Why are some cards being declined on Inn Charge?

With the SCA and PSD2 regulation now in full effect, some property owners are seeing some cards being declined. There can be multiple reasons for this, some of these are below but the list is by no means exhaustive. It is important to note that it is the acquirer or cardholder’s bank declining the payment and not Inn Style.

Reasons for cards being declined:

1. The customer’s card must be registered with their bank to allow 3DS checks to take place, their bank must have an up to date mobile number to allow an authentication code or request to be sent to them.  If they do not have a mobile phone they should contact their bank to ask how they authenticate 3DS challenged payments.
2. When completing the hosted form on Inn Charge – The correct cardholder’s name, address AND postcode must be completed in FULL – AND as their bank holds their address details: i.e. “Mrs. J B McColl” will be verified but “JB McColl” would not and will be declined, as would “17 Blackmore Road” against “17 Black More Road”, etc.
3. If the customer has made an online booking and has not completed their name, address and postcode in full in the payment window, the card may still be verified, but it may not accept payment when the time comes.
4. Your Merchant Category Code (MCC) must be set in preferences within the MMS system correctly. This must match what your acquirer has (most of these are set as 7011 – but if in doubt please ask your acquirer (like global payments, Worldpay, Elavon, etc.) to confirm your MCC).
5. Your Website address must match your settings in the MMS system – this is found in account contacts.
6. If card details have been stored previously and tokenised, these still may be declined by the cardholder’s bank if their risk score is high at the time of processing the request. Especially if the name, address and postcode were not stored at the time.

What should I do if a payment is declined?

1. Often, the easiest way to collect payment is by sending a payment request email to the customer, or you may request them to send you a BACS payment instead.
2. If you have a PDQ terminal at your property, you may wish to take the payment over the phone instead and mark this as paid within the reservation. This is called a MOTO payment and is not covered by the SCA regulations, so is more likely to succeed. But naturally, you would not be covered for fraudulent card use as the bank will not accept liability for MOTO transactions.

I received card details via Booking.com and I can’t take a payment? What should I do?

If you are not using one of Booking.com’s payment solutions, you will receive the card details into Inn Style, but these will not have gone through any SCA security checks. This could result in you seeing declined payments on attempting to charge these cards.

If you find the payment is declined, you can either:

1. Mark the card as Invalid, however, it is likely that it will result in another card being sent that also cannot be charged. 
2. Request an alternative payment method from the guest directly and either attempt to take payment via the hosted form or through a PDQ terminal directly.

We recommend you consider using one of Booking.com’s payment solutions to facilitate payments on their site.

Booking.com has two options you can choose from:

1. One option is that guests can only pay online, and payments will be made to you via a BACS transfer.
2. The second option is where guests can choose to pay online or at the property. If guests pay online, then the money will be sent to us via a virtual card. Virtual cards are not subject to any SCA checks so there will be no issue charging them. If the guest chooses to pay at the property, the card details we receive may not be able to be charged due to SCA card checks.

The key benefit of Booking.com collecting payments on your behalf is that it attracts a wider range of guests, as they will be able to pay via a host of different payment methods including PayPal. Their statistics show that guests who have paid in full are less likely to cancel or not show up, resulting in more revenue for your business.

Click here to find out more about Booking.com payments.

If Booking.com take the payment at the time of booking and send Virtual Card Details, what do I do?

1. As Booking.com have taken payment already, the onus is on them to ensure SCA was attempted. Therefore, Virtual Cards (VCC) are exempt from SCA requests on Inn Charge and these should process as normal.
2. We recommend Booking.com takes the payments on your behalf to guarantee funds should a ‘no show’ occur.  Please contact them directly to facilitate this.

If Booking.com take the payment at the time of booking and BACS the payment to me after the guest has stayed, what do I do?

1. As the payment is BACS to you, you do not need to do anything further.

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.