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Ask HN: Stripe payments being declined for existing customers, what can I do?

4 points by jerrygoyal ↗ HN
We have noticed that many cards are being declined (with generic "card_declined" error code) even for existing customers whose payments initially went through. This issue has started occurring with different banks in various countries. It has been happening since September 20, and we are losing our existing subscriptions. Stripe support said they can't do anything about it. Has anyone else experienced this? What can I do in this situation?

5 comments

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immibis
Tell your customers to update their billing info and then cancel their service if they don't?
jerrygoyal
I reached out to some of our customers, and they said that they can still use that card for other service providers.
gtvwill
So it might not be on stripes end. We as consumers regularly use payment systems that generate a unique card number for subscription services. Then we load up a card with whatever is needed for one month of the subscription service then just don't ever add money to it again. This way we can make use of the first month bonuses or reductions/free products companies provide for initial 1 month get em into the system sales tactics they use but don't have to worry about actually canceling the service once a month's up. The card just bounces and declines payments until it ceases to exist.

You might be experiencing the company end of this...for us the consumer it's easier to do this than it is to keep track of canceling the service after 1 month and also less effort.

jerrygoyal
Thank you for your comment. However, our situation is a bit different. We are noticing that cards with existing subscriptions as old as nine months are suddenly being declined. Some of our customers have reached out to us, mentioning that they can still use their cards for other services.
lancecotingkeh
I had the same experience at my previous startup and I ended up going down a rabbit hole of research and testing. I discovered there is this concept of "payment orchestration" which allows you to retry failed payments on other payment processors.

I learned that Stripe is one of the most conservative payment processors (to protect its reputation with card issuers like Visa and Mastercard), and typically has a higher payment decline rate than other processors. My recommendation is to retry these failed payments in another payment processor like Checkout.com, Airwallex, or Adyen if you're big enough.

Side note, after learning how big of a problem this is, I started a company called OpenPay (getopenpay.com) to solve this exact issue. We've helped hundreds of customers like yourself reduce their payment decline rates. Feel free to reach out to me at lance [at] getopenpay.com