Why Do I See Failed Transactions & What Do the Errors Mean?
Written By Stefan S.
Last updated 5 months ago
Many new PayKickstart vendors are initially concerned when they notice failed transactions on the Transactions page.
However, it’s important to understand that this is entirely normal. Unlike many other shopping cart platforms, PayKickstart provides deeper visibility into transaction activity, offering insights that may not have been available with other systems.
Because our goal is to help you grow your business, we prioritize full transparency for every transaction, successful or not.
On average, around 15% of customer transactions may fail for various reasons. Most commonly, these failures occur due to incorrect billing information (e.g., an invalid expiration date, credit card number, or CVV code). In many cases, the customer corrects the issue and completes the purchase successfully once notified of the error.
We display both the failed and successful transaction attempts, along with detailed explanations for why each failure occurred. These failure reasons are pulled directly from your Payment Gateway and can be viewed in the Transaction Details section.
Here’s an example of what that information might look like.
Handling Failed Transactions
Note:
When a transaction fails, PayKickstart automatically takes steps to help recover the sale.
If the customer has not completed a successful purchase within 5–10 minutes of the failed attempt, we will send a Payment Failed: Pending Order reminder email encouraging them to try again.
That email looks something like this:
Handling Failed Rebill Transactions
Whenever a rebill/recurring transaction fails, PayKickstart will again do its best to try and save the sale. Which means an email will be sent out to the customer to Update their Billing Details.
You can set up the frequency schedule for the Subscription Saver by going to your Platform Settings. Locate Subscriptions, and then you can adjust how you want PayKickstart to handle failed rebills.
If you choose to send out an email reminder to Update Billing Details, the customer will be sent an email with a link to update. They will click on the link and will be taken to a page that looks like this to update their subscription.
Depending on your Dunning configuration on the Platform Settings page, you may see the same transaction in the Failed Transaction list a few times, as we can try up to 4 times to charge the billing details we have on file.
More info about PayPal Failed Transaction Error Codes.
More information about Stripe Failed Transaction Error Codes.
More Information about Braintree Failed Transaction Error Codes
More info about Authorize.net Failed Transaction Error Codes.
More info about Easy Pay Direct Failed Transaction Error Codes.