You can not attempt to authorize a credit card that has been declined unless you wait at least 24 hours. If you do you will not get to keep the funds!

If you do the cardholder’s bank can pull back the sale and there is nothing you can do about it because it is a MasterCard/Visa/Discover/Amex regulation. Do not confuse this with a chargeback!

Make sure that you tell your POS provider that their POS must be set to disallow a reauthorization attempt on a declined credit card until 24 hours from the decline has passed. If you enter orders in a virtual terminal gateway or receive orders in a shopping cart integrated to your gateway make sure you set the gateway to not allow reauthorization of a declined card until 24 hours has passed.

Below is a quote from an actual case.

I hope this email has been of some help to you.

“FNBO gave the correct reasoning as to why we had to return the funds to the issuer. The issuer of the card filed this compliance case because the merchant didn’t wait at least 24 hours after the initial decline before trying to reprocess the transaction. The merchant was paid for this transaction when it was processed on 6/9, so they are liable for this transaction. I understand you saying it was the cardholder processed the transaction online, however, there should be settings that their gateway provider can change so once a card declines it can’t be reprocessed for at least 24 hours. Yes, this is a rule set forth by The Card Associations and there’s no way around it. As FNBO said, we have no recourse.”

The cardholder probably had some issues with their card and the issuer filed this case in order to recoup funds they may have lost.”