Visa Raises Card Retry Limit to 20 in 30 Days, Catching Many Merchants Off Guard

Visa updated its Core Rules on 18 April 2026 to allow merchants up to 20 retry attempts on soft-declined cards within 30 days, raising the previous limit of 15. Major payment processor Adyen's documentation still references the old figure, suggesting many merchants may be operating on outdated retry logic. A card decline carries three distinct signals — an ISO 8583 response code, a scheme-level retry category, and a PSP-normalised code — and retry rules are tied to the first two, not the third. Visa classifies declines into four categories, with Category 1 codes barring retries entirely and Categories 2, 3, and 4 each permitting up to 20 attempts in 30 days. Adding complexity, the same response code can carry different meanings across networks — for example, code 65 signals a withdrawal frequency limit on Visa but triggers a strong customer authentication requirement on Mastercard in the UK and EEA.