How to review credit card declines for your members?

As a group creator or billing manager, you can assist your members with declined charges. Here's how you can review the declined state:

1. Navigate to the Member that has the "Declined" label in red. Click on Membership Settings.

2. Click on the Payment tab, and then click on the Invoice that has been declined.

3. Upon opening the invoice, you'd be able to review why the card was declined. You'd also see how many payment retries Skool has already done, out of the total. Additionally, you'll also see a way to manually retry the charge on your end.

Members see the same error message on their end as well. They will see it whilst signing up or whilst changing plans. They also see it during the recurring billing charge, with a prompt to update the billing method.

Typical reasons we see:

Generic decline or Charge declined by the Issuing Bank:

• Some banks block certain online or international transactions by default—if the card number, expiration date, CVC, and zip/postal code look correct, please contact your bank or card provider.
• Complete any 3D Secure / Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) prompts: allow pop-ups/redirects and disable ad/pop-up blockers (and VPNs if applicable). If you see errors like “authentication required,” “card may be invalid or authentication may be needed,” or “3D Secure attempt failed,” try an incognito window or a different browser/device/network, and complete the bank’s OTP/app approval without closing or refreshing the checkout. If no prompt appears or it keeps failing, contact your bank to enable/approve 3DS/SCA for online, recurring, or international e-commerce transactions, or try a different card.

Note: We don’t receive detailed decline reasons from banks, so contacting them directly is often the quickest way to resolve payment issues, rather than contacting Skool Support.

Do not honor:

• The member needs to contact their card issuer and ask them to whitelist the charge for the SKOOL merchant.
• They also need to allow foreign charges if they are paying from outside the United States.

Insufficient funds:

• Verify that your card number, expiration date, CVC, and zip/postal code are correct.
• The member either needs to update their debit card to allow for funds or double-check their credit limit. A pending charge from a different merchant will be counted towards their credit limit, thus declining the Skool charge.
• A different payment method entirely, issued by a different bank, should work.

Card not supported:

• Since most Skool charges are recurring, there's a chance that not all bank-issued cards are supported. It's recommended for members to try using Visa, MasterCard, or Amex cards. Prepaid cards aren't supported.

Card velocity exceeded:

• The member has exceeded the balance, credit limit, or transaction amount limit available on their card. It's recommended for them to try again in 24 hours.

Invalid account:

• The card, or the account the card is connected to, is invalid or has been closed. The member is recommended to add a different card or update the card number.

Members have the option to update their payment methods from their profile settings: