Asked for card details twice, then card declined.

[adrianhb1]

I've set up a standard PayPal button, the one with a yellow banner to log in to PayPal and a black one below to pay by debit or credit card.  A few people have reported problems such as being asked to log in in a loop but I can't get an accurate account of exactly what happened.

I tried a test transaction by clicking the black button.  It asked me to fill in typical card details, then sent me to another form with similar fields, some pre-populated with my previous answers.  After correctly filling this in, it said my card was declined - no other explanation.

This was a credit card that I have already attached to my PayPal account.  I normally have no credit on the account and when I pay using PayPal I think the only option given is to pay using the card - which works without problem.  Is it possible that the card was declined because PayPal could tell that it was attached to an account?  In other words, having set up card payment via a PayPal user login, I shouldn't and can't pay by card on PayPal as if I didn't have a PayPal account.

I tried a second time using the black button, but this time using a debit card that I'd never attached to my PayPal account.  This time the payment went through.

[adrianhb1]

OK then.  Maybe I need to ask a concrete question.

Was there a problem with PayPal affecting the UK, for a few days early this week, whereby people had to re enter some of their card details a second time?  And were cards being declined that weren't incorrect?

I've tried again with the black button, it asked the usual questions once, and passed me to my bank's validation - in other words behaved completely normally, unlike the last time.  Any thoughts on what was wrong before?

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi @adrianhb1,

Thank you for your participation in the PayPal Community Forum! I'm sorry to hear that you've been having issues with testing your button.

If the card is one in your name, especially one that has ever been attached to your account, using it to test your button on the same account would not be possible. It is not possible to cash advance from your card into your account, and even though you're only trying to test, that's essentially what it would end up being. Typically, the system would block that. If it allowed it the next time you tried it, that is the uncommon thing. Any payment would have to come from a different account, under a different person's name, with a payment method not associated with you, in order to work more consistently.

I hope this helps clarify!

Olivia

[adrianhb1]

Thanks Olivia

No, the button is one I set up for another user.  I haven't tried again to pay via the black button using a card that was attached to the "yellow button" PayPal account, but no doubt you'd say if this was something that was invalid.

In any case there have been no more reports of problems and I suspect this was just a random occurrence of a few user errors at around the same time.