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Stripe decline code: generic_decline

Generic decline — The issuer declined the charge without specifying a reason.

Common cause

Catch-all for issuer-side declines. Could be fraud-flag, transient block, or unknown reason.

Recovery strategy

Retry strategy	Retry once
Customer-facing action	Ask customer to contact their issuer
Recovery rate (retry only)	~25%
Recovery rate (with customer flow)	~40%

What to do, in order

Retry once at +24h. If still failing, ask the customer to contact their card issuer to authorize charges from your business name. Don't retry aggressively — increases your fraud-flag rate at the issuer.

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

generic_decline 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.