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
