When a donor's contribution submission does not succeed, they will see one of the following error messages listed in the chart below.
The goal of these messages is to provide useful information to the donor to correct their submission while also protecting your forms from fraud. Attackers using a form to test stolen credit cards will use any information returned in an error message to determine the full details of the stolen credit card, so we are not able to provide specific details on why the submission failed.
| Failure Reason | Donor-Facing Error Message | Additional Information |
| Processor declined the charge | There was a problem processing your payment. Please contact your bank for more information. | This occurs if the attempted transaction was declined by the donor's bank. The donor would need to contact their bank if they believe this occurred in error. |
| CVV validation failed | You have entered incorrect credit card information. Please check this information and try again. | |
| Invalid Expiration date | You have entered incorrect credit card information. Please check this information and try again. | |
| AVS (address verification services) validation failed | You have entered incorrect billing address information. Please check this information and try again. | |
| Likely duplicate charge detected and blocked | Your payment has not been processed because a payment with identical information was submitted very recently. Please wait one minute if you would like to try again. | This occurs if we see a donor submit an identical submission within a short time of a successful submission. We will block the subsequent charge to prevent against donors being accidentally double charged. This block lasts one minute, so if this is a legitimate transaction, please tell the donor to try again. |
| Unknown processor failure | There was a problem processing your payment. Please try again and contact us for assistance if the problem continues. | This can occur for a variety reasons, such as incorrect gateway credentials or other improperly formatted information. We recommend looking up the payment in your merchant account vendor's portal (such as Paragon) and reaching out to us if you have further questions after speaking with them. |
| Likely fraud detected and blocked | There was a complication processing your payment. Please contact us for assistance. | This occurs if our third-party fraud prevention service identifies this transaction as fraudulent. These transactions are blocked on the form to limit the impact of fraudulent transactions on you organization. |
Once a donor has successfully submitted their contribution, the transaction will attempt to be settled by the payment processor. You can track the settlement status by using the Reconciliation Report or one of the General Ledger reports.
Read more about tracking the settlement status on contributions
How do I troubleshoot : contribution-related error messages? | How does : contribution-related error messages work in EveryAction? | Why can't I troubleshoot : contribution-related error messages? | Where do I troubleshoot : contribution-related error messages in EveryAction? | What is : contribution-related error messages in EveryAction? | How to troubleshoot : contribution-related error messages? | Can I troubleshoot : contribution-related error messages in EveryAction?