Why your credit card is failing

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Posted by Felix Okoli on May 15, 2010 at 10:51:29:

Are you used to making payments online from Nigeria with a credit card or perhaps are you new to the whole credit card payment thing. Well there are a couple of reasons why your online credit card transactions may be failing.
If you are not yet used to making online payments with a credit card, then perhaps you should know that credit card payments are the major way of finalising business transactions on the internet.
With the growth of telecoms and the increasing growth of internet usage in Nigeria, credit cards are becoming more useful for initiating and concluding business transactions on the internet. Whether it is paying for online subscriptions to magazine or entertainment websites, buying mobile phones from retail shops, buying books online from Amazon, paying for web hosting with Bluehost or Hostgator, paying for domain names or just sending electronic money online, credit cards are most useful.
When credit cards first came to Nigeria, it was brought in mostly by Nigeria based agents of virtual credit card providers from the US. Those kind of cards were mostly virtual in the sense that it cannot be physically touched but only used, with the details, for making online payments and had a US address attached to it. Then came the plastic credit cads which were branded by reknown credit card brands like Mastercard and Visa. Ecobank, a West African bank, was the first to introduce those kind of credit cards and other Nigerian banks followed suit. Now every Nigerian, as long as he/she has a valid identity can get a credit card which can be used on both dollar denominated ATMs and also for online payments.
There are also problems users of credit cards In Nigeria have been facing when making payment on the internet. One of the errors users face is the rejection on the merchant's website and error message they keep getting when a credit card transaction fails to sail through on that site:

Card Declined!

If you have been facing this or other problems when using your credit card for online transactions on the internet, then you should try and consider the following things as they could be a number of reasongs why your card may be failing:

- No more funds in the card
- Card expiry date is almost expired or has expired
- The particular Merchant has simply blocked cards with Nigerian addresses(esp. if your cards worked on other sites)
- The transaction amount exceeds credit card balance
- The transaction period exceeds card validity period
- The name on card is different with name used in the transaction
- Your IP could also be blocked

So try to do a bit of check on your own side anytime you keep facing the same problem with your credit card and whenever you want to get a card from a bank, try and ask them of the expiry date of the card before collecting it. Some banks are known to issue credit cards that only have 6 months validity or already approaching its expiry date instead of 2 years from date of issue

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