There are many reasons why a credit card transaction may not be approved. If a cardholder attempts a transaction but does not receive an authorization, he or she will be prompted to retry the transaction. This allows a customer who has made a simple typing error to correct it, or to select a different credit card.
The information displayed to the cardholder often does not pinpoint a specific reason why the transaction was not approved. Most often this is because the card Issuer has simply declined the transaction and has not provided us with the reason, in order to protect their cardholder's privacy. There are occasions when a transaction may not be sent to the card Issuer for authorization becaue it did not pass our own internal security checks. In these cases we do not tell the purchaser why the transaction was declined, as we do not want to facilitate fraudulent transctions from a criminal.
The most common reasons a card Issuer may decline a transaction are:
- the cardnumber is invalid (too few or too many digits, or a correct number of digits in an invalid combination)
- the cardholder was unable to correctly enter their password for Verified By Visa.
- the card has been withdrawn from circulation (cancelled, or reported lost/stolen)
- the credit card expiry date is incorrect.
- for a Recurring Transaction the credit card may be expired. (for cardholder initiated purchases, they are prompted on-line if they enter a past expiry date).
- the cardholder has exceeded or is very close to their credit limit
- the cardholder was attempting to process an INTERAC Online transaction and was not able to log into their online banking successfully, or opted out of the sale or has insufficient funds to complete the sale
- the card is blocked for "electronic commerce" (internet) transactions
- the card is blocked by MCC or Merchant Category Code (ie: a corporate card for travel may be set up only for purchases through airlines, hotels, restaurants etc and may therefore not accept transactions from your particular Category of business)
The following are the most common reasons the InternetSecure Gateway will decline a transaction:
- the transaction is being passed to us with the "test declined" flag in the product string
- the transaction has failed AVS or Cardholder Verification Number (CVN)
- the transaction is outside your Maximum or Maximum Transaction Amount
- a cardnumber has been used more than a specified number of times in a 24 hour period
- the transaction has been submitted from a Merchant IP that is different from the one you submitted to us for whitelisting (only approved IPs may send transactions to your account with the InternetSecure Gateway
- we cannot currently connect to the host computer for authorization (you and the cardholder will see a "please try later" prompt)
- the IP Addresss (address of the purchaser's ISP) has been blocked on our system due to previous fraudulent activity or at the request of the merchant to block certain countries, etc.
- the Email Address has been blocked on our system due to previous fraudulent activity or at the request of the merchant
- the credit card number has been blocked on our system due to previous fraudulent activity or at the request of the merchant
