Why is my VISA card payment frequently declined on my online store?

[JennyJenny]

I have many many abandoned checkout due to VISA Card being declined.  I just start my shopify online business less than 3 months, luckily I got some sales.  However, nearly all my orders are abandoned for visa payment!!!!    I contacted the support team more than 5 times and no one can solve my problem.  Finally, I find that the decline is due to the international restriction of the purchase of my customer's visa card.  As I only have the company in HK, I cannot set up the Payment US gateway, I will go on to face the same issue.   As we cannot control the bank restriction, how come Shopify cannot set up internally our region to be US payment gateway so that we can accept US VISA card with international restriction???   Internet business is international business and I think Shopify welcome international customers to set up the shop, I feel frustrated and surprised that Shopify do not set internally to the region to be US to accept US VISA card with cross-border restriction????   I lost all the orders!!!!  Pls help!

Is anyone here or shopify team or developer can help me???

[Nick]

Hi @JennyJenny,

Nick here from Shopify. 

Just to make sure I am 100% sure, you were getting abandoned carts from a visa card being declined but it was the customers visa card when trying to purchase from your store? This seems like it could be an issue with the customer and not you or your store. You mentioned you are based in Hong Kong also? If so, can I ask which payment gateway you are using for your store and to see if it is one of the gateways Shopify is partnered with in HK here? If it is, then a customer based in the USA shouldn't have any issues ordering from your store and a declined card would be an issue on their end. It could be worth investigating if the order and customer are legitimate as they might not be. Shopify has a helpful information guide about fraud prevention here, which would be worth reading to check if anything looks familiar for the orders you have on your store. But I can assure you, if you are using one of the gateways Shopify is partnered with in HK, that you can make international sales to people from the USA. 

The other thing I can think of which might be causing this is your shipping settings in your store admin and that you have it open for people from the USA to make orders from your store. 

Thanks, Nick

[JennyJenny]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for paying attention to my concern. I feel very frustrated to see the abandoned checkout due to card issue. There are many vsia card declined actually and I don’t think all of them are due to customer’s problem. It shows “your card does not support this purchase” in abandoned checkout in shopify adm. I think they are due to the 2nd reason below.

mailto:shopify.prod|370b0dca|8be6b0cd-6800-48db-9710-5880345f10e4@reply01.lithium.com%3e;

For your information, I am using shopify payment gateway. I talked to the shopify adm more than 5 times, finally they told me that I can change to US gateway to avoid cross-border restrictions. Unfortunately, my company is based in HK and I do not have any entity in US to change the account region. As changing to US gateway can help to solve the issue, how come shopify cannot change the setting to US gateway with the remarks of HK company. It will avoid such case happened again. I saw many discussion here with same problem!!!

You know, internet business is international business and we cannot control the restrictions from the bank, but we can revise the setting to accept it. Am I correct?

Hope you understand my situation and I really need help!!!

Thank you!

Best Rgds,

Jenny Ho

[Nick]

Hi @JennyJenny,

From what I can tell with what you're saying, this doesn't seem to be a payment gateway issue at all. An abandoned checkout wouldn't occur from a gateway not being available or even a customers card now that I think of it as it would be created by a customer filling out their details and moving away from the checkout or closing the tab. 

Abandoned checkouts are created only when customers enter some information before leaving the store. Customers that "reach the checkout" are customers that actually click the Checkout button and end up in the checkout itself. Abandoned checkouts refer to customers that not only clicked into the checkout, but also entered customer information before leaving the checkout process. If a customer reaches checkout but doesn't enter their information, Shopify's system won't create an abandoned checkout since there is no customer information to associate the checkout with.

Something to remember is if a customer is on the contact information page of checkout (First step), and enters their information, and leaves the checkout, there will not be an abandoned checkout generated unless the customer proceeds to the next step (shipping or payment, depending if the product doesn't require shipping). So it doesn't even reach the payment aspect of the transaction for an abandoned cart to be created.  

I hope this helps explain and breaks this down for you. 

Thanks, Nick

[Ecomcommando]

Hello, can you guide me on how to change the payment gateway to US?

[JennyJenny]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for paying attention to my case.   In fact, the failed payments due to declined visa  also appeared in abandoned checkout and my issue here is mainly deal with the declined visa.  I just have the reply from Shopfiy's billing team that the declined visa for my case is due to cross-border restrictions.  Can the US payment gateway or other methods can help my shop to accept the US visa card with cross-border restrictions?  

Thank you!

[Nick]

Hi @JennyJenny,

Could you ask the customers who are receiving the declined error on the sale to double check with their bank first please? Just to confirm if it is something to do with their card or if it's something Shopify can look into. To take a closer more detailed look into your store and order admin, you would need to contact the support team directly as we currently are unable to review account specific requests in the community right now. Please visit our support team here and log in to your account to talk to someone in real time if you want to explore this further. 

With regards to what you're asking about the following:

Can the US payment gateway or other methods can help my shop to accept the US visa card with cross-border restrictions?

I'm not 100% clear on what you mean exactly. If you could elaborate a little more, it would be greatly beneficial!

[Danny31]

Hi Jenny, were you able to resolve this issue? I'm in Canada and nearly all US Visa credit, debit or prepaid transactions are being declined by Shopify Payments and Stripe.