decline ratio with the issuer.
- 2Reach the customer on a channel they actually answer — email and SMS — and ask them to add a current card, since the one on file has been reported stolen.
- 3Once a new payment method is on file, charge that card; the original number will keep declining no matter how many times it’s attempted.
- 4When the customer doesn’t respond to automation, a real person — not another automated email — works the card update directly. That AI-plus-human handoff is exactly what Revatto does for you: we recover the payment end to end, and you only pay if it works (20% of the first recovered payment, $0 setup, $0 monthly, cancel anytime).See how Revatto recovers 43declines →
See what Revatto would recover for you
Failed payments recovered automatically — no engineering, no manual chasing. We do the work; you keep the revenue.