Intelligent Retries

Intelligent Retries help recover lost revenue from declined transactions by sending you notifications informing you when a transaction has succeeded on that card. The card networks track activity, such as successful approvals on the same card at other merchants for similar amounts or greater, to identify optimal retry windows.

Declined transactions impact all businesses to some degree and are often caused by temporary issues, such as insufficient funds. They can negatively impact revenue, support costs, customer loyalty, and brand trust. To prevent these issues, most solutions retry the payment based on some kind of static schedule, without any signal that the retry will succeed. Intelligent Retries fills this gap. It uses card network intelligence to determine when a retry is more likely to succeed.

• Increase approval rates

  Retry when the network has seen the card succeed, instead of on a fixed schedule.

• Maximize revenue recovery

  Recover payments that would otherwise be written off after a temporary decline.

• Mitigate excessive retry fines

  Fewer blind retries means fewer network penalties for repeatedly retrying declined cards.

• Prevent service disruptions

  Keep subscriptions and services running without asking customers to update their payment details.

How it works

After a monitored decline, Mastercard watches the card for successful approvals elsewhere. When it sees one, Evervault sends you a signal to retry the payment.

1. 1.

   Configuration

   Intelligent Retries is configured per merchant. To enroll your merchant, use the Intelligent Retries onboarding API. Then, configure a webhook endpoint in the Dashboard and subscribe to the payments.intelligent-retries.signal event.

2. 2.

   Network Monitoring

   After enrollment, Mastercard monitors declined transactions on that MID to identify the optimal moment for a retry.

3. 3.

   Intelligent Retry signals

   When the network sees a successful transaction on the same card, Evervault sends a signal event to your webhook endpoint so you can retry the payment.

Intelligent Retries Onboarding API

You need to onboard your Merchant ID (MID) for Mastercard using the Intelligent Retries Onboarding API. Mastercard monitor this MID for declined transactions as outlined in the next section.

If you don't know your Merchant ID, you can supply a network transaction ID from one of your transactions. Evervault works to locate the MID associated with the transaction and onboard it with Mastercard for Intelligent Retries.

Locating a transaction ID is typically straightforward. Refer to the Locating a transaction ID section.

From the time of onboarding, it can take up to 3 weeks before the MID is tracked by Mastercard and you start receiving notifications.

1curl -X POST 'https://api.evervault.com/payments/intelligent-retries/onboarding' \
2  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
3  -u '<app_id>:<api_key>' \
4  -d '{
5    "networkTransactionId": "MCC123456789012345",
6    "merchant": "merchant_123456789098"
7  }'

Supported merchant countries

Merchants must be registered in one of the following markets.

Mastercard monitoring

Mastercard scans its own network for failed transactions associated with your enrolled MID. If a monitored MID receives a 51 or 61 decline code, Mastercard monitors the payment instrument involved in the declined transaction.

Mastercard monitors linked payment credentials across its global network. They track activity such as successful approvals on the same card at other merchants for similar amounts or greater, to identify optimal retry windows.

Duplicate decline prevention

When a repeat decline occurs for the same PAN, MID, and amount, the system doesn't initiate a new monitoring session. It also avoids new sessions if a decline occurs within an existing monitoring period. This avoids redundant tracking, minimizes system load, and reduces duplicate notifications.

Self-retry detection (auto-termination)

If a successful authorization is observed independently (e.g., the customer pays manually), the active monitoring session is canceled.

The Intelligent Retry signal event

Here is an example of a retry signal webhook event:

1{
2	"id": "webhook_event_0aa6ff0fee57",
3	"type": "payments.intelligent-retries.signal",
4	"data": {
5		"network": "mastercard",
6		"signal": "retry-now",
7		"amount": 12345,
8		"networkTransactionId": "W3T51Z",
9		"timestamp": "2026-02-04T13:53:47.314Z",
10		"currency": {
11			"alphaCode": "usd",
12			"numericCode": 840
13		},
14		"metadata": {
15			"notificationId": "M8OjZWZgRi0uZLa6PdB0CIavqctFyipx",
16			"acquirerMerchantId": "12354689987",
17			"cardBin": "5123456",
18			"cardLastFour": "9000",
19			"tokenBin": "5234567",
20			"tokenLastFour": "1234",
21			"maskedPan": "512345XXXXXX9000"
22		}
23	}
24}

A retry signal webhook event has two sections: the signal status and transaction information, and card network-specific transaction metadata.

Signal status and transaction information

Card network metadata

Mastercard metadata

Signal statuses

Matching signals to failed transactions

To retry the failed transaction after a webhook signal, you can match on the following set of identifiers from your PSP:

• Transaction timestamp
• Network transaction ID
• Last four digits
• BIN
• Masked PAN

Here's an example handler that matches a retry-now signal to the declined payment and retries it.

1app.post("/evervault", async (req, res) => {
2  const event = req.body;
3
4  if (event.type === "payments.intelligent-retries.signal") {
5    const { signal, networkTransactionId, amount, metadata } = event.data;
6
7    if (signal === "retry-now") {
8      const payment = await db.payments.findDeclined({
9        networkTransactionId,
10        amount,
11        lastFour: metadata.cardLastFour ?? metadata.tokenLastFour,
12      });
13
14      if (payment) await retryPayment(payment);
15    }
16  }
17
18  res.status(200).send({ success: true });
19});

Locating a transaction ID

If you use a PSP, it typically provides this value when you inspect a transaction on its platform or through its APIs. Here's how to find it for some common PSPs.

Finding a transaction ID with Stripe

1. In the Stripe dashboard, navigate to Transactions and locate a Mastercard transaction.
2. Copy and search for the Payment and open it in the Workbench.
3. Locate the Charge associated with the Payment.
4. In the Workbench Inspector tab, find the network_transaction_id under payment_method_details.

Finding a transaction ID with Adyen

With Adyen you can use the Transfers API to locate a payment transfer for Mastercard. In the response, locate the event containing a transactionId field. This is the network transaction ID.