Suspected Fraud / Pick Up Card

This decline means the card issuer believes the card may be lost, stolen, or used fraudulently, and in some cases is instructing the merchant to physically retain the card if presented in person. It is a strong fraud signal and should be treated with caution.

Decline code by card network

Common causes

• The card has been reported lost or stolen by the cardholder.
• The issuer's fraud model flagged the specific transaction as highly likely to be fraudulent.
• The card details may have been compromised in a prior data breach and are now blocklisted.

What merchants should do

• For in-person transactions, follow your payment processor's guidance on this decline code — some card network rules do call for retaining the card, but this must be handled carefully and never confrontationally.
• For online transactions, do not attempt to retry or split the charge — treat it as a hard decline and do not ship goods or provide services against this transaction.
• Document the transaction details and consider flagging the order for manual fraud review before any further contact with the customer.

How to prevent this

• Use address verification (AVS), CVV checks, and 3-D Secure to catch likely-fraudulent transactions before they reach this decline stage.
• Monitor for velocity patterns (multiple attempts, multiple cards, same device/IP) that often precede a suspected-fraud decline.
• Work with your payment processor's fraud tools and network-provided fraud scores to flag high-risk orders automatically.