Load Impact

We accept credit card payments using VISA and Mastercard. If you experience problems with payment, it may be due to a variety of factors. We urge you to get in touch with us if you can't seem to pay with your credit card, as we are interested to know what the most common problems are.

Common problems include:

- Mistyping the credit card number, your name, card expiry date or your security code.

There is a lot of information you have to give the payment service processor in order to make a payment, and it is easy to mistype something somewhere.

- 3Dsecure problems.

3Dsecure is a new security feature that when enabled, forces credit card holders to use a password when they make purchases on the Internet. If the payment page asks you for a password, it is probably because of this feature. Here is a question from a user:

"This could not be a bug, but when i try to make a purchase with my Australian mastercard or visa, it prompts me to enter my online banking password to authenticate the payment. This is very odd as even though the site is secure, i refuse to enter my online password to internet banking on a non banking site. I cant seem to find the link between paying with my credit card (CC) online and internet banking. Most of the time when i use my CC online, the payment is made and thats it. do you provide other payment options, even paypal as i really like to use your system but unable to use it. Any help or explanation would be much appreciated"

And a response from Jonas at Load Impact:

"The password requested is not the password to your bank, but rather a password you set at your bank. This is an extra security feature, called 3-D Secure, used by Visa and MasterCard for online credit card payments. You should also be able to see a phrase, also set at your bank, that verifies you are actually communicating with your bank rather than a scam site."

You can read more about 3-D Secure at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure
Your bank can tell you more about 3-D Secure as well.

- The risk check fails, causing the purchase to be denied.

Whenever a purchase is made, there is a risk calculation made to determine how (un)likely it is that the transaction is fraudulent or unauthorized. Credit card companies don't tell us exactly what parameters they look at when making these risk calculations, but it involves things such as recent transaction history etc. I.e. if someones credit card is used to make 1,000 purchases in a single day, that might be seen as extraordinary behaviour and result in future transactions on the same card being denied. There are probably a ton of factors being used to calculate risk, and we have seen people be denied purchasing a $199/month monthly subscription (with recurring charges), but then get OK when they instead bought a $49 day pass (one time fee). The user said he had money on his account, so it was likely due to a risk calculation that he was denied the $199/month purchase.

Last edited by Ragnar (2009-12-16 16:20:50)