Payment Dishonours and Fatal Dishonours

Sometimes, when a payment is attempted, it results in a dishonor. There are several types of dishonors, which can sometimes result in pre-approvals being removed from the system.

Types of Common Dishonors: 

  • Insufficient Funds (Your client does not have funds in their account or has reached their card limit) 
  • Temporary Problem - (Pinch has encountered a temporary technical error; try again later) 
  • Blocked by Bank - (The bank is blocking this debit from occurring, your payer has likely requested this, and you should contact them to enquire about this) 
  • Invalid Card - (The card being attempted is invalid (Expired or recently reissued)  
  • Invalid Account - (The account doesn't exist, or the account information is incorrect)
  • Unsupported Card - (The card isn't supported due to region or account type restrictions) 
  • Technical Error (Either Pinch or our provider experienced an issue when processing this attempt or a bank account is unable to be debited - savings accounts that don't allow direct debit)
  • General Decline (Can be a more niche decline reason or a recorded error from our provider) 
  • Security Blocked* (Pinch has detected usual payment activity and blocked this transaction; contact support) 


Fatal Dishonours; 

A fatal dishonor occurs when Pinch attempts to debit your client, and we receive specific types of failure responses from their bank or card issuer. These encompass a variety of reasons, but Pinch is required to terminate any existing agreement and suspend debits in the event this occurs

This means if your client has a pre-approval and we encounter a Fatal dishonor when we next debit, your clients pre-approval will be canceled immediately, and an email will be sent to the merchant informing them of this. 

  • Closed Account 
  • Stolen Card