ISO 8583 response code: 62
The issuer has a restriction on the card that prevents this transaction — commonly a country, merchant-category or account-level block rather than anything about the amount.
Restricted cardHard decline
Retrying the same request will fail the same way.
What it means
A restricted card is one the issuer has fenced in some way. The usual shapes are geographic (the card is not enabled for use in the merchant's country), category-based (gambling, quasi-cash, crypto), or account-level (the card is suspended pending some action). It is not a fraud decline as such, and it is not about funds, but from the merchant's side it behaves as a hard decline for this transaction.
Common causes
- A country block: the card is not enabled for use where the merchant is, or the transaction is cross-border on a domestic-only card.
- The merchant category is one the issuer blocks for this card product.
- The card is temporarily suspended by the issuer, or by the cardholder in their banking app.
- A card product with restricted acceptance, such as a closed-loop or single-category prepaid card.
How to fix it
- Ask the cardholder to check for blocks in their banking app — many restrictions are cardholder-toggleable and clear immediately.
- Verify the merchant category code you send is the correct one for your business. A wrong MCC can trip a restriction that should not apply.
- Offer an alternative payment method rather than retrying the same card.
- Do not read 62 as fraud. It is an acceptance restriction, and treating the cardholder as suspect over it is a poor customer experience.
Tools that help
Frequently asked questions
- Does 62 always mean the same thing?
- No, and this is the code where acquirer remapping bites hardest. The standard convention is "restricted card", but FIS/Worldpay's published ISO 8583 reference guide maps 62 to "Lost Card" in its EBT and WIC response tables. Before writing logic that branches on 62, read your own acquirer's response-code table.