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Stripe decline code: authentication_required

Authentication required — The charge needs 3D Secure authentication and didn't complete it.

Common cause

European cardholders subject to PSD2 SCA. Off-session retries fail without customer auth.

Recovery strategy

Retry strategy	Don't retry
Customer-facing action	Send a card-update flow
Recovery rate (retry only)	~5%
Recovery rate (with customer flow)	~75%

What to do, in order

Send the customer back to a Stripe Customer Portal session that triggers SCA. Off-session retries are a dead end here.

Code example

The recommended Stripe Customer Portal session for the recovery flow:

session = stripe.billing_portal.Session.create(
    customer=customer_id,
    return_url="https://yourapp.com/billing/thanks",
    flow_data={"type": "payment_method_update"},
)
update_link = session.url

Where this fits in the bigger picture

authentication_required is one of dozens of decline codes Stripe returns; recovery rates vary by code by 5x or more. The recovery-rate reference covers the full set; the card-update flow article covers the customer-facing side; dunning emails covers how to write the messages.

DunningKit's open-source CLI parses your Stripe failed-charges CSV and gives you the breakdown by code, with recoverable-revenue estimates. pip install dunningkit.