Library · Payment orchestration · How to run this
Kill the token or enroll updater — not both by habit
After a rebill or checkout fail, the fork is often kill the token, retry later, or enroll / wait on account updater. Mixing those by habit burns auths and still buys chargebacks. Soft NSF is not this fork — it is dunning. Measuring the hard-fail hole is involuntary churn. Cash after enrollment is updater lift.
Pair: Token kill vs updater — claim map on Orchestration.
The fork
Kill. Pick-up, lost/stolen, invalid account (when permanent), do-not-honor after confirmed fraud — stop. Do not hop. Do not updater.
Updater path. Expired / account-number change shapes where the issuer can push a new PAN or expiry. Enroll; wait; bill once when updated.
Neither. Soft NSF and many soft declines — family retry, not kill, not updater.
What not to do
Do not enroll updater hoping to fix NSF. Do not hop a killed token onto a spare MID. Do not invent recover %. Do not treat clear-PAN shopper ask as updater enrollment.
Related: Orchestration, decline playbook, clear-PAN retry, involuntary churn, updater lift.
Procedure
- Read the decline family.
- Kill stop-list and fraud; do not hop.
- Enroll updater only for expiry / account-change shapes.
- Send NSF to the dunning calendar.
Failure modes
- Updater on stop-list / fraud codes.
- Treating NSF as kill or updater.
- Hopping killed tokens to spare MIDs.
- Inventing recover % for kill shapes.
Worked example
None on this page yet. When one lands it will be a real case: what broke, the number, and what changed. Not a composite.
Glossary
- Token kill
- Stop using a stored credential after pick-up, lost/stolen, or confirmed fraud. Not an updater enrollment. Not an NSF retry.
Work with us — We run this job on your accounts. Services
FAQ
- Should every hard fail go to account updater?
- No. Pick-up, lost/stolen, and confirmed fraud kill the token. Updater does not resurrect stop-list cards.
- Is NSF a kill-the-token event?
- No. NSF is money. Retry on the dunning calendar. Updater does not fix NSF.
- Is this the clear-PAN retry map?
- No. [Clear-PAN retry](/manuals/clear-pan-retry) is when the vault path is dead and you may ask the shopper. This page is kill vs updater enrollment.