What to do when a Parent has a Payment Issue

When a parent has a payment problem the first point of contact to investigate is the person in your organisation who has access to your payment portal.  SchoolsBuddy supports a number of different payment providers and does not have access to all organisations' accounts so it is necessary to check these yourselves.

Declined Transactions

You will be able to view the reasons for declined transactions in the payment portal. Please see your payment providers Support guidance for help with navigating the portal and understanding error messages. Where possible please add your Merchant ID to any query as this will speed up the process. 

Common Errors

1. Incorrect Information Entered / Card has expired

• Ask the payer to try making the payment again
• Ask the payer if they are using any storage tokens in their browser or app that could be auto-filling incorrect details (such as an old expiry date or card number)

2. Payment has been declined by the issuing bank

• Ask the payer to check with their bank why the payment was declined

3. Parent is trying to pay using an Amex card.  

• Most of our payment providers do not take Amex cards currently, as the fees to process payments are higher than for Visa and Mastercard.

Parent is not able to pay for an event in SchoolsBuddy

Usually, SchoolsBuddy will conduct a payment test before payments go live to make sure all transactions are processed smoothly.  For some Asian payment providers, we will be unable to do so (as the provider may not offer a test facility) so we may need your assistance to conduct a live payment test of a small value amount. 

In the event that more than one parent is having difficulty making payment please contact SchoolsBuddy providing the below information:

• Name & email address of the person making the payment
• The exact timestamp of the issue including Timezone
• Amount of payment & group/event name the payment was for
• Payment method (Bluesnap/PaySafe/ Checkout/Stripe/ PayFort/ AsiaPay/ Cybersource etc.)
• Payer's Card type (Visa / Mastercard - please note Amex is not accepted)- Customer last 4 digits of the card/ first 6 digits if possible. 
• Has the parent tried using a different payment method or a different device and is still unable to make payment?
• What browser or app the payer is using (iPhone, Android, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Edge - please note Internet Explorer is not supported) and the version
• Screenshots of any error messages

An example of an issue taking payments could be an expired secure hash or secret, or an account being made inactive after being dormant for a long time.

If it's happening on multiple devices but only for this customer, it could be an issue with their card. Please ask the parent to try another card if possible. 

If it's happening with multiple cards but only on one device. We can safely assume it's the device therefore please ask the parent to try another device if possible.