Verification issue shopify billing - store frozen cannot make payment for shopify fees

[billuk]

Hi Guys,

Looking for some help here... Our store is currently 'frozen' due to shopify being unable to charge/process the card that's on the account for monthly fees, etc.

We've clicked on the 'verify and pay' button in the top right of the frozen page & it shows a turning circle for about a second then goes back to the standard 'verify and pay' black button?  It's not giving any error message in relation to the card, fund available etc (all the usual has been checked, spoken to bank etc).  Even went as far as replacing card, upon doing so the card 'verified' and requested to take $0 transaction successfully (verifed & approved on banking app) however when attempting after this to pay the outstanding bill, it repeats the verify and pay button issue as above?

I'm getting zero updates from shopify support apart from saying billing team are aware & I should get updates but last update was over 26 hours ago & was not an update, just acknowledgment of the ticket.

First line support, or at least one person confirmed this is a shopify issue and the team are working on a fix, however other support chat team did not verify this...

Can anyone offer any help on this, I would be very grateful for any help... As it stands our website offline, customers are worried & we cannot access customers orders & information to process.

FYI, from our side we've tried to pay the bills at least 10 times over 3 different cards, all have the same issue as mentioned above..  We are looking for Shopify support to reinstate the website if this is something they have to fix, however I'm being told only billing team can approve this and they have not responded in 36 hours!

Please help, is it just me or is this an issue on other shopify sites?  Thank yo for taking the time to help.

[SealSubs-Roan]

Hi @billuk !

Since this is a billing issue, the best course of action is to keep an open communication with Shopify support team as they are the one that have better view of your account's status. If after 72 hours and you did not receive any updates from them, make a follow-up and request for escalation if necessary and possible.

[reedsc]

We're having exactly the same problem.   Shopify says it's an issue on its side which they've escalated to the Billing team.  They've assured me the shop won't be frozen until end August but in the meantime we can't pay/create shipping labels.

[billuk]

Hi Reedsc, Thanks for leaving a comment on this.  Although I'm sorry to hear you are having this same issue, it does offer some reassurance when we know we're not alone with the issue.

An interesting development from over the weekend is that we managed to get the store back online (unfrozen!) Due to a member of the billing team getting back to us (which took at least 36 hours to get sorted) but they were helpful & the store was reinstated.  Shopify then were able to process a 'new' bill without verification or any issue on the first attempt.

We then thought the issue was resolved & tried to click the 'verify and pay' button for two older invoices that were still open & we still have the same issue!  So we are trying to work out if this will only effect invoices/bills that are historic?  Who knows....

I would like to add that we are using a mastercard that is from Tide bank in the UK and I think it's classed as a pre-paid master debit card I think... Nos sure the issue is with the specific card type, however we've tried 3 or 4 other cards, all different types & still would not process the payments so that seems a long shot to blame the card type!

Again, any help form your experience would be welcome or if you could suggest the best route to contact someone at Shopify who can actually take direct action to unfreeze sites would be welcome as it took us 36 hours (with the website down) to get that part resolved.

 Best wishes.

[vividvariations]

Just to let you know I'm having the same issue. I've tried different cards and the circle just goes round and then nothing happens. Very frustrating. I do have an email saying they will attempt to take payment again on 10th so not sure if maybe a pending payment is blocking another one? I don't know why the payment didn't go through properly in the first place!

[billuk]

Hi, thanks for confirming you share the issue, although I'm sorry you've had problems like us as it's not great.

We have exactly the same issue as you, tried multiple cards and still won't take the payment.  

As I mentioned above, what's strange is that they were able to process a bill payment on 6th July and that payment did not require verification and from what I can see processed correctly on the first attempt, leaving 2 older bills that will not process??  Very strange.

Again, just wanting to help anyone with the issue & receive any help that can be offered!  Thanks and best wishes.

[vividvariations]

Hopefully it's just a technical glitch on their side and they sort it out soon. Good to know it's not just me though.

[reedsc]

Hi Vividvariations -- what type of card did you initially use as a payment method?

[vividvariations]

Mine wasn't a Tide card, it was just my business Master Card. Still not working.

[billuk]

Could be a Master Card issue perhaps?  The Tide business bank card is a Mater Card, so it could well be something to do with that..  FYI, we are still having the same problem, not solved as yet!

[reedsc]

Hi Billuk - interestingly we were also using a Tide card (UK) as the primary source with Paypal as back up.  I've since tried different cards and different PayPal accounts but it hasn't made a difference.    I wonder whether setting it up initially with Tide has caused the issue.

[billuk]

Hi Reedsc, That is interesting re the Tide card.

We have done exactly the same as you, tried different/standard (high street bank) cards and also PayPal without success. 

I think this is where the issue is, setting up initially with Tide perhaps caused this issue & when it's attempting multiple times to charge the card without success it's causing problems??  As you will know Tide doesnt send OTP for verification but verify from within the banking app and it NOT asking for verification when we are clicking the verify and pay button.

I would be surprised if this is not linked to the issue... We contacted Tide via their chat feature & they confirmed there were no pending payments of request for payments from Shopify, so from their side it's not reaching that far!

[Thomas259]

We're having exactly the same problem. Pls is your problem solved now?

[billuk]

Just posting a update here, basically the below message from a Shopify team member confirms they have made some changes to the billing process & this may be impacting some accounts or causing the current issue we are experiencing...

There has been some changes to our billing system, so I am curious if this is continued side effects, etc. I will see if I can find some information on this being a known issue, or contact our developers if needed.

[PulseParticle]

Hello, 

We are having exactly the same issue.  We are chasing the support team on a daily basis and still nothing!  We are unable to process any shipping labels due to the issue and we have had to do this manually (Massive head ache).  Shopify have not been very helpful at all and I fee like we all deserve some kind of compensation for this issue!  Interestingly we are using a Tide account too.  So this has to be linked in some way.  Shopify do not seem to be treating this issue with the urgency it requires!  We are very unhappy with the lack of resolution. 

[reedsc]

"Massive headache" is an understatement!!   I've been in touch with Tide and no requests for validation/verification are coming through when the 'verify & pay' button is clicked.

[billuk]

Hi Guys,  Yes it's really a headache & to be honest causing real business issues for us.

Same here, been in contact with Tide and they have confirmed no transactions or request for payment are reaching them.  One Shopify team member on chat agreed that the request is not reaching the bank at all.

Lots of messages back & forth with Shopify & to be honest, I have to agree they are not treating this as high importance.  Nothing showing on Shopify Status even though they have admitted it is an error with their billing & they are aware of it.  My guess is they have carried out an 'update' and it somehow has resulted in billing requests not processing... Not sure if it's limited to Tide Master Cards as another user on here used a non-Tide Master Card but also experienced the same issue.

If anyone has a good channel/process to get Shopify to take action on this, please let me know as I'm going round in circles....

[Thomas259]

We also have this problem with Visa cards

[Ollie]

Hey, @Thomas259.

Thanks for reaching out on this thread.

Since we are unable to authenticate over the Community forums due to the sensitive information that needs to be shared, I am unable to look into the specifics. It would be best to bring this to the attention of our live support to have a further look into the error you are experiencing. You can get in touch with our live support by navigating to the Help Center. Once you arrive at the Help Center, you will need to make the virtual assistant be aware that you would like to Speak with support and you will be connected with a Support Advisor accordingly. 

Let us know if you have any questions.

[vividvariations]

Shopify chat are still just referring me to my bank and saying its an approval issue with the bank. In which case this is never going to be sorted. I'm at a loss on what to do next.

[billuk]

Hi Vividvariations,  I'm sorry you also have this issue.  I've added some points below that I hope will help, it worked for us (for the time being) although Shopify have not confirmed they have found a 'fix' for the issue, more a case of just postponing billing until it's sorted.

1. Various team members within SHopify via chat & email (via open case ticket) have confirmed its a Shopify billing issue & although I think it is an approval issue (3DS/Verification/etc) they all agree the transaction requests are not reaching the bank for it to request payment.

2.  I copied & pasted this thread into the chat & also added it to the open ticket that was created for this issue to bring attention of this problem & shows many Shopify customers are having this issue.  I think this helped and perhaps drew attention to the issue.

3. Shopify, due to the locations they work from seem to take at least 24 hours to 'register' the issue and for it to reach the billing team for review.  This is a real pain however I can't find any shortcuts to this.

4.  My process was - go onto chat, explain issue, paste this tread, request billing team to deal with this issue (as billing team are the only guys who can un-freeze a store).  When the ticket was created I went and added more details of the issue onto the ticket and asked for urgent help, I also pasted the thread on the ticket in the hope this reached the billing team directly.

5. After around 36 hours the above resulted in the store being un-frozen.

6.. Interesting thing is that when they un-froze the store it created a brand new bill & this cleared right away, without the need for verification etc??  It left an older bill on our billing list (this was the bill that caused the problem) and to date that bill remains unpaid & overdue on the billing page!!

I hope the above helps & if anyone has any further advice please let me know as I'm not convinced we are 100% safe from the site going onto freeze again due to that old bill still showing as due!

Thanks and best wishes.

[PulseParticle]

Like a few on this thread we have also confirmed with Tide that the issue is Shopify side and there is no request making it to the bank at all.  We have got shopify to admit this too and they have 'Escalated' our ticket to the billing team.  That was on Saturday.  Its now Wednesday and we have had no contact from the billing team at all.  We have chased every single day and it seems to be burred behind a wall of 'We are working on it'!  The issue still persists.  We get alot of sales Via tiktok shop, so we have ramped down our website marketing and ramped up tiktok and we are now managing our fulfillment directly in TikTok!  This issue is costing shopify money so its within their interests to get it fixed ASAP.  We hit our $200 Billing limit every other day, so why on earth they can't just remove this restriction as a temporary measure to get us all up and running is beyond me!  We did actually request this and we were told that they had requested this with the billing team (Which seems non existent.   So we have been forced to find our own work around and we are now using Tiktok shop shipping and Royal Mail.  To be honest if they freeze the site, we will just move away from shopify completely. 

[reedsc]

Hi Billuk... when you say you added it to the 'open ticket' are you simply referring to a ticket which you raised or is this some sort of public ticket they're working on?

[billuk]

Hi, when going onto chat with Shopify, after the chat has ended and we've been through all the usual questions & suggestions, they email a copy of the chat transcript & that creates a ticket number that shows in the bottom right.  I quoted this ticket number every time I've been onto the chat, more importantly I added comments, a link to this post & various requests for help to this ticket, which eventually was picked up by the billing team.

In short, it's a ticket that was created rather than a 'group or public' ticket they were working on to find an overall fix, unfortunately. 

[billuk]

Hi all,  Interesting comment from Shopify team member on chat...

I already consult our Billing Team and as per them, most of the merchants from the United Kingdom encounters this error. No worries, our developers are already working on it.

[PulseParticle]

This is exactly the same generic one liner we keep getting fobbed off with two...  Apparently their developers are working on in.  But there has been no movement on actually resolving the issue or getting people to be able to process shipping labels.  It really has been a frustrating and disappointing experience. 

[Shay · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone! 

Thank you for sharing your feedback on this issue and I am sorry to hear that your businesses have been affected by this problem. 

To confirm - Our developers are aware of this problem and it is a high priority issue that they are working to resolve. While this issue is ongoing our support team has been authorized to extend invoice dates to postpone stores freezing, or to reactivate a frozen store due to this issue. 

Please connect with our authenticated chat support team in our Help Center and make this request. Feel free to share a link to this forum post as reference. To access our authenticated support, please follow this link: Shopify Help Center. Open the AI chat window and type "contact support" to get started. 

I will be marking this reply as the answer for now, so that affected merchants know they can have their invoices extended and stores reactivated by our support team.

[billuk]

Hi Shay, thanks for adding your insights on this, it's appreciated.

As you can imagine, this has been a very serious issue and has taken some time to get Shopify to acknowledge the issue, in fact they did not update the Shopify Status with this matter (which I think would have helped to stop my panic to an extent!).

It's my understanding (from speaking with Shopify online support) that this issue is impacting all UK based customers & preventing us all from settling bills, can you confirm this?

Also, my store has been reinstated (although it was offline for best part of 2 days - you can imagine the customer fallout!) We have an 'overdue bill' on account & are receiving email reminders from Shopify stating if we don't settle them in next 2 days our store will be frozen.  Can you please advise/confirm this is not the case & the emails received are system generated please?

Thanks for your help... from a (still) very worried Shopify customer.

[reedsc]

Despite accounts not being frozen, the related issue is the fact that we cannot buy/print shipping labels. 

Can a short term solution also be provided for that?

[justhere4coffee]

This has been a problem for us since last Friday.  

Despite hours spent with support on L/C from Friday through to Monday assuring me of a response via the support ticket when there was an update, no response was ever or has ever been received.

Monday came and after protracted periods on the phone with the bank, it transpired that the payment requests were not even making it to the bank.  Suddenly then I was told that there is an issue affecting many UK Merchants.  Every day i'm told my ticket is marked as urgent and it is being worked on, but four days later and nearly a week after this saga started, we are no further along.

I don't mean to be a nag, but it's hard enough running a business without this drama - we migrated to shopify in good faith earlier this year from WC and i'm beginning to feel like this could have been a costly mistake.

Do we have any form of timeframe on a resolution to this yet?  The store generated a random £30 invoice today and it paid without issue, so this issue must only be affecting certain invoices.  Can you void and re-issue them?

[PulseParticle]

A small update from us...  The first unpaid bill was taken automatically by shopify this morning via pay pal which was a backup payment type we had set up (Still linked to the TIDE card).  However, there is still a random outstanding invoice for £44 which we are unable to verify and pay...  So in theory we can process shipping labels again.  But only for a short period as the issue still seems to persist with being unable to verify and pay the invoices.  For this reason we are not switching our shipping back from Tiktok for the moment until we have the confidence that the issue does not persist. 

[reedsc]

As the main issue we’re having is with shipping labels rather than our store being frozen we’re going to try a separate app called Zenstores. I’m hopeful it will solve our problem.

[PulseParticle]

I'm in a live chat with them and I have been told "I checked the ticket, and I see that this has been escalated to our team. I also see the last note of the one that handle your case, and it seems like there's an ongoing issue on our end. Don't worry, this is being worked on by our team already. Your escalated ticket will remain open until the issue has been resolved. Once it's resolved, you will be notified via email."  So defo worth investigating a new app for shipping labels.  We will look into this too.  Such a shame to lose so much trust in shopify 

[reedsc]

I believe the issue has now been resolved! 

🎉🎉🎉

[RaviG]

Hey Shay,

Could you please look into below link and help me out or please refer at the end of this thread where our STORE is FROZEN?

https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/verification-issue-shopify-billing-store-frozen-... 

[kasle_lokesh]

Dear Shopify Staff,

I am facing the same issue for UPI payment in India, my store also frozen from last 2 days and Shopify not able to solve the issues.

Please let us know who will be responsible for our losses?

[Kinjalbhandari]

Hey I am also facing the same issue as yours has it been resolved for your store if yes can you please tell me what was the issue 

[Design]

This is super frustrating. Our card processed fine before and after a single payment for Fee Threshold of a measly $17. It has since processed a $2700 payment on the same card with no issue. We keep getting sent back and forth between our card issuer and Shopify support. No one with Shopify has identified this as an internal issue and we have gotten no confirmation that our store will not be interrupted. Have a store interruption for us will be catastrophic and will take down our international retail, wholesale and three brick and mortar locations. It's incredibly frustrating to be paying nearly $3000 a month for a service and losing days of actual work to deal with this - and still not getting anywhere. It's crazy. 

[RaviG]

We are facing the same issue since 21st of July where our store is currently frozen where SHOPIFY is unable to charge or process the card for yearly and other charges. I have been in touch with chat support of Shopify since 21st and all I got is nothing from Shopify Support. They did the escalation and again escalated the issue on the support ticket number 49275835 but nothing seems to be changed. Our STORE is in currently frozen and we are loosing customers and reputation day by day. PLEASE HELP...

[reedsc]

I think the original issue has been resolved for everyone else.  Share this thread with Shopify support and ask them to get the billing team to unfreeze your account until end August whilst they work out what is wrong

[RaviG]

Before posting my earlier post on this thread, I forwarded this THREAD link to Shopify Chat support and also did the same again couple of times with the hope that they will DEFREEZE. Unfortunately, SHOPIFY CHAT SUPPORT is not giving any solutions nor willing to DEFREEZE my store. All they are saying that they have ESCALATED the ticket number 49275835. IT'S MORE THAN 100 HOURS SINCE MY STORE IS FROZEN.

All I got the access (below screenshot) which is totally USELESS. None of the below three options provide any chance to DEFREEZE the store.

SHOPIFY CHAT Support is saying that one PAYMENT is being processed and I cannot make other payment until and unless it gets failed. The access which I have (in View Past Bills section) indicates in Payment Timeline section that it will be processed on 23rd of July which has already been passed and there are no further updates that on which date it will be processed. WHAT KIND OF JOKE IS THIS.

I have now a very strong feeling that there are serious BUGS in SHOPIFY system and SHOPIFY and its executives are hiding their incapability to tackle these BUGS. Otherwise, it does not make any sense when customer is willing to make another payment, even in the mode of advance payment if earlier payment is in PROCESSING stage, so that store can be DEFREEZE. They are not giving any sort of support or option to DEFREEZE the store. 

It is more like a situation where due to HACKING someone's computers get LOCKED due to virus, and it cannot be UNLOCKED until you met the demand of hacker. In my case with SHOPIFY is that SHOPIFY is not able to process the payment & not giving me the options to pay any dues or make payment in advance so that STORE can be DEFREEZE. This is what I am getting from SHOPIFY for being a loyal customer for more than NINE long years.

The worst part is that we are unable to convey this unfortunate situation to our CUSTOMERS and are getting lots of enquiries through emails and phone and we are also unable to process any orders which was already placed by our loyal customers. Another unfortunate part is that my ADS running on all available SOCIAL MEDIA including Google gets suspended because ADS could not find the destination because my store is FROZEN. It will also have adverse impact on SERP, SEO, backlinks, which will take time to rebuild if we are able to do so.

All we are doing now is that LOOSING revenue, loyalty & trust of customers, reputation of all these years of hardwork, all thanks & credits goes to WORLD CLASS & START-OF-THE-ART SYSTEM OF SHOPIFY.

PLS SOMEONE HELP!!! IT'S MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

[Japanned]

Was your issue resolved? Because I am also facing the same issue. The store has been down from the last 7 days.

[kasle_lokesh]

Dear Shopify Staff,

I am facing the same issue for UPI payment in India, my store also frozen from last 2 days and Shopify not able to solve the issues.

Please let us know who will be responsible for our losses?

[Anuradha2]

HI Lokesh,

Am facing the same issue. From past 18 days my websites is down and I have tried to make the payment from 30days. Is your website working fine now?? How to get back the website now. Tried all payment modes. Tired to talking to chat advisor. They just escalate to billing team and billing team never respond.

Could you pls suggest how u rectified this payment issue.

Thank you

[Thomas259]

Guys, I'm having the same issue.🤔

[SBellePlans]

I just started having this issue last night shipping bill bounced back and it won’t let me update anything - it’s not my bank or PayPal etc - it’s SHOPIFY!!!! 

[Thomas259]

I have 2 payment methods for my bill, PayPal and credit card, and the payment has been running successfully; But today the payment failed, I deleted the PayPal payment, and the initiative to pay the bill still failed; It is also not possible to add PayPal now.

[SBellePlans]

Yes!!! I can’t add ANYTHING - this is so frustrating!!! 

[Thomas259]

I've just opened a case for shopify support.

[Erin]

Hi, everyone. We are aware of a current issue with paying Shopify invoices. Our developers are investigating this and hope to have a fix soon. You can contact our support team through the Help Center here for more help if you have any questions.