HELP PLEASE! Customer payment processed but no record of transaction or payment

[SarahChees]

Hi there,

I have a customer who claims that they tried to purchase a product, their card was declined but now a payment has been withdrawn from their account (they have sent a screenshot).

They are listed in the back end as an abandoned checkout and there is no details of a payment transaction taking place.

Has anyone had this experience? Is their just a delay through Shopify? Is the customer just lying? Their screenshot had store details they wouldn't otherwise know or have access to... Any insight is appreciated.

[Summer · Accepted solution]

Hey, @SarahChees! Welcome to Shopify Community!

I understand this situation can be jarring, however, you can rest assured that this is a normal occurrence. While it's not typical, it's expected to happen. Whenever a customer claims to have placed an order but this order appears on your abandoned checkout page, it can either be caused by a failed zip code security check, if they attempted to pay with Shopify Payments, or an interruption in the payment process, if they used a third-party payment gateway.

If you enabled the zip code security check on Shopify Payments, the check occurs after the funds for the transaction have been pre-authorized by the customer's bank or card provider. Should the customer fail the zip code security check, the transaction will also fail and no order will be created in your admin. Now, because the check occurs after the pre-authorization process, a charge associated with that pre-authorization will appear in the customer's bank statement. While that charge may seem to indicate that the payment was withdrawn from the customer's account, it will typically reflect as a pending transaction (or something of a similar nature). Pending transactions will naturally expire and the card provider will eventually remove them from the customer's billing statement if the transaction fails. The speed at which this is carried out is entirely dependent on the card provider and we are not able to influence or expedite the process, however, if no payout was recorded in your admin, you can assure the customer that the order they attempted to place is not a paid transaction.

To check if a failed zip code security check caused the order to turn into an abandoned checkout, you can check the history and the payment event recorded in the abandoned checkout. This can be done with the steps below.

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders > Abandoned checkouts.
2. Click the abandoned checkout in questions.
3. Scroll to History.
4. Click a payment event. The following details are what you'll see if the zip code security check failed. 

   

To complete this order, the customer will need to go through your website again or check out through the abandoned cart email, if they received one.

If your customer used a third-party or an external payment gateway, it's likely this happened because they weren't able to finish the checkout process. Third-party gateways typically redirect customers to their own platform to pay for the order. Once customers pay, they're redirected back to your checkout and this is the time where the gateway would send a response to us and a confirmation letting us know the order has been paid. If we don't receive that response (e.g. the customer closes the window before they're sent back to your checkout and sees the thank you page, their internet connection is interrupted during that process, or the third-party gateway takes too long to send the proper response) the order turns into an abandoned checkout.

If this is the case, I recommend checking your account with your third-party payment gateway and verifying if you received the payment. If you did, you can recreate the abandoned cart as a draft order, mark it as paid and fulfill the order from there. If you didn't receive the payment, the customer can go through your website again or check out through the abandoned cart email, if they received one.

I hope this clarifies your concern. Let me know if you have questions about what I've discussed and I'll help you further!

[djackson_vip]

This happens in our store all the time, and it is a pain in the you know what! When this happens, although the pending charges fall off eventually, it still creates a negative buying experience for the customer. And we have to take the time to explain it to him. According to our customers, our site is the only time they have experienced this. And I have also never experienced this when shopping online.

So am I safe in assuming that the only way to avoid this happening is by turning off the zip code verification? And doesn't that open us up to fraud?

[Cedcommerce]

Hello, @SarahChees,

We know that’s a difficult situation. 

However, If the payment is successfully deducted from the customer’s card while placing an order, then the order must have been listed in your order section. 

If not, you can check your bank transactions to verify if you have received any payment from that customer or are they lying. 

Otherwise, you can contact Shopify support to look into this case, and they will share all the details and fix the payment issue from the backend.

I hope it helps. Let us know if you have any other queries.

All the best,

Team CedCommerce