There are a number of common reasons why Twilio will not be able to charge your credit card.
Insufficient funds
Sometimes, a credit card will be declined because you are at your credit limit. This doesn't necessarily mean that your bank account is empty. Check with your bank or you credit card issuer to see if you have sufficient funds, or to raise your credit limit.
Using a debit card which cannot be used in "credit" mode
Twilio's payment processor only has the ability to charge cards in "credit" mode. So, if you are using a debit card that doesn't work when you choose the "credit" option at the grocery store, the charge may be declined by your bank. If your card can only be used in "debit" mode, you will need to use a different card.
This is frequently a problem with Visa Debit cards from Europe.
We are working with our payment processor to change this, but for now we can only accept cards that can be used as "credit".
Wrong address
You may be entering the wrong address without even knowing it. Our payment processor uses AVS (address verification) for all charges and will refuse a charge if you enter the wrong billing address.
Sometimes the address that the bank has on file is a variation of your actual address. Even cards that normally pass AVS might fail our processor’s particularly strict AVS. If you have tried multiple variations of your address without success, please contact your bank and check to see which address they use for validating credit cards.
Keep in mind that the bank may have both a mailing and a billing address on file for you. Please be sure that you are entering the correct billing address.
Here are some hints for entering your address:
- Leave out the apartment or suite number.
- Spell out all of the words in the street name.
- For institutional addresses, the street address will probably work better than the name of the institution, but try both.
Example address: 1337 W. Cloudphone St., Apt #42 Try: 1337 West Cloudphone Street
Example Institutional Address: University of Telefonica, Department of Communications, 23 Greetings Ave. Try: 23 Greetings Avenue
The lack of a "State/Province" field on our "Add a New Card" form won’t matter because the state can be inferred by the postal code.
Your bank has placed a "hold" on the card
Sometimes a bank will refuse a charge because the attempted purchase is not a normal or expected purchase for the customer. Banks have automated fraud detection systems that looks for suspicious purchases, and exactly how they make these decisions is something of a mystery.
You may need to call your bank to ensure that you card has not had a "hold" put on it because it suspected that the charges you have been attempting were fraudulent.
This particular problem often affects customers with non-US based credit cards, since banks outside the U.S. may be suspicious of a sudden charge to the card from a U.S. address.
If this is the problem, it can usually be corrected by calling your bank, telling them that the charge was declined and asking if there is a "hold" on the card or anything else that would prevent the card from being used.
Your card is not from a country we are able to accept credit cards from
We are able to accept credit cards from over 230 countries.
It's still not working!!
If you've tried calling your bank, asked about everything on this page, and your credit card still isn't being accepted, please contact Support and we will do our best to find out what might be going wrong. If you are worried that your project will run out of funds while you are troubleshooting with your bank, please let us know so that we can monitor.