## TL;DR
Liability shift only happens when authentication succeeds. A declined challenge means the issuer said no, so the liability stays with you and the payment is dead. Treat it as a hard decline and route the customer to another payment method.

```text
3ds2 declined with liability shift missing: how to fix
```

## Use this when
- A challenged payment declines and the charge shows no liability shift.
- You need to decide whether to retry, reroute, or abandon the payment.
- Finance asks why a 3DS payment still produced a chargeback.

## Not for this skill when
- Authentication succeeded and liability shifted. That payment worked as designed.
- You want the challenge to succeed. No integration change forces an issuer's hand.
- The goal is avoiding authentication. That is out of scope for this skill.

## Steps
1. Read the charge's three_d_secure fields and the outcome decline code. Verify: you can confirm authentication did not succeed.
2. Treat the payment as a hard decline. Show the customer a clear message and offer another payment method. Verify: no automatic retry of the same card inside the session.
3. Check whether the payment went through frictionless flow or a full challenge, to separate issuer declines from integration gaps. Verify: you know which path the payment took.
4. For low-risk orders, request a TRA exemption on the next attempt instead of forcing another challenge. Verify: exemption requests only go out for orders that meet your risk criteria.
5. Track decline rates for challenged payments by issuer and BIN. Verify: you can spot a bank whose challenges always decline.

## Variant phrasings
### 3ds decline no liability shift
Shorter phrasing of the same question.
### liability shift missing on challenged payment
Finance-team wording.
### 3ds2 authentication failed and payment declined
Symptom-level search.

Compatibility: 3D Secure 2 via Stripe or any gateway exposing authentication results. Liability rules follow card network policy, not gateway settings.

## Why it happens
Liability shift is the network's reward for successful authentication. If the issuer declines during the challenge or the authentication fails, there is nothing to shift. Only a successful authentication moves liability, and a decline ends the payment entirely.

## Edge cases / pitfalls
- A soft decline asking for authentication is different from a challenge decline. Retry the former with 3DS, accept the latter.
- Exemptions do not shift liability either, so price that risk into your exemption strategy.
- Never coach customers to pick a different bank or card to dodge a challenge. That trades a decline for a compliance problem.
- Log the shift outcome per payment. Finance needs it when a chargeback arrives months later.

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_L4ALPTKqRoH-4m8ZZRs7Rg