There are several reasons why a payment might be declined when submitting a payment. In this article, we’ll explain the common reasons why payments fail and how to resolve them:

• Insufficient funds

• Authorization required

• Incorrect billing information

• Incorrect payment information

• High risk and fraud

Insufficient funds

This error occurs when your payment method does not have the balance necessary to cover the payment.

• Check your bank account balance. Sometimes an unexpected or scheduled charge can leave your remaining balance lower than usual.

• Contact your bank or financial institution to resolve the issue.

• Try using a different payment method.

If your account has a high enough balance to accept the charges, including tax, check both your payment information as well as your billing information. (Taxes in the United States are not included in the subscription price.)

Authorization required

Your bank may need you to authorize the charges through their web service if such a feature is available. Please use this option to authorize your charges. You can also contact your bank to authorize the charges. To avoid recurring issues, please also ask your bank to authorize charges from Shadow in the future by default.

Incorrect billing information

Payments can fail if the billing information you’ve provided doesn’t match the billing information registered to your payment method.

• Make sure your full address, including the city and zip code, has been entered correctly. This information will be verified with your bank and must match.

• Choose the right country and state to check out. This information is also verified with your bank.

  • To change your country or state, start the checkout process over.

Incorrect payment information

Sometimes, your bank may decline the payment without disclosing the reason to Shadow. Check your bank account to ensure you have sufficient funds and confirm your billing information is correct.

You can also:

• Make sure the card has not expired.

• Find out if your bank has issued a new card to you.

• Check the CVV, card number, IBAN, expiration date, or other payment credentials and try again.

• Try using an alternative payment method to see if the charge is successful.

• Read the High risk and fraud section of this article.

High risk and fraud

At Shadow, we use Stripe for all payment processing and management. Stripe does not share your payment information with us, and you can feel secure knowing your information is safe with a PCI-compliant payment processor. Stripe's platform also offers fraud detection and helps us block suspicious charges.

If you've contacted your bank and believe your payment has been blocked, here are some things you can do to resolve the issue.

Turn off any services that can obscure your IP address

Using a VPN, proxy server, or submitting your payment from behind a network firewall can cause your payment to fail.

Use a different payment method

Stripe compares payment activity with other merchants using Stripe. If Stripe detects any suspicious activity related to your charges, the payment will likely be blocked. We cannot disclose the reason, make exceptions, or offer advice in such situations. Accepting a fraudulent charge often comes with multiple risks that impact our business, and these decisions cannot be overturned, even in the event of a false positive.

Try your payment again later

If you have tried submitting your payment too many times, this will trigger a period of unavailability during which any payment will be rejected, due to a rate limiter*1. If you experience this issue, try processing your payment again 24 hours after your last attempt.

*1 Rate Limiter: A rate limiter sets the number of times an event such as a payment request can occur before it is no longer allowed, in order to protect a service from being overused.