Home Exchange - Declined Credit Card Payments
Occasionally we have to explain to indignant would-be members who, for one reason or another, have had their credit card payments declined, that it’s not our own ‘personal’ rejection against them. We don’t play any part in how the payments are authorized and either accepted or declined.
No company, no matter how big, processes payments directly. This job is done by “gateways” that act as a bridge between the companies and their banks. These gateways handle the complete processing and settlement of all credit card transactions. Once a day it will collectively take all transactions successfully settled and deposit them into the company’s bank account.
The most common reason for a payment to be declined is for AVS (address verification service) Mismatch. Under that category, a sub-section for rejection can simply be AVS-S which translates to mean that the verification service being implemented is not supported by whatever bank or authority actually issued the credit card. Unfortunately the AVS-S decline code is the most difficult for our clients to understand.
Thanks to the stringent verification services of our gateway company, we’ve never had to deal with a case of credit card fraud. All suspicious transactions have always been caught at source. This statistic unfortunately does little mollify a potential member who has just had his card declined. All I can do is apologize and stress the importance of their entering the billing address used for the credit card, as well as entering it carefully to avoid errors.
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