An update from David Smith, Operations Manager at Inn Style
I don’t think that the banking industry actually really appreciated that accommodation owners handle card payments in a slightly different way than most other payment providers. It’s not quite as simple as buying something from Amazon, or paying for a monthly subscription to Country Life for example! And whilst we are seeing far less ‘card declines’ than we were, there are still instances where cards may fail…
As we support two different sorts of Payment Gateways (STRIPE and INN CHARGE) this can be doubly confusing, but hopefully this Blog will help you understand why you may see a ‘decline’.
Booking.com card details
If you are using Booking.com to send you card details to subsequently charge cards on arrival/departure, please note they do not SCA challenge these cards! So the card details may not work. Please request booking.com and Expedia take payment for you and send you a Virtual Credit Card (VCC) instead to allow you to take payment for the accommodation booked.
Cards with no monetary value
If you have stored a card with NO monetary value against it for a reservation taken before 14th March (STRIPE) or 7th April (INN CHARGE), then this may also be declined as no SCA challenge may have been completed at the time of booking/storing the card. In this instance you would need to send a payment request email for the customer to add their card details in again. But make sure you are requesting more than £30 in the subsequent payment request email to force the SCA challenge, so that the card can be used again in the future.
Moto payments
If you are still having issues after sending a payment request email, and you use STRIPE, you can request that Stripe turns on MOTO payments for you (where you can take card details manually over the phone), you can follow the guide below to request this.
Further to the above, if you are using Inn Charge however (through Cardstream) just click on TO PAY, and change the 0.0 value to the amount you want to charge (say £100) and this will facilitate a MOTO payment (and then you can use these card details again in the future).
Please ensure this hosted form is completed in FULL with the name and address details (as these too are used for SCA!) N.B. this should be as per their billing address as lodged with their card issuer, so Mr D C SMITH may not work if the card is named DAVID SMITH for example and 29 Mallard Cres. would need to be 29 Mallard Crescent.
The safest and most secure way is for a guest to complete a payment request email (with a monetary value) and not just store a card with 0.00 value – this is to ensure the SCA challenge is always completed. Taking a MOTO Payment is fine, but these are deemed by the banking industry to be more risky, and they will not cover you for fraudulent transactions/chargebacks whereas SCA challenged payments are protected.
We appreciate that these changes are frustrating, especially when dealing with elderly customers or those without email addresses, but where the correct steps are followed these payments sail though frictionless and with ease. Please remember that it is the card issuing bank that ‘decides’ if SCA must be complied with at the time the card details are stored, so you are more likely to get SCA accepted if a monetary value is charged over £30 rather than just ‘storing card details’ for charging later.
We’re here to help.
Have you got a question that we haven’t covered in this article? Get in touch with our team for the Support you need when it comes to understanding the change SCA has brought to the industry.