Failed transaction causes & what to do

Find out the different causes and solutions for failed transactions.

When paying for a subscription by card, the payments are processed through Stripe, a platform for online payments.

However, there are times when payment failure occurs. In what follows, I will present to you the different scenarios when this happens and the solution for each scenario.

There are 3 main categories of payment failure:

1. Payments declined by card issuers

This occurs when Stripe attempts to process the payment, but the issuing bank refuses the payment. There are different reasons why this happens.

• Expired card -> Reason: Your card has expired. Solution: Check the card’s expiration date. If the card is expired, try a different valid card.

• Insufficient funds -> Reason: There are insufficient funds in your account. Solution: Check your account balance. If you have insufficient funds, try a different payment method.

• Incorrect card information -> Reason: You might have entered the wrong card number, card date, or CVC. Solution: Reattempt the payment, and pay attention to the card information (Number, CVC, date).

• Different card limits -> Reason: Your card issuer might have set up certain card limits regarding the number of transactions you can perform in a day, the sum you can spend in a day, or the sum you can spend in a single transaction. Solution: Contact the card issuer and ask them to remove these limits.

• Card usage area limitations -> Reason: Your card issuer might have restricted transactions in certain geographical areas. Solution: Verify this problem with your card issuer and ask them to approve any payments made to Flipsnack LLC.

• Service provider card restrictions -> Reason: Transactions are limited to certain service providers. Solution: Try a different payment method.

• “Generic reasons". There are cases when the card issuers do not reveal the exact reason why the payment was declined. This information is not made available to Flipsnack or Stripe, only to the cardholder. If you are the cardholder, and you’ve ruled out any of the first 3 reasons mentioned above, you should contact your card issuer for this information.

2. Blocked payments

This happens when the payment is approved by the card issuer but is blocked by Stripe for the following reasons:

• Suspicious fraudulent payment.

• The card might have been reported lost or stolen, and Stripe has this information.

3. Technical issues

This happens when there is an invalid API call between Flipsnack and Stripe. Note that these types of failures are very rare.

• Payment processing errors -> Solution: Reattempt the payment.

In case you have any questions or uncertainties, you can always contact us via live chat.