When a payment fails

This article is a look-up list. Find the symptom you see, read the cause, do what is underneath.

If your case is not there, write to us. Every email reaches someone who helped build the system, and a question about your own situation is never too small.

First this: where do you look?

With a payment there are three places the truth can be, and they can temporarily differ:

Place	What you see there
Orders in Passavo	What we know: Pending, Paid, Cancelled
Your provider's dashboard	Whether the money really has been collected
Your bank account	Whether the money has been paid out

Always look in those three places before you draw conclusions. "I do not see it in my bank" usually only means that the payout is still to come.

The connection

"This provider has not been set up on the platform yet"

What you see: with Mollie or Stripe, a red sentence in the block, and no button.

What is going on: that provider is not switched on in this installation. It is nothing you did wrong.

What you do: choose a different provider, or send a message to support.

The connection is refused or gets stuck

What you see: you come back from the provider's screen with the message The connection was cancelled. or The provider returned an error while connecting., or you get an error page.

Possible causes, from most to least common:

1. Your attempt has expired. The connection has to be completed within a quarter of an hour. You then get an error page. Simply start again.
2. You refused on the permission screen or closed the window. You then see The connection was cancelled.
3. You chose the wrong account with a provider where you have several.
4. You have been signed out of Passavo in the meantime, for example in a strict private mode. Sign in again and try it in an ordinary window.

What you do: start again at Settings → Payments, click the connect button, and read what is on the permission screen before you click.

I cannot see the Payments menu

You need the Owner role. An Administrator does not get to it either: whoever can switch the provider decides where the money goes. Ask the owner of your organisation. See Staff and roles.

The payment page

"The test payment could not be created"

What you see: a red message after clicking the button Test payment of …, with underneath it, for example, Mollie refused the test payment. Check that your Mollie account is active and try again; if it still fails, connect the provider again.

Most common causes:

• Your account with the provider is not active yet. A Stripe account has to be activated before payments can go through it.
• With Stripe: Bancontact or iDEAL is not switched on. See below.
• With Bancontact Pro: the wrong key or environment. An ext key with Production chosen alongside it, or the other way round. Passavo does not check the key when you save it, so you only notice a typo here.
• With Mollie: the connection is no longer valid, for example because the permission was withdrawn at Mollie. Disconnect and connect again.

What you do: sign in with your provider, check whether your account is in order and whether your methods are on, and try again. The exact reason for a refusal is in your provider's dashboard.

Mollie shows a test page instead of a real payment

What you see: Mollie lets you choose yourself whether the payment succeeds, and no money leaves your account. In Settings → Payments the Mollie block shows the badge Test mode.

What is going on: your connection is in test mode, because you connected before your Mollie profile was verified. Your visitors then get the test page too. Their orders are test orders: they are marked TEST and their tickets do not grant entry.

What you do: check in your Mollie dashboard whether your profile has been verified. As soon as it has, the connection goes live by itself, within fifteen minutes. If you don't want to wait, click Go live in Settings → Payments. Then make another test payment.

The "Test mode" badge is on Stripe or Bancontact Pro

• Bancontact Pro: you saved a key for the Test environment (ext). Paste a production key, choose Production (prod) and click Replace key.
• Stripe: the connection was made with Stripe's test environment. You cannot change that yourself: send a message to support.

My visitor cannot see their payment method

What is going on: what your visitor gets to see comes from your active provider, not from us. Your ticket shop uses one at a time.

What you do:

• Mollie: sign in to your Mollie dashboard and check at the payment methods whether Bancontact, iDEAL or card are on. If something is off, switch it on.
• Stripe: go to Settings → Payment methods and switch Bancontact and iDEAL on. By default they are off.
• Bancontact Pro: it offers only one method. If you want more, make Mollie or Stripe your active provider.

Note: Bancontact exists only in Belgium and iDEAL only in the Netherlands. A German visitor should see a card, not Bancontact. See the country table in Which payment provider do you choose?

With Stripe the payment page does not open at all

What your visitor sees: they come back to the checkout page with the message The payment could not be started. Please try again.

Almost always the same cause: Bancontact or iDEAL is not switched on in your Stripe account. Passavo always asks for card, Bancontact and iDEAL together, and Stripe then refuses the whole payment page instead of leaving out that one method.

What you do: Settings → Payment methods in your Stripe dashboard, and switch them both on. You only pay per successful payment.

My visitor gets "Payment is not possible at the moment"

What is going on: no provider at all is connected, or you have disconnected them all. Your shop does show your paid products, but it gets stuck at the payment.

What you do: connect a provider, or take your paid products out of your shop for as long as you have not done so. See Connecting your payment provider.

After the payment

The order stays on "Pending"

What you see: your visitor says they have paid, their bank shows the debit, and with you the order is still open. No ticket has gone out.

What is going on: the provider lets us know with a short message — a webhook — that payment has been made. On top of that, Passavo looks up the status itself when your visitor returns from the payment page to your ticket shop. Both have failed.

What you do:

1. First look in your provider's dashboard to see whether the payment really did succeed there. If it is on open or failed there, nothing has been paid and your screen is simply right.
2. If it did succeed there: write to us. Every incoming webhook is recorded, so we can check whether anything arrived and put the order right.

What you say to your visitor in the meantime: that their payment has arrived and that their ticket is on its way. Their money is not gone.

My visitor cannot find their ticket email

Usually the junk mail. Look the order up and click Resend the ticket email; the email goes again to the order's email address. The code and the QR stay the same, so no second valid ticket comes into existence. First check the address in the Buyer block: sending it to a different address is not possible. At the door, the code from the Tickets table is enough to let them in. See Following up orders.

The payment was refused for my visitor

That happens between their bank and the provider; we see only the result. Common causes: insufficient balance, a daily limit, a card that has expired, or a payment they did not confirm in time in their banking app.

What you say to them: they can simply try again, with a different method if need be. Nothing has been debited and there is no ticket in their name getting in the way.

The money

I do not see the money in my account

After a sale, count on your provider's payout period, not on the same day. With Mollie and Stripe you choose yourself how often you are paid out, and the very first payout takes a little longer with every provider.

What you do: sign in with your provider and look under payouts. It shows what is on its way and when it goes out.

My payout is blocked

Most common causes:

• the name on the bank account does not match the name of your organisation;
• a document is missing in your provider's check;
• your turnover has suddenly risen sharply and the provider wants to know why.

What you do: you solve that with your provider, not with us. Supply what they ask for; it usually comes down to one document.

The amount in my account does not match my sales

That is normal: your provider keeps back its transaction cost before it pays out, and one transfer often contains several days of sales, sometimes with refunds among them. Your provider's payout statement shows per payment what was kept back. See Payout and costs.

I have to issue a refund but it does not work

A refund goes via the provider the order was paid with, even if your ticket shop has since switched to another one.

For a cash sale at the desk there is no Refund button: there is no provider that can pay anything back, so you return the money from the cash drawer. If a refund failed, for example because the balance at your provider was too low, you can simply start it again.

If that provider has been disconnected, you cannot start anything from Passavo any more: you get the message This organisation has no payment provider connected. Connect it again, or refund by hand from the provider's dashboard; Passavo then does not know that you have issued a refund. See Refunds and cancellations.

Commonly made mistakes

Panicking at "Pending". In nine cases out of ten the money is there and only the message still has to arrive.

Looking for the problem with us while it is with the provider. Methods, payouts and verification are in their dashboard.

Connecting a second provider to solve a problem. That usually changes nothing, because the problem is in the first one's settings — and the new connection immediately becomes your active provider.

Cancelling an order to "try it again". Leave it and write to us; a cancelled order is harder to put right.

Keeping the visitor waiting. Tell them straight away that their payment has arrived and that you will send the ticket on. That is almost always true.

Frequently asked questions

Can money be lost? No. The money is with your provider, even when an order is open with us. What goes wrong at our end can delay the ticket, not make the money disappear.

Can you see my payment in my provider's dashboard? We do not look in your dashboard. Passavo only looks up the status of the payments it started itself. What we can do is check what came in at our end.

Who does my visitor call if something goes wrong? You. You are the seller. So put a contact email address in your organisation settings; it appears as the reply address on your ticket emails.

Do I ever have to set a payment to paid by hand? You cannot do that yourself. Write to us; we check what really happened before a ticket goes out that has not been paid for.