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Avaloi

Payment failed

What happens when a card is declined, how 3D Secure works, what the 402 answer means when you add a site, and how to get back to normal.

A payment can fail in three places: when you save a card, when you start a plan, and when a plan renews. A site that will not create because no plan has a free slot is a different thing: nothing was charged or declined. This article covers all of them.

What you see

  • Adding a card: the Add credit card modal says the card was declined, and nothing is saved.
  • Starting a plan: the Summary step says the plan could not start, or your bank's 3D Secure check opens in the page.
  • A renewal: a notification says the payment did not go through, and the plan shows Payment failed on the Billing page.
  • Adding a site: the Add site modal offers Buy a new plan, or the API answers 402 with the problem type payment-required.

Check these first

  1. Is the card still valid? Check the expiry on the Payment methods page. An expired default card fails at renewal.
  2. Did your bank ask to confirm? Some banks ask for 3D Secure on a new plan. Finish the check in the page; closing it leaves the plan waiting for payment.
  3. Read the 402 code when you add a site. no_free_plan_slot means every plan is full, choose_plan means more than one plan has a free slot and the request must name one with subscription_id, and plan_unavailable means the named plan is full or has ended. None of them means a card was declined.
  4. Check your role. Only Owners, Admins, and Billing members can change cards or buy plans.

Fix it

  • Declined card: add another card under Payment methods, set it as the default, and try again.
  • Failed renewal: set a working card as the default. Stripe retries the open invoice, and the account is back to normal as soon as a payment succeeds.
  • No free slot: buy a new plan in the Add site modal, delete a site you no longer need, or create a free test site.

How a failed renewal plays out

  • Retries. Stripe retries the charge and Avaloi tells the Owner and the Billing members by notification. Sites keep running.
  • Read-only. After two weeks of failed retries the account becomes read-only. Sites keep serving visitors, but wp-admin, the WordPress sign in page, and XML-RPC show a "Changes are paused" page, and no new site can start. Front end features that call admin-ajax.php, such as forms and carts, keep working. Every site page in the dashboard shows a banner with a link to Billing.
  • Suspended. After 30 days every page of every site shows a "This site is suspended" page until the balance is paid. Your files, databases, and backups are kept, and backups continue.
  • Recovery. A successful payment returns the account to normal at any point, within about a minute. Each site's server serves it as before; nothing is restored from a backup, because nothing was removed.

Still stuck

Write to [email protected] with the plan name, the last four digits of the card (never the full number), and the request_id from any error you saw.

Still stuck?

Email [email protected] with your site name and what you tried, or send us a message.