What To Do if Your Credit Card Was Declined

We recognize that there's nothing more frustrating than having your card declined when attempting to make a payment.  From the Paper.li point of view, it is in our interests to ensure that valid, non-fraudulent transactions are processed without a hitch. However, it's worth noting that some declines are due to checks put in place by your credit card bank to prevent fraud and are in your interest, however inconvenient they may be.    

A credit card decline can happen for any number of reasons. However, most common reasons (and our suggestions to resolve) are found below.

Mismatched information or expired card

• Decline due to expired card, mismatched CVV

Sign into your Billing Dashboard (link is found at bottom of any invoice) to verify that your billing information is correct and that your card has not expired.

Fraud checks put in place by issuing bank

• Each card issuing bank will have a different algorithm to detect and prevent fraud.  Some common checks may be:
• No history of international purchase:  Although all transactions are in US dollars, Paper.li is located in Lausanne Switzerland.  If you have never made a purchase outside of a geographic area, it's possible that your bank has flagged the transaction.
• No history of online purchase:  It's possible that if you have never purchased something online, your bank has flagged the transaction as fraudulent.
• Multiple purchases from different locations at the same time
• Card has been determined or reported stolen
• Multiple transactions in a relatively small space of time:  If you have multiple Pro subscriptions, that all renew in a small timeframe, this could trigger the transactions as being flagged as fraudulent.

In these cases, we suggest you contact your credit card company and start by asking if the transaction in question can be seen on their system.  If the bank can see the transaction, you can ask if the transaction was blocked by the bank and if so, request that they release the block.  Normally, once you clear the transaction with the credit card company, the next time the card is charged, the charge will go through.  

Insufficient Funds

• An obvious cause of decline is that you may not realize that the card balance is over its limit.

Contact your credit card company to confirm that this is not the case.  

Payment gateway or Credit Card issuer system is down

• In some rare cases, the payment gateway (the service that securely sends your bank information to the card issuer to request approval) or the Credit Card issuer system was down at the time of the transaction.  

You can contact your credit card company and start by asking if the transaction in question can be seen on their system.  If they are not able to see the transaction, it's possible that either the credit card issuer system or the payment gateway system was down at the moment of the transaction.  Although rare, this can happen.

The approval/disapproval does not come directly from Paper.li.  We only communicate the message received from the card vendor.

Please note: We currently do accept Visa, Master Card, American Express, Diners Club and JCB-- and PayPal.