If you ever dealt with customers claiming that you charged them, but their transactions show as "canceled/declined" on the dashboard and you didn't get those amounts in your bank account, then this solution article is for you!
This is a common issue and caused by many of the processors/banks, which they conducting the balance check when processing a transaction at the wrong stage of the transaction.
And this happens as some issuers bank that initially allowed CVV mismatch to authorize, should proceed the correct sequence (among other steps) as follows:
- Check account number
- Check CVV
- Check available balance
- Reserve transaction amount
- Send SMS notification
However, it seems that what some of the issuing banks actually do is:
- Check account number
- Check available balance
- Reserve transaction amount
- Send SMS notification
- Check CVV
Meaning that the balance is reserved (hold on the issuer bank side), and they send the deduction SMS notification to the customer, then according to security reasons the bank will not proceed ahead with this transaction, because of a CVV mismatch.
While in this case, it will be too late, and because they reject the transaction due to CVV there is no option for PayTabs to reverse it (as there is no transaction to reverse) so any amount reserved can’t be released and we have to wait for the issuing bank themselves to automatically release it after a few days.
You should know that the funds are never actually debited from the account, but they can have a hold put on them making them unavailable for other transactions. Customers get a notification of transactions via SMS even though we got a declining result. The transaction could even show up in their statement as a pending authorization.
What you need to do in this case is
Guide the cardholder/customer to follow up with the Card Issuing bank to check the status of this pending authorization.