Pickup Response: What to Do When the Terminal Says Pick Up Card

A pickup response is not a decline you can retry. It is the issuer telling you the card should not be used, and the Visa rules say you must not complete the sale. Four response codes carry that meaning: 04 (pick up card), 07 (pick up card, special condition), 41 (pick up card, lost card) and 43 (pick up card, stolen card).

Here is what the rules require, what they forbid, and the consequence most merchants never hear about.

What you must not do#

Section 10.6.1.1 of the Visa Core Rules (ID# 0002350) says a merchant must not complete a transaction when either of the following is true:

Merchant receives a "Pickup Response" code indicating the Card is lost, stolen, fraudulent, or closed

Merchant has reasonable grounds to believe that the Card is counterfeit, fraudulent, or stolen

The second one matters as much as the first. You do not need a code to be obliged to stop. If something about the card or the person presenting it gives you reasonable grounds, the rule already applies.

Do not take the card#

The same section is blunt about the other half of the situation:

A Merchant must not attempt to recover the Card in a Face-to-Face Environment.

That is worth putting in writing for your staff. Older training in this industry told people to keep the card, sometimes for a reward. The rule now says the opposite. Nobody at your counter should be asking a stranger to hand over a card that the bank has just flagged, and no sale is worth a confrontation.

Hand it back, or simply decline to proceed. Then move on.

Retrying costs you a protection you would otherwise have#

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the practical reason the rule has teeth.

Normally, if you get a decline and then obtain an authorization for the same purchase, that later approval makes a Dispute Condition 11.2 claim invalid. In plain terms, a merchant who retried and got an approval is protected from a declined-authorization dispute.

Table 11-42 (ID# 0030267) carves an exception into that protection. The carve-out does not apply to an authorization request that received a pickup response of 04, 07, 41 or 43.

So a plain decline followed by an approval leaves you covered. A pickup response followed by an approval does not. If your terminal or your retry logic treats every failure the same way, this is the case where that costs you money. Our guide to card present versus card not present covers where the rest of the liability sits.

What to do instead#

Keep it simple and keep it safe.

Do not complete the sale. Do not retry on the same card. Do not ask for the card. Offer another payment method if the customer wants to pay, because a pickup response is about the card rather than about the person standing in front of you, and the account may simply have been closed or reported lost by someone else in the household.

If you believe you are being defrauded, contact your acquirer rather than handling it yourself. Keeping a record helps: date, time, amount, terminal and the response code you saw. That same discipline supports a dispute later, which is the point of chargeback defense.

If an unattended terminal keeps a card#

Section 10.6.1.3 covers the one case where a card legitimately ends up in your hands. An unattended cardholder-activated terminal may retain a card only at the issuer's specific request. If a card is retained and a merchant removes it, the rules require the merchant to do three things: log it under dual custody immediately after removal, render it unusable, and send it to the acquirer.

Note the order. Logged, destroyed, sent. Not kept in a drawer.