It might seem like an expired card should always cause a payment to fail. In practice, that's not always true - some payments still succeed on a card past its printed expiry date. This isn't necessarily a bug or a sign of a fraudulent customer; it's expected behaviour built into how issuers handle card renewals and recurring payments.
Why can a payment succeed with an expired card?
Every card has an expiry date, typically renewed every three to five years. In the past, a renewed card came with an entirely new Primary Account Number (PAN) (card number), expiry date, and CVV. Today, issuers can trace a new card back to the same underlying account, so the PAN is often reused - only the expiry date and CVV change.
A related and growing factor as to why card details can stay current without action is the use of Scheme Network Tokens or Account Updater.
- For Scheme Network Tokens - rather than storing the card's actual number and expiry date, a network token represents the card in encrypted form and is issued directly by the card network (such as Visa or Mastercard). When a card is renewed, the network can update the token in the background, without the merchant needing to refresh the stored card details. As a result, the expiry date on file - even if it looks outdated - may no longer reflect the card's true, current expiry date, and the payment can still succeed correctly. Mollie supports Scheme Network Tokens, so this can happen automatically for supported cards and payment types.
- For Account Updater services (provided by some schemes), saved cards are periodically refreshed to improve acceptance rates for stored credentials (e.g. a customer’s saved card credentials). Either way, a payment can succeed correctly even though the expiry date visible to the merchant no longer matches the card's actual details.
When is an expired card accepted?
Whether an expired card is accepted depends on the type of payment:
- One-off, customer-initiated payments: the expiry date is strictly enforced by Mollie, acquirers (those who process the payment on the merchant’s behalf), and issuers (the customer’s bank). An expired card will be declined.
- Recurring payments: issuers tend to be more flexible, since recurring payments are meant to keep an ongoing service running. Issuers often refer back to the first successful authorisation on the card. If the card was valid at that time and the PAN hasn't changed since, later recurring payments can still succeed - even past the printed expiry date.
- Additionally, Mollie’s card form does not accept expiry dates in the past.