Why do credit card charges fail?
Locals uses Stripe as it's payment system to process all credit card transactions made from the web. There are 3 general reasons why we fail to charge your credit card, which will cause your subscription to be canceled or fail to start.
When creating a new subscription, Stripe will not always know whether or not the information you initially entered is correct. It communicates with your bank after the information is entered and sometimes, it will fail to process because the bank tells Stripe that the payment information was incorrect (i.e. wrong CVC, expiration, etc).
You can fix this by submitting the payment information again on the subscription page. You will not be double charged since the first transaction never went through.
You may have an existing subscription with an old credit card that needs updating. Note: if your subscription has expired, you cannot update the credit card. You need to create a new subscription instead.
To update your credit card, go to the Manage Support page of the community in question and click the pencil icon next to "Credit Card" under Payment method to update your credit card information. If it fails, your subscription is cancelled and you will have to start a new one.
There can be several reasons why a bank refused to process the payment but the most common ones are that they flagged the payment as fraud or that you have insufficient funds.
The best way to get to the bottom of this is to contact your bank to see if they held any payments and resolve any issues before applying for a new subscription.
The third reason is more ambiguous and it is unfortunately something we do not have further information to provide you with. Stripe has filters built into their platform that will block payments due to high risk and other attributes on their end. They may also not support certain cards which may cause the payment to fail or not even go through. The only thing we can suggest if you still want to support is try another card (if available) or do it via our Locals coins method on the Locals app. You can purchase the coins with any method supported by your App Store and give the coins to the creators as an alternative method of payment.
You can download the Locals app here:
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/locals-com/id1511032007
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.locals.localsapp
1. Wrong payment information
When creating a new subscription, Stripe will not always know whether or not the information you initially entered is correct. It communicates with your bank after the information is entered and sometimes, it will fail to process because the bank tells Stripe that the payment information was incorrect (i.e. wrong CVC, expiration, etc).
You can fix this by submitting the payment information again on the subscription page. You will not be double charged since the first transaction never went through.
You may have an existing subscription with an old credit card that needs updating. Note: if your subscription has expired, you cannot update the credit card. You need to create a new subscription instead.
To update your credit card, go to the Manage Support page of the community in question and click the pencil icon next to "Credit Card" under Payment method to update your credit card information. If it fails, your subscription is cancelled and you will have to start a new one.
2. Bank refusing to process the payment.
There can be several reasons why a bank refused to process the payment but the most common ones are that they flagged the payment as fraud or that you have insufficient funds.
The best way to get to the bottom of this is to contact your bank to see if they held any payments and resolve any issues before applying for a new subscription.
3. Stripe is not accepting your payment method.
The third reason is more ambiguous and it is unfortunately something we do not have further information to provide you with. Stripe has filters built into their platform that will block payments due to high risk and other attributes on their end. They may also not support certain cards which may cause the payment to fail or not even go through. The only thing we can suggest if you still want to support is try another card (if available) or do it via our Locals coins method on the Locals app. You can purchase the coins with any method supported by your App Store and give the coins to the creators as an alternative method of payment.
You can download the Locals app here:
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/locals-com/id1511032007
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.locals.localsapp
Updated on: 18/06/2021