High-ticket invoices
Why did our large customer payment decline?
Short answer
Most often because of a per-transaction cap or velocity limit on your own merchant account rather than anything on the customer's card. These limits are set during underwriting based on your financials, average ticket and processing history, and they do not grow with your business unless somebody asks. The decline reason is frequently not passed through to whoever ran the payment, which is why it looks like a customer problem.
- Written by
- B2B Pay Hub editorial team
- Reviewed
- Reviewed by a B2B Pay Hub payments specialist
- Published
- Updated
The fuller explanation
Three limits cause most of these: a per-transaction cap on the largest single payment your account accepts, daily or monthly velocity ceilings on total volume, and average-ticket variance triggering a review when a transaction sits far above your normal size.
Raising a cap is an underwriting conversation requiring financials and evidence of trading at that size. It takes days rather than minutes, which means it has to happen before the order rather than while a customer waits.
On an invoice large enough, the better question is whether a card is the right rail at all. Percentage-based cost on a six-figure payment is a very large number against a flat ACH or wire fee.
Important caveats
- Telling your processor in advance about an unusually large expected order prevents most holds and reviews.
- Splitting a single transaction purely to stay under a cap is identified quickly and can put the account at risk. Genuine milestone billing against separately delivered work is different.
Other ways people ask this
These phrasings share the same answer, so they live on this page rather than on duplicate URLs.
- Large invoice declined
- Why won't our card payment go through for a big order?
- Transaction limit decline
Follow-up questions
- Can limits be raised quickly?
- Usually within days if you have financials ready. Not within minutes, which is why it is worth doing before you need it.
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