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> (An example which is just a boggling fact about the world: what’s your finger-to-a-wind guesstimate about what percentage of credit card payments fail with er
by js2 8y ago
> (An example which is just a boggling fact about the world: what’s your finger-to-a-wind guesstimate about what percentage of credit card payments fail with error code I Don’t Know Sometimes Things Fail In Credit Card Land? Hint: it’s higher than you think. Those failed payments cost conversions at the margin. When Stripe fights that number down by a basis point, that creates value across our entire portfolio, forever.)
I have no idea what the percentage is but I recently had a decline I think may have been from Stripe itself.
A few months back I’d dropped my car off at the shop and tried to Lyft home. I’m a very infrequent Lyft/Uber user. Lyft refused to accept my payment. Tried with two different cards (Chase, AmEx) both directly, via Apple Pay and via PayPal. Couldn’t hail a car.
So then I try with Uber. Same thing! Payment rejected, no car for you.
I wrote to both Lyft and Uber customer support. Never heard back from Uber. Lyft claimed my card was denied (“It appears that the card is not working due to a decline from your bank. Because the information we receive about bank declines is very limited, you’ll need to reach out to your bank directly for more information as to why the transaction was denied.”) I contact both my card companies - they tell me there are no blocks on my card nor anything that would cause the payment to be rejected.
The only thing I could find Lyft/Uber had in common was they both used Stripe.
(But that doesn’t explain not being able to pay via Apple Pay/PayPal unless those somehow route through Stripe.)
Never did figure out what it was (“Jay, I had checked and verified that the last four of the card that you have provided is already added on this account. There shouldn't be any issues in requesting for a ride. If you had any issues with your Lyft request. Please kindly send a screen shot so that we will be able to see and rectify the issue.”) and haven’t had cause to use Lyft/Uber since.
This incident is the only time I can recall payments being rejected like that. I think Chase once temporarily blocked an Internet payment, sent me a notification immediately, I indicated the charge was legitimate, tried again and it went through.
Oh well. (I ended up getting a ride home in the shop’s customer service van.)
- d_v 8y agoNot sure about their Paypal integration but worth noting that with ApplePay, they're likely still using stripe as the processor (ApplePay generates an authorized payment token which is then passed to Stripe for processing). So if there was a Stripe problem, ApplePay being busted too makes sense.
- ikeboy 8y agoI'd guess half a percent? Can't imagine it being much higher?
- patio11 8y agoThat would have been close to my estimate prior to joining. The actual number is more than an order of magnitude higher, across the industry, for fifty years. Insert "this is fine" gif here. If anyone thinks "Oh wow that isn't fine" I'd encourage you to join the team working on it.
- epa 8y agoBank declines are 10-20% of total card volume, depending on industry.
- ikeboy 8y agoMost of those are going to be straightforward insufficient funds or fraud though, I'd assume?
- penagwin 8y agoDisclaimer: I'm not familiar with these specific numbers. Anecdotally I've had my own cards denied because I've reported my card missing and had to get new numbers. This is fairly common from what I've seen, many people I know have had issues because of this (late fees, etc.). Just another case I thought I'd add, as we sufficient funds and it wasn't fraud.
- panorama 8y agoI'm fairly certain that, unless they changed in the last couple years, Uber is using Braintree as their payments provider.
- js2 8y agoI think they use both according to some Googling I did at the tome. A common payment provider seems like the most likely explanation to me so unless Uber also uses Braintree that would rule it out. It's possible something about this purchase was triggering fraud detection on two completely independent systems, which would be dismaying since this was a legitimate charge.
- lstamour 8y agoI’ve had Apple Pay payments get rejected due to internet issues — make sure you’ve a solid LTE signal, not on dodgy wifi, and perhaps flip back to airplane mode temporarily next time it happens.
- js2 8y agoThanks, was on LTE. Had no trouble interacting with either app, adding payment method, using the Internet, etc. It was just the payment being rejected. I think this had to be a common payment provider issue, and who knows what fraud detection flags I was triggering for whatever reason.