Gateway Declines KPI

Gateway Declines

Gateway declines—also referred to as gateway rejections—happen when a transaction is stopped by the payment gateway before it ever reaches the issuing bank for authorization. This means the gateway itself is applying certain rules or checks and decides not to forward the transaction for processing.

These rejections are typically based on fraud prevention tools, AVS (Address Verification System) or CVV mismatches, velocity checks, duplicate transaction filters, or other criteria configured by the merchant or the payment provider. For example, if a billing address doesn’t match what the card issuer has on file, or if a customer tries to submit multiple identical transactions within a short time frame, the gateway may flag and reject the attempt.

Gateway declines help merchants protect themselves from fraudulent transactions and unintentional errors, but they can also lead to false positives—where legitimate transactions are mistakenly blocked. Unlike issuer declines, gateway declines come with specific rejection reasons (e.g., avs, cvv, risk_threshold), which can be useful for troubleshooting and refining risk settings.