Hi everyone,
Some of you may have seen the following error when trying to confirm your credit card with the $1.95 verification charge:
"The Card Verification System used by PayPal is currently unavailable"
This error message is seen when the card issuer has denied our attempts to confirm your card.
You may ask, "But if that's the case, why do I see a $1 line item on my credit card statement?"
Good question! The $1 amounts are called authorizations. An authorization is a process which checks to make sure that the card is active. There is no code involved with an authorization. Authorizations expire within a few days, and the funds are released for your use automatically. The authorization is an entirely different process from the confirmation, which checks to make sure that there is an identity match. If you get the error described and do not see a charge for $1.95, then that means that your card issuer has denied our attempts to confirm your card.
While this can happen for a variety of reasons, there are two more common reasons that you can check into:
One is to check and make sure that you have credit available on the card. If the card does not have the capability to accommodate the $1.95 test transaction as well as the previously mentioned $1 authorization holds, your card issuer will likely decline our attempt.
Another of the most common issues is that there could be a name or address mismatch. Please make sure that your name, address and all other data matches exactly on record with PayPal and with the card issuing bank. Even minor discrepancies such as abbreviations or misspellings may cause a mismatch. Sometimes, as silly as it may sound, the mismatch might be something as minor as the spelling of "street" in one place and "st." in the other, or "avenue" vs "ave", etc.
If there's available credit and all of the information matches but this error still occurs, please contact the card issuer to ask about the reason for the decline. If the confirmation continues to be declined by the card issuer, the card will be unable to be confirmed on PayPal. In that case, another card should be tried.
I hope this helps!
- Olivia
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