Decline code 62: Restricted Card
By Jay Stevens · Principal EngineerReviewed by Jordan MederichUpdated 3 min readQuick answer
Decline code 62 — “Restricted Card” — is an issuer decline meaning the card is barred from this transaction: the cardholder's bank has placed a restriction on the account. Under the ISO 8583 standard it's a hard decline, so an immediate retry rarely clears it. Stripe reports the same issuer decision as a card_declined error, and NMI returns it as response code 240 (“Restricted card”). Recovering it takes customer outreach and a timed retry, not re-attempts.
What code 62 means
A 62 won't clear on a blind retry — the issuer has placed a restriction on the card itself. Recover it with customer outreach plus a retry timed only after the cardholder updates the card or clears the restriction with their bank, not back-to-back re-attempts.
Cross-processor equivalents
The same issuer decision surfaces under a different code on every processor. Here is how code 62 maps across the stacks Revatto recovers on.
Why it happens
- The issuer has placed a restriction on the card — geographic blocks, merchant-category limits, or a hold the bank has not itemized.
- Card rules that block recurring or card-not-present charges, international use, or specific merchant types.
- An account the bank has flagged, frozen, or partially suspended pending cardholder verification.
- A card restricted to certain transaction types (e.g. a corporate or prepaid card not authorized for subscriptions).
- A temporary issuer-side restriction the bank will release once the cardholder confirms the charge or contacts support.
How to recover it
- 1Don't re-run the same charge right away — repeated 62s trip issuer velocity rules and inflate your decline ratio.
- 2Reach the customer on a channel they actually answer — email and SMS — explain the bank restricted the card, and ask them to call their issuer or supply a different card.
- 3Time any retry to land only after the cardholder has lifted the restriction or updated the card on file — a same-card re-attempt before that almost always fails again.
- 4When it persists, a real person — not another automated email — works the card update directly. That AI-plus-human handoff is exactly what Revatto does for you: AI-timed retries where the processor API supports them, plus email, SMS, and human outreach, fully done-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 62declines →
See what Revatto would recover for you
Failed payments recovered automatically — no engineering, no manual chasing. We do the work; you keep the revenue.