ECMTuning - wiki

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<h1>Credit Card Process</h1> <div class="level1"> <p> It's not often, but every once in a while a customer will have problems processing an order on our website. After trying a few times, they'll e-mail us and tell us that their card has been charged multiple times and they want their money back. </p> <p> The problem is that they haven't actually been charged anything yet and we have no money of theirs to return. </p> <p> This page explains the general credit card processing flow so customers are more aware of what's actually going on and how to properly resolve issues they may run into. </p> <p> You can also get more details on all this stuff below off the following Wikipedia page (look in the <b>Confusion in online banking</b> section). </p> <p> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_hold" class="urlextern" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_hold" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_hold</a> </p> </div> <h2>Overview</h2> <div class="level2"> <p> The image below outlines the process here. It's basically: </p> <ol> <li class="level1"> Customer submits credit card information to our website, including credit card billing address</li> <li class="level1"> We submit this information to our credit card processor along with the customer-supplied billing address.</li> <li class="level1"> Our processor submits the credit card # and amount to the customer's bank for an authorization hold.</li> <li class="level1 node"> Once our processor has this authorization hold, they attempt to validate the billing address with the credit card bank.<ol> <li class="level2"> If that succeeds, our processor finishes the sale and the money transfers to our account</li> <li class="level2"> If that validation fails, our processor gives us a declined message</li> </ol> </li> </ol> <p> <a href="/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?tok=28c5e5&media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecmtuning.com%2Fimages%2Fforums%2Fccflow.gif" class="media" title="http://www.ecmtuning.com/images/forums/ccflow.gif"><img src="/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?tok=28c5e5&media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecmtuning.com%2Fimages%2Fforums%2Fccflow.gif" class="medialeft" alt="" /></a> </p> </div> <h2>Authorization Hold</h2> <div class="level2"> <p> The biggest problem with this "hold and commit" flow is that the authorization hold placed in step 3 above locks those funds in the customer's credit card account for some period of time <b>even if</b> the transaction (and actual transfer of funds) in step 4 fails. </p> <p> We have no control over this ourselves. The customer's credit card bank can clear the hold if the customer calls in about it. But it's really up to the customer's bank on how long that hold will stay in place before being cleared automatically. </p> <p> So if the customer just checks his available balance after one of these failed transaction, he will mistakenly get the impression the funds were transferred out of his account. But in reality, only a hold was placed. No funds transfer actually took place if the transaction failed. </p> </div> <h2>Resolution Steps</h2> <div class="level2"> <p> By <b>FAR</b> the best way to figure out why a transaction was declined is to call the credit card bank. Information is usually available on the back of the credit card. The bank can tell the customer exactly why a particular transaction was declined and can help to free up the authorization hold or can explain how to get the transaction to succeed. </p> <p> There's very little we can do on our end. The process is handled securely off site by our credit card processing service. We retain no information related to transactions on our site for security reasons. So we have no visibility into these failed transaction. </p> <p> Most often the problem with a failed transaction is the result of a mismatch in the credit card billing address and the address entered by the user. </p> </div>