An error occurred while processing your payment

Technical Q&A
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1

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some insight into a persistent payment issue my store has been facing. Three months ago, I migrated to Shopify Payments and Shop Pay. Everything was smooth until last week, when we started seeing two specific issues:

  1. The Error: Customers receive the message: “An error occurred while processing your payment.”

  2. The “Phantom” Charge: Some customers are successfully charged (the amount shows as pending/deducted from their bank), but no order is generated in the Shopify admin. These funds are eventually reversed and sent back to the customer automatically.

Troubleshooting done so far:

  • Consistency: The error appears random. I’ve personally reproduced it using the same device, credit card, and Shopify account that worked just minutes prior.

  • Support: Shopify Support suggested the issue is on the customer/bank side, but since this is happening across multiple different customers and card types simultaneously, that seems unlikely.

Has anyone experienced a “handshake” issue between Shop Pay / Shopify payment and the checkout flow recently? Are there specific third-party apps (like upsells or inventory trackers) known to interfere with order creation?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

2

while most failed attempts are logged, a recent test by a team member—which resulted in a ‘cannot process payment’ error—never appeared in the records. Unlike other abandoned orders where I can see the history of failed attempts, this specific instance left no trace. I’m now concerned that my abandoned checkout data is incomplete and that I may be missing more of these ‘invisible’ failures.