Cascading
When a provider declines or fails, MintCash can retry the same charge against the next provider in line — without your code knowing.
Cascading is what happens when the first provider says no. Instead of surfacing a failed to your application, MintCash re-attempts the same charge against the next provider in the merchant's routing priority. The payment doesn't terminate until every eligible provider has had a chance — or until a non-cascadable error stops the chain.
The flow
From your side, this is one charge with one final webhook. The cascade is internal — you don't see the intermediate decline.
What's cascadable
Not every failure triggers a cascade. Some errors mean "try someone else", others mean "this charge is dead".
| Resolution | Cascade? | Why |
|---|---|---|
provider_error | Yes | The PSP itself failed — another one may succeed |
issuer_decline (soft) | Yes | Issuer rejected via that PSP — re-route may pass |
provider_fatal_error | Yes | PSP-side outage |
insufficient_funds | No | Card-level — another PSP won't fix it |
card_expired | No | Card-level |
lost_or_stolen_card | No | Card-level — also a fraud signal |
antifraud_error | No | Stops immediately |
invalid_pan / invalid_cvv | No | Customer-input issue |
The full mapping lives in the errors reference.
What you see
- One payment record. The
payment.iddoesn't change during cascading. - One terminal webhook. You get either
payment.succeededorpayment.failedonce the cascade finishes — not one per attempt. - One audit trail. The intermediate provider attempts are recorded server-side and visible in the dashboard, but they don't pollute your webhook stream.
Cascading is one-shot per request
Cascading covers the single in-flight charge — provider A failed, so we try provider B. It does not mean we retry later. For time-spaced retries on recurring charges, see Retries.
Controlling the cascade
You can configure cascading behaviour per merchant:
- Enable / disable — turn cascading off if you want every provider decline surfaced immediately
- Eligible providers — limit which providers participate
- Order — overlay a priority order on top of your routing rules
Changes flow through your account manager.