Payment systems are provided to online stores by third parties (in our case, Stripe). This means that we are only given limited information on why payments do not complete successfully, so these can be a little tricky to diagnose!If you have tried to put an order through but this has been unsuccessful, this can be for a number of different reasons. It may be due to a simple mistake when entering your payment details, a poor internet connection, or a failed third-party verification from your bank (known as 3D Secure).Sometimes, where transactions fail, these may appear in your account marked as 'pending'.
If a transaction is marked on your banking app as “pending”, this means it has not completed and money has not yet been taken. The reason this appears on your account is that when you use a credit card to pay for a transaction, your issuing bank will place a hold on your account for the value of the payment before it is actually made.
This is done to enable your bank to check to make sure that you have enough funds to pay for the transaction you are entering into. When this happens, the authorisation hold will be marked as “pending”, and may (depending on your bank) display in your banking feed even if the purchase does not successfully complete. If the transaction does not complete then these are reversed in due course by your bank. This can, however, sometimes take some time (often these charges are reversed quickly but most major banks advise that it can take up to 5-7 business days).
It is standard policy for banks to place authorisation holds on a payment attempt to ensure the smooth flow of funds from bank account to merchant. You can read, for instance, Nationwide’s help page on this here: https://www.nationwide.co.uk/help/payments/pending-transactions/
Banks differ in terms of how these pending transactions are displayed, but they do commonly (and very unfortunately!) look like an actual charge.
If you have a pending charge on your account, you should find that this reverses itself within 7 business days. If there is any problem with this, we are happy to help but the likelihood is that you would need to contact your bank as, in this scenario, we will not normally have received your money.
If you wish to place an order you will need to try and put it through again separately. When we have had similar issues happen with customers previously, customers are generally able to successfully place their order by waiting a little while and trying again.