This page contains an overview of the possible scenarios where a capture or refund can fail because it was rejected by a card scheme and what, if anything, you need to do in each case. These are the possible scenarios:
- Technical issue
- Shopper cancelled the payment
- Incorrect request
- Account configuration error
- Capture expired
- Capture cannot be re-captured
Captures and refunds are treated the same by card schemes, so these failures apply equally to both.
If a receive a CAPTURE_FAILED or a REFUND_FAILED webhook, this means that the capture or refund was rejected by the card scheme. The webhook contains the reason why the card scheme rejected the capture. You can also find the failure reason on the Payment details page in your Customer Area. There, you will see an error message explaining why the capture failed and what you need to do.
Technical issue
The most common reason for failed captures is a technical issue with the capture request, as indicated by the following error message:
Capture rejected by card scheme because of a technical issue.
What you need to do
You do not need to take any action. Adyen will try to fix the issue and re-capture the transaction. If the transaction is re-captured, the status of the payment becomes SentForSettle, and you receive a webhook event with:
eventCode: CAPTUREsuccess: truereason: Transaction Recaptured
If the transaction is not re-captured within 10 days, contact our Support Team.
If you are using Pass-through payout, these errors will result in a settlement delay — the funds will only be paid out to you after we've successfully captured the payment.
Shopper cancelled the payment
If you are accepting recurring payments such as subscription payments or automatic top-ups, it might happen that the shopper cancelled their payment through their bank before you captured the payment. You will then see the following error message:
Capture rejected by card scheme because the shopper cancelled the recurring payment through their bank.
What you need to do
There is nothing that either you or Adyen can do to re-capture the transaction. Consider reaching out directly to the shopper.
Incorrect request
A capture can fail if the capture request contains incorrect information, or is missing some information. For example, airlines require you to pass passenger name, so submitting an invalid passenger name might lead to a failed capture.
The error message contains the raw error message sent by the card scheme:
Capture rejected by card scheme:
raw error message from the scheme(incorrect request).
What you need to do
Contact our Support Team, providing:
- The PSP reference of the capture request.
- The error message.
We will fix the issue and re-capture the payment for you.
Account configuration error
In some cases, a capture fails because something is configured incorrectly on your Adyen account. This affects all payments processed through your account, so you will probably see the same error for multiple transactions.
The error message contains the raw error message sent by the card scheme:
Capture rejected by card scheme:
raw error message from the scheme(account configuration error).
What you need to do
Contact our Support Team, providing:
- The PSP reference of the capture request.
- The error message.
After you receive confirmation that we have corrected your account configuration, you can re-capture all payments that failed because of this issue.
Capture expired
Sometimes, a capture fails because you submitted the capture request too late. In this case it is no longer possible to re-capture this authorization. If you still want to get the funds for this payment, a new authorization is required.
The error message contains the raw error message sent by the card scheme:
Capture rejected by card scheme:
raw error message from the scheme(capture expired).
What you need to do
You can re-authorize the payment in your live Customer Area. Re-authorization is supported for a limited number of payment methods, and requires the user role Merchant re-authorise payments.
If you cannot re-authorize the payment, you must send another payment request or send a payment link to your customer.
To prevent this error for future payments, you can:
- Make sure that you capture payments within the scheme expiry time. For an overview of expiry information from major card schemes, refer to Authorization validity.
- If you are using the pre-authorization flow, you can extend the authorization.
Capture cannot be re-captured
Sometimes payments do not meet essential criteria to be captured, and card schemes do not allow these payments to be re-captured.
The error message contains the raw error message sent by the card scheme:
Capture rejected by card scheme:
raw error message from the scheme. This capture cannot be re-captured.
What you need to do
You should identify the cause of failure from the error message sent by the scheme and fix it from your side; Adyen cannot fix the error for you.
If it is a capture failure, and you need clarification about how to fix the error, contact our Support Team, providing:
- The PSP reference of the capture request.
- The error message.
If it is a refund failure, then you can contact the shopper directly to agree on a different payment method to refund the shopper.