Understanding Failed Payments

Payment failures (also called “declines”) can happen for a number of reasons. Most often, they occur because the card issuer (customer’s bank) has declined the charge, or some other system has blocked it. Only rarely do they signify an error with the Stripe extension.

Payment failures/declines will show different error messages to the customer during checkout and will appear in the “Order notes” section of the affected order. Depending on the particular issue or type of decline, you may see:

• Error: Your card was declined.
• Error: There’s a problem with this payment. Please try again or use a different payment method.
• Error: Your card has insufficient funds.
• Error: Your card has expired.
• etc.

Card issuer declines

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Card issuers (e.g. Visa or Mastercard) have sophisticated data models that analyze a large number of factors and either allow or decline a charge in real-time. Issuer declines happen when these automated systems decide not to allow a charge.

Some of the most common card issuer declines are:

• Generic declines. This is by far the most common type of decline. Cardholders should contact their bank and work with them in order to resolve the problem.
• Non-sufficient funds (NSF). If a customer doesn’t have enough funds or credit in their account, the card issuer may decline the transaction.
• Incorrect card data. If a customer enters an incorrect card number, verification code, or expiration date, the card issuer may decline the transaction.
• Fraudulent activity. If a card issuer suspects fraudulent activity on the part of the customer (the cardholder), they may decline the transaction.

Blocked payments

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Blocked payments occur when the card issuer has approved the charge, but it is later rejected by a secondary system, such as Stripe Radar. For more information, please read this document, which goes over how to configure Stripe Radar.