Stripe decline code: lost_card
Stripe's wording: "The payment was declined because the card has been reported as lost." The specific reason should not be reported to the customer — present it as a generic decline.
lost_cardHard decline
Retrying the same request will fail the same way.
What it means
The issuer holds a lost-card report against this number and will decline every transaction on it. This is Stripe's counterpart to the ISO 8583 field 39 value 41. As with `fraudulent` and `stolen_card`, Stripe instructs that the reason is withheld from whoever is at the checkout, since that person is not necessarily the cardholder.
Common causes
- The cardholder reported the card lost and it has not been replaced.
- A saved PaymentMethod still being charged for a card that was reported and reissued.
How to fix it
- Present a generic decline, exactly as Stripe's documentation instructs.
- Detach the saved PaymentMethod. Continuing to attempt a reported card generates decline volume against your account for no possible gain.
- Ask for a new payment method through your normal update flow.
Tools that help
Frequently asked questions
- Why does Stripe tell me the reason but not let me pass it on?
- Because you need it and the person at the checkout does not. Knowing the card is reported lost tells you to stop retrying and to detach the stored credential. Telling the person holding the card is either useless — if they are the cardholder, they already know — or a warning to someone using a card that is not theirs.