I noticed that once and a while we will have customers who have tried to place their order 3 or 4 times (which is suprising that they kept trying after the second time) but the order could not be processed. We get the same ol' message for each "Customer has tried to pay for their order using a real-time gateway, but encountered an error in processing their card. The error returned from the processor was Invalid CreditCardType". What I have noticed though is that in most cases the failed orders are American Express cards. Does anyone have any ideas on what can be causing this because all card information seems to be the same each attempt so I would imagine they entered the information correctly.

I had this happen just last week. Order tried to go through 3 times, I just assumed the credit card was bad and the person didn't know it because they get a very simple error message that gives them no clue as to why it didn't go through. The info, address, phone, email, everything was the same, looked legit. I emailed the person to see if she needed help, never heard back.

I did the same thing and emailed the person to see if there was anything I could help them with and they did respond back stating they ordered the products from another site with the same card and information and everything worked fine. So it is something to do with our order processing for American Express cards. I very seldom get people who enter in the incorrect information and you can generally tell when it is not a valid order because information will change with each attempt.

The person entered the same information 3 times before finally leaving and order somewhere else. do you have any thoughts as to why this could be happening with American Express cards and how they are processed?

We have had a couple of these in the last week as well, only thing is I could of swore it was with MC and not Amex. What Gateway do you guys use?

We have been working with the PayPal Website Payments Pro which seems to work good for us. I am not sure if there is something within some of the validation settings that could cause Amex cards to not process.

I use USAePay

We use Linkpoint, so the three of us have different gateways. If amex would of had some issues, we would of heard about it by now, guess the only other thing we have in common is MC. Hmmm ? ?

BamaCat,

How do you like USA ePay, I had used them a while back and at the time there seemed to be a few issues with how things functioned with the cart. Have you had any trouble with them?



It would be nice to get a response from on this Amex issue because I really hate it when customers try to make a purchase on our site, the processing fails, and the customer then goes to another vender to purchase the items.

It is kind of waving the order in our face and teasing us, "hey I want to order... oops you can not process amex" haha I will go to your competitor and buy the same items from them instead.

Does anyone else have any issues processing Amex, this seems to be the only card type that causes the most issues for us?

Has anyone gotten any further information on this issue? We had the same problem, we use Authorize.net.

Thanks for any reply,
Tara
PacificRescue.com

Bamcat,

There is nothing wrong with usaEpay but since there is no integration with the MC cart I would strongly advise against using it. We had to switch to authorize.net because customers had no idea why their cards were declining (MC cart does not show the real error code that usaEpay generates.

Nuriel

I have not had any issues lately for all other orders but the cards being processed were not AMEX. I know for certain that as soon as a customer tries again with their AMEX card that either the first attempt will not process and the second will (if they try again) or it will not work at all.

Has anyone else noticed this issue again with AMEX cards? I wonder if it is some kind of filter or fraud utility that is running to ensure that the card information is entered correctly and the specs for AMEX cards is incorrect.

equick,
sorry, I never saw your question about USAePay! I like it, it's been fine so far, unless there's stuff going on behind the scenes that I don't know is going on. The last couple months I've had a few people try 3 times entering almost the exact same info, rejected 3 times. Most of the time, it's the customer who either forgets what their billing address is, or types it in incorrectly. I always call the customer if I see 3 non-finalized checkouts unless it's blatantly obvious, and I've had a couple where they try 3 different cards or 3 different exp dates. I think I'm getting pretty good at verifying orders now, I check every one first.

Havne't noticed any particular problems with Amex.

I noticed in the admin panel under Online Payment manager - Custom Response Text to Handle Declined Credit Cards
I never noticed that before, is that a way to customize certain decline messages we get from the gateways?

Bamba--

That is where we enter our custom decline responses. We use Authorize Net and they have list of definitions for each decline code. We customize our responses accordingly. Helps with the problem but we still have customer trying 3, 4 and even up to 6 times with a declined card.

RE the Amerrican Express issue -- perhaps the card number is not a legitimate Am Ex number, or the expiration date stated is not correct, or the account is overdrawn. These are some of the reasons we have charges declined even tho it seems that all the billing info is correct.

What do you find are the most honest mistakes people make entering their cc info?

I think there's too much info you can give, like you don't want to tell someone their exp. date is wrong if they're a crook guessing on exp. dates for a stolen card, right?

I would think something like this: "The billing information you have entered is not correct, please try again." would work for most declines.

Or: "The credit card information you have entered is not correct, please make sure your billing information matches your statement and try again."

What do you use?

We do perform a card type check before passing the information to the gateway that could cause this issue. Basically, we check the format of the card, and make sure it matches a formula for one of the major card types. For example, just a couple rules are that the Visa cards start with 4, and MC cards start with 5. They are both 16 digits long. There are a few other rules we check as well. Maybe these specific cards for AMEX do not match the format we have stored. If you would like to find out this information, please contact tech support. Since it deals with individual orders and credit card numbers, we obviously do not want that information posted in the forums.

Tech support should be able to test these for you. If you have any trouble, PM me with an order number that this occurred on, and I will see if I can find the problem.

Thanks for all the replies.... I've got a lot of homework to do.
Something has to be done to eliminate so many trials.
Appreciate all the input and will certainly give any I might come up with; right now I'm just a 'taker'!
Cheers,
Tara

Bamacat,

You can't customize the response with usaEpay, tha part is not integrated with . I can't emphasize it enough but if I were in your place I would switch. The problem is that a customer can make a simple mistake such as entering wrong zip code (as a typo) or wrong security code and the order will not go through, the worse part is that the customer will never know why the card was declined. That is exactly the reason why we have switched to Authorize.net

Nuriel

Thanks for the tips JD. I haven't had any problems with Amex cards though. So far I'm fraud-free (knock on wood).

Nuriel, I was told by tech support they can be customized. I get the codes from usaepay, and create them in Online Payment Manager, entering the response I want for the reason it's declined. If they told me wrong (this has happened before believe it or not) then let me know. I'll test it tomorrow and see if it works.

Bamcat,

First, they gave you a wrong information and I would like to know who gave the wrong information especially that we have discussed it with Brian and Chris extensively, we have been through this countless times. This is a quote from back on February 07
" The "Custom Response Text to Handle Declined Credit Cards" is not a feature of the shopping cart for USAEpay gateway...."

End of story, you can test as much as you want but it will not work! There is only one solution at the moment and it is to switch to a gateway that is 100% supported by . Don't ask why USAePay is recomended by . We had so many discussions about it and I am trying to save you the frustration.

In my opinion if you stay with USAEpay you will loose a % of your future sales.

Nuriel