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Event Manager: Receive Payments
Charge On Approval - Handling Declined Credit Cards
Charge On Approval - Handling Declined Credit Cards

Learn how to change the Credit Card provided by the registrant if a card is declined when approving a deferred payment.

Updated over a week ago


When using the Charge on Approval feature (Manual Approval Payment Mode is set to Charge registrant on approval) it's possible that the credit card processing may fail when you attempt to later approve and charge the registrant. A common approval failure can be caused if the supplied credit card no longer has sufficient funds. The exact reason for failure will be displayed at the time of approval and, depending on the failure, the solutions discussed below may help to resolve the failed transaction.

Depending on the type of failure, the solution could be as simple as just approving the registration again at a later time. In some cases, such as a restriction applied by the cardholder's issuing bank, it may be necessary to contact the cardholder to ask them to investigate the restriction with their financial institution. Such restrictions can be applied by issuing banks for reasons that have nothing to do with the registration charge (e.g. spending limits, purchase category restrictions, etc.). Once resolved by the registrant, the registration can then be approved and the payment processed. 

Using a different credit card

In some cases, the registrant may need to make the payment with a different credit card.

In this case, you have two options:

  1. Ask the registrant to sign up again with the new credit card.

  2. Manually collect new card details and update the payment details for the registrant from your Stripe Dashboard.

To proceed with Option 2, you may follow the steps below.

How to add a new default Credit Card to a Customer in your Stripe Account

Go to your Stripe dashboard and log in using the Username and Password for your event's Stripe account.

  1. Locate the Stripe Customer Id. Go to the Registration section > Registrants tab > Edit the desired registrant > Payments tab. Copy the Stripe Customer Id. The id will start with "cus_".

  2. Go to your Stripe Dashboard (https://dashboard.stripe.com) and sign in using a Stripe Account that is connected to your event. If you have multiple Stripe Accounts, make sure you select the correct Stripe account.

  3. Click the Customers menu item.

  4. Paste the Stripe Customer Id into the Search box and click Jump to customer... to open the Customer object associated with the registration.

  5. In the Payment methods section, you will see the credit card supplied at the time of registration listed as the DEFAULT payment source for this customer.

    NOTE: For security reasons, the complete credit card information for a credit card supplied by the customer during the registration process is not available in Stripe. Once new credit card details are added to Stripe, they will no longer be available to view. Handling credit card details is risky and appropriate care should be taken when manually entering credit cards in Stripe to ensure the credit card details you collect are kept secure.

  6. Before proceeding, you will need to contact the registrant to collect the new card payment details that you will enter in the following steps.

    NOTE: We recommend collecting credit card details over a secure communication channel (e.g. phone) and that you do not keep these details once you have updated the card details in the following steps.

  7. To add a new credit card, click Add > Add card link and enter the new Card #, Expiry Date, CVC details, and ZIP details, and click Add card.

  8. After entering the card details and If the credit card entered is valid, the card will be added to the list of Cards for this customer.

  9. The original card will still be tagged as Default.  Since ClearEvent charges will be applied to the customer's Default card, you must make the newly added card the Default. To do this, click on the "..." button for the newly added card and select Set as default.

  10. You may optionally wish to delete the old card from the Customer object to avoid any future confusion.

  11. After updating the Customer record in Stripe, return to the Payments tab in ClearEvent and click Approve & Charge Participant.

     

  12. If there are no issues with the customer's new credit card, the payment will be processed and the registrant's payment details will be updated accordingly in ClearEvent.

NOTE: Any subsequent refunds made for this payment will be processed with the credit card associated with the successful payment, not the credit card initially entered by the buyer/registrant at the time of registration submission.

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