Merchant Advice Code Hard Blocking Guide

Merchant Advice Codes are returned by Mastercard or Visa when a payment is declined. They tell a merchant why the transaction failed and whether it is safe to retry.

Where it shows:

a. Back office: on an individual transaction, under Manage Transaction > transaction details, BPOINT displays a row "Merchant Advice Code" formatted as code plus description (e.g. "03 - Do not try again”).

b. API v3/v5: the code and description are returned in the txn response.

MAC hard blocking

Hard blocking is off by default and enabled per merchant on CBA request. When enabled: if a transaction receives a MAC that provides guidance to “Never retry”, that card is marked blocked and will not be processed again. Subsequent attempts are stopped before processing. The full list of Merchant Advice Codes is available on the BPOINT developer portal here.

When attempting to retry a transaction blocked by a MAC hard block the new decline code PT_v24 will be returned and the transaction will not be retried.

Where it appears

A notice will appear when a MAC hard block is active for a payment method. On the payment method record, the DataVault and, if tied to a customer, the customer record.

Reporting

You can export a report with all blocked tokens in the Data vault by navigating to Data vault > Payment methods and selecting Export blocked tokens. Please note this button will not appear if MAC hard blocking is disabled for your merchant facility.