Heads up: Problems making payments with some Visa cards

[Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com>]

Hi all,

In the three weeks since Tarsnap started taking credit cards directly
(i.e., not via Paypal), a pattern has developed involving failed payments
from Visa cards.  I don't know what is causing this problem -- the people
at Stripe (Tarsnap's credit card processor) are investigating -- but it
is happening with about 10% of Visa cards; Mastercard cards, in contrast,
always seem to work fine.

The symptoms are:
1. The credit card charge fails (you'll see an error message "An error
occurred [...]: Error charging provided credit card").
2. All I see in the logs provided by Stripe (and all that Stripe reports
having received from the card network) is a "generic decline".
3. In some cases the card issuer shows the charge as "authorized but not
completed", meaning that no money was charged to the card but a "hold"
was placed.  This sometimes shows up as a reduced "available credit" number,
and some banks may show this as a "pending transaction".

Obviously I'm hoping this gets straightened out soon; but I figure this sort
of glitch is the price Tarsnap pays for being part of Stripe's Canadian beta
-- if they hadn't invited Tarsnap into the beta, *nobody* would be able to
make direct credit card payments.  In the mean time, if you have problems
using a Visa card, please try using a Mastercard card (if you have one) or
paying via Paypal.

-- 
Colin Percival
Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve
Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid