Help center suite · four linked articles
Payments knowledge base
A four-article knowledge base covering one painful problem from four angles: orientation, task, reference, and explanation. Written for the merchant whose payment just failed, using the same underlying facts the Ledger API states to engineers.
- The hub assumes arrival from a search result, part-way in, which is how nearly everyone reaches a help center.
- The same decline reasons appear here and in the Ledger error reference, in two registers: one for a person whose card was refused, one for the service that has to branch on it.
- The retry article exists to stop a harmful habit, so it opens with what the habit costs the reader, before any explanation of why.
- Every article names the one thing to do next, because a help article that ends without an action has returned the problem unopened.
Diátaxis · Task-first structure · Plain language
Payments: start here
OverviewThe orientation page, written for someone who arrived from a search result and is already frustrated.
Fix a declined payment
How-toThe task article: what to do now, in order, with the decision points named.
Decline reasons, explained
ReferenceEvery reason a payment is refused, what it means in plain language, and whether trying again can help.
Why retrying a declined card usually fails
ExplanationThe article that exists to prevent a behavior: repeated retries make future payments more likely to fail, not less.