Question

Paypal Virtual Terminal Merchant - Customers Visa declinced? Why?

Asked by: JReam

Paypal Virtual Terminal Merchant - Customer Visa declinced?  

We're trying to start accepting Visa/MC at our business.  We opened a Paypal Virtual Terminal Merchant account a few months ago because we've been using Paypal/Ebay for years buying things and felt comfortable with Paypal.    We have successfully tested Visa transactions of around $10 with our personal credit cards.    So far so good.    Problem:  Our first few real Visa charge attempts have all been rejected with the error:  "15005 - Gateway decline: Your card issuer declined this transaction, not Paypal. Ask your buyer for another card.".   Most of our transaction will be in the $1000-$2000 range.    Over the last couple of weeks we've tried maybe 3 or 4 times to use a customer's Visa at their request, and everytime we get the 15005 error.  

I'm starting to think that Paypal has been Blacklisted by most Credit Card issuing banks and these issuers will only approve nickle & dime transactions from Paypal Virtual Terminal.    Paypal tech support points the finger at the 'issuer', but I can't believe we'd get nailed by this 5 out of our first 5 attempts.    Maybe Paypal is blacklisted, especially when its over x dollars, and only virtual terminal accounts for online merchants, and if so Paypal probably wouldn't tell us as they'd rather have us tell cardholders to go back to their issuing banks and get paypal approved, I'm just thinking out load.  

Should we give up on Paypal Virtual Terminal Merchant and look at the other merchant providers such as Flagship and Merchant Warehouse?



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Asked On
2009-11-06 at 14:30:17ID24879509
Topics

E-Commerce

,

Payment Processing Recommendation and Integrating

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: Kurt4949Posted on 2009-11-16 at 07:11:38ID: 25830742

We use paypal website payments pro and never had that problem.  However, our transactions are usually less than $200.  Are you sure the cards in question have enough credit for the purchase?  We have had lots of cards declined but it's usually because the customer used the wrong address\zip code.  

If you ask your customer for the 800 number on the back of the card, you should be able to call the card issuer and ask why it's being declined.

 

by: JReamPosted on 2009-11-16 at 07:25:49ID: 31651260

We finally discovered that Paypal itself was rejecting our transactions due to a fairly low upper limit transaction amount, only for new accounts during a probation period I guess.  The problem which cost us so much time and anguish was that the Paypal rejection screens showed INCORRECT denials by the issuer bank, which was never the case.  So we got burnt by Paypal policies that we didn't know about on top of incorrect messages from rejected transactions.    We have since opened up a merchant account thru one of the big players, First Data, so far so good.

 

by: Kurt4949Posted on 2009-11-16 at 07:41:14ID: 25831015

Glad you figured out what the issue was.  I was thinking about the a transaction limit but since you did talk to PayPal support I didn't mention it.  Apparently, the rep you spoke with didn't know what they were talking about.  Thanks for the points.

 

by: JReamPosted on 2009-11-16 at 07:48:01ID: 25831090

Correct, no one we spoke to at Paypal had a clue, they kept saying it was the Issuer bank.  Wrong.  They really need to fix their VT software, if the website had given us a correct clue as to the real reason for rejection early on then we could have addressed that issue and we'd probably still be with Paypal.   Paypal is narrowly focused primarily for eBay merchants, which is fine and all, but the VT webpages, policies, and customer support need work.    

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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