thread Re: Payment Card Validation Failed. in Payments Troubleshooting

Payment Card Validation Failed.

ICTPaisley — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 13:18:31 GMT

Hi,

my customers recently have been getting this message when trying to pay for goods. “Payment card validation failed”

I have tried on two of my own cards to see if it works for myself and it worked on 1 out of 2.

it appears where it shows the last 4 card digits, expiry date, last 3 digits, and post code.

Any ideas why this is happening?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

tranguyen — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 10:22:38 GMT

Hi @ICTPaisley, thanks for bringing this to our attention! This isn't an error message I've come across before so I can definitely check with the team and see if they have more information. Before I do so, can you let me know:

Is this happening when you paid via the Square Point of Sale app, Virtual Terminal, Invoices or on the website?
Do you have a screenshot of the error message (without the card details) by any chance?
Was the customer able to reach out to their bank and confirm everything was okay with their card?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

ICTPaisley — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 10:50:58 GMT

This is the screenshot that he sent me, I’ve tried it on two of my cards at home and only worked with one of them. I think it might have something to do with the Post code but unsure?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

ICTPaisley — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 10:52:50 GMT

Sorry I should have said, this is when paying on the website through Weebly

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

tranguyen — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 14:44:41 GMT

Thanks for the additional information and the screenshot @ICTPaisley. If the information entered does not match what the bank has on filed that can cause a decline as well. In this case, since you've tested a payment yourself and also experienced the same issue, I'm going to query it with our teams and see if they have come across this before and if they can investigate further.

To confirm, these declines only happened yesterday, is that correct?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

ICTPaisley — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 15:01:34 GMT

Thanks for your reply, I’ve known about the issue a couple times in the last few weeks. It wasn’t frequent enough for me to think there was any big issue. However it happened twice yesterday which is why I tried it myself and I also had the issue. I eventually got it to work so it may be something to do with the post code being case sensitive or requiring a space in between?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

tranguyen — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 17:04:03 GMT

It's best to ensure that the postal code is in all cap and that there isn't a space between or after the postcode. I've flagged this to our team as well so they can investigate further and see if there are anything else they notice.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

MJD — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 15:16:03 GMT

I faced this issue at the beginning of the month one time, and at the beginning of the year, it seems to work when no spaces are applied to the billing postcode and CAPS LOCK is on! would be good if spaces could be ignored in this box as well as it no longer being cases sensitive.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

ICTPaisley — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 20:19:07 GMT

Hi, this has happened again. My customer has recently purchased from me successfully and now two weeks later is struggling, he is getting the same error code as before. He has tried every variation of Postcode and nothing has worked for him.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

MJD — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 20:26:47 GMT

Usually the only way to easily fix this is to write the postcode all lowercase with no spaces, has this has been attempted? I face the same issue sometimes

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

ICTPaisley — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 20:59:07 GMT

I’ve tested it myself tonight and it has worked but still no success for him unfortunately. Thanks for your help though.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

Helen — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 22:09:26 GMT

@ICTPaisley So sorry to hear this happened again. Has your customer tried switching to another browser (e.g from Safari to Chrome or from Chrome to Firefox) or clearing their browsing history? I've asked our Online Store specialist for any other tips and I'll share anything helpful when they've had a chance to have a look.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

Kateandmae — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 15:17:29 GMT

The same thing is happening to my site I've lost so many customers to this!

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

tranguyen — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 16:55:06 GMT

Really sorry to hear your customers are experiencing this issue as well @Kateandmae!

If the customers have confirmed all their details are correct, including the postal code and they have tried making payments on different browsers but still encounter the same error message, it's something we can definitely take a further look into.

To make sure we can investigate this thoroughly, please contact our Support team directly as they'll be able to look at account-specific details and check the individual transaction to understand the decline better.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

SaraB — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 11:30:44 GMT

Hi, i have had the same issue. i hate to think how many issues and sale losses ive had but havent been told about. im lucky its a friend trying to buy.

'payment card validation failed.

super frustrating :(.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

tranguyen — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 13:53:39 GMT

Hi @SaraB, I'm so sorry to hear your customers are seeing this error as well.

As mentioned above, if the customers have confirmed all their details are correct, including the postal code and they have tried making payments on different browsers but still encounter the same error message, it's something we can definitely take a further look into.

The best course of action is to contact our Support team directly as they'll be able to look at account-specific details and check the individual transaction to understand the decline better. This will ensure that we can investigate the issue thoroughly on our end.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

JoeSargent — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 09:21:55 GMT

I have the same problem where customers checking out through the website start entering their address, square then suggests the address from their database but it always truncates the post code, square displays only the first 4 characters of the UK post code. If the customers try to then manually enter the full, correct post code square returns the message 'Selected shipping method is no longer available, please select a new shipping method' and the customers either send me a complaint e-mail or give up.

This has been an issue for a couple of months now, please can you fix this issue before we loose more customers?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

tranguyen — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 14:01:28 GMT

Hey @JoeSargent, sorry to hear you're experiencing this issue!

The error message you mentioned is different from the error message reported in this thread. I've sent you a DM there just to get a bit more information as it sounds like a different issue we're currently tracking.

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

Karamsingh — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 19:29:37 GMT

Hi Joe, I am having the same issue is. by any chance are you and your customer using iPhones safari for you web browsing? Also does you Apple Pay work when you want to checkout?

Re: Payment Card Validation Failed.

JoeSargent — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 20:08:44 GMT

I have tried it in Google chrome browser and on my iPhone and get the same problem. I have turned off the google pay and apple functionality because it was having similar problems.