1. Introduction

When you check your transactions in your PostFinance account via Operations > View transactions or Operations > Financial history, and/or you download a monthly report of your transactions, you will notice that each transaction has a specific status.

2. Transaction statuses

Below we explain what status types there are and what they represent. The most common statuses are marked in bold.

StatusNCERRORNCSTATUSDescription
0 - Invalid or incomplete 500... 5 At least one of the payment data fields is invalid or missing. The NCERROR and NCERRORPLUS fields give an explanation of the error.
1 - Cancelled by customer The customer has cancelled the transaction by himself.
2 - Authorisation refused 300... 3 The authorisation has been refused by the financial institution.
The customer can retry the authorisation process after selecting another card or another payment method.
4 - Order stored
40 - Stored waiting external result
41 - Waiting for client payment
46 - Waiting authentication
5 - Authorised 0 0

The authorisation has been accepted.

An authorisation code is available in the “ACCEPTANCE” field.

The status will be 5 if you have defined “Authorisation” as the default operation code in the "Global transaction parameters" tab, in the "Default operation code" section of the Technical information page in your account.
50 - Authorized waiting external result
51 - Authorisation waiting 0 0

The authorisation will be processed offline.

This is the standard response if you have selected offline processing in your account configuration.

The status will be 51 in two events:

  • You have defined “Always offline (Scheduled)” as payment processing in the "Global transaction parameters" tab, "Processing for individual transactions" section of the Technical Information page in your account.
  • When the online acquiring system is unavailable and you have defined “Online but switch to offline in intervals when the online acquiring system is unavailable” as payment processing in the "Global transaction parameters" tab, "Processing for individual transactions" section of the Technical Information page in your account.
You don't have to take any action when status 51 applies.
52 - Authorisation not known 200... 2

A technical problem arose during the authorisation/payment process, giving an unpredictable result.

The merchant can contact the acquirer helpdesk to know the exact status of the payment or can wait until we have updated the status in our system.

The customer should not retry the authorisation process since the authorisation/payment might already have been accepted.
55 - Standby
56 - Ok with scheduled payments
57 - Not OK with scheduled payments
59 - Authorization to be requested manually
6 - Authorised and cancelled
61 - Author. deletion waiting 0 0 The authorisation deletion will be processed offline.
62 - Author. deletion uncertain 200... 2 A technical problem arose during the authorisation deletion process, giving an unpredictable result.

The merchant can contact the acquirer helpdesk to establish the precise status of the payment or wait until we have updated the status in our system.

63 - Author. deletion refused 300... 3 A technical problem arose.
64 - Authorised and cancelled
7 - Payment deleted 0 0 The payment has been cancelled/deleted
71 - Payment deletion pending 0 0 Waiting for payment cancellation/deletion
72 - Payment deletion uncertain
73 - Payment deletion refused
74 - Payment deleted
8 - Refund 0 0 The payment has been refunded
81 - Refund pending 0 0 Waiting for refund of the payment
82 - Refund uncertain
83 - Refund refused
84 - Refund
85 - Refund handled by merchant
9 - Payment requested 0 0 The payment has been accepted.

An authorisation code is available in the field “ACCEPTANCE”.

The initial status of a transaction will be 9 if you have defined “Sale” as the default operation code in the "Global transaction parameters" tab, "Default operation code" section of the Technical information page in your account.

91 - Payment processing 0 0 The data capture will be processed offline.
92 - Payment uncertain 200... 2

A technical problem arose during the authorisation/payment process, giving an unpredictable result.

The merchant can contact the acquirer helpdesk to know the exact status of the payment or can wait until we have updated the status in our system.

The customer should not retry the authorisation process since the authorisation/payment might already have been accepted.
93 - Payment refused 300... 3 A technical problem arose
94 - Refund declined by the acquirer
95 - Payment handled by merchant
96 - Refund reversed
99 - Being processed


Statuses with one digit are the most common statuses.

    • 0: The transaction was not completed, because it was interrupted or because of a validation error. In case of a validation error, usually an additional error code (*) (NCERROR) identifies the error.
    • 1: The transaction was cancelled by the customer/buyer
    • 2: The acquirer did not authorise the payment
    • 5: The acquirer authorised the payment. You should confirm these transactions to complete the payment, or delete the authorisation if you wish to cancel the order.
    • 9: The payment was captured. Usually, with this status, you may expect the money on your account.

      Statuses with two digits represent either ‘intermediary' situations or abnormal events. When the second digit is:

        • 1, this means the payment processing is on hold. (e.g. status 91: payment waiting/pending)
        • 2, this means an error occurred during the communication with the acquirer. The result is therefore not determined. You must contact the acquirer's help desk to find out the actual result of this transaction.
        • 3, this means the payment processing (capture or cancellation) was refused by the acquirer while the payment had been authorised beforehand. It can be due to a technical error or to the expiration of the authorisation. You must contact the acquirer's help desk to find out the actual result of this transaction.

          For a list of all possible statuses, please log on to your PostFinance account and check the "List of the payment statuses and error codes" in the User guides section of the Support menu.

          3. Transaction errors

          The list of error messages is non-exhaustive and contains error messages that you may never encounter, often because they don't apply for your account type or because they're payment method specific.

          In general, error codes starting with:

            • 2 mean the status is "uncertain". This will usually evolve to a final status.
            • 3 mean the transaction is declined by the acquirer or blocked by the Fraud detection module
            • 4 mean the transaction is declined. It could be only a temporary technical problem. Please retry a little bit later.
            • 5 mean a validation/configuration error (e.g. currency not allowed on your account).

              For a list of all possible error codes and messages, please log on to your PostFinance account and check the "List of the payment statuses and error codes" in the "Selected user guides" section of the Support menu.

              FAQs

              In your PostFinance account menu, you can easily lookup your transactions by choosing "Operations" and then clicking either "View transactions" or "Financial history", depending on the type of transaction results you're looking for.

              Go to Consult your transactions for more information.

              You can easily refund a payment with the "Refund" button in the order overview of a transaction (via View transactions). If your account supports it, you can also make refunds with a DirectLink request or with a Batch file upload (for multiple transactions).

              Please note that the Refunds option has to be enabled in your account.

              Go to Maintain your transactions for more information.

              You can only perform refunds on transactions for which the funds have already been transferred to your bank account. A cancellation or deletion can be done before a payment has been fully processed, i.e. before the daily cut-off time at the acquirer, at which point all transactions of the previous day are processed.

              There are different reasons why you can't refund a transaction. You need to consider the following (with the condition that the Refund option is enabled in your account):

              • The transaction is in an "incomplete" status, such as a pending or erroneous status (9192 etc.) that doesn't allow the refund operation.
              • If the transaction is authorised (status 5), at which point no payment has been made yet. In this case you have to cancel the authorisation instead of refund.
              • The used payment method doesn't support the refund functionality, which can be the case with certain debit cards, web banking methods and "offline" payment methods such as Bank transfer.