We have been reviewing the failed payment attempts from previous releases with the help of the nice lady from Worldpay. It seems that in the majority of instances, order attempts are failing at the 3D secure stage of payment and so never getting through to worldpay for them to process.

What is 3D Secure?

3D Secure is an online cardholder authentication technology. The technology has been developed by both MasterCard and Visa through their respective brands SecureCode and Verified by Visa for use with Maestro, MasterCard card and Visa payments. 3D Secure operates in a similar way to ‘chip & pin’ by asking shoppers to enter a unique pin / password to help authenticate the identity of the cardholder at the time that the purchase is made.

In practice this is usually a little box that appears on the screen, asking for you to enter certain digits from your password. It pops up after you have entered your card details (I think it shows a ‘redirecting you to a 3rd party’ screen first). If you have never set up a password or have forgotten it you can set one up there and then. You can also set up you password in advance with your bank.

 

If you skip or decline this step it is highly likely that the transaction won’t go through.

 

So to give you the best possible chance of your payment reaching us we recommend that:

1. every customer should take advantage of the 3d secure system offered by their card provider to authenticate their card payment.
2. US customers should inform their bank beforehand of their intention to purchase a high value item from an international site.

 

We hope that this will make a difference to many of the card payment attempts that don’t reach us and we will continue to work on this issue. Despite the difficulties experienced by our international customers, a very high percentage of our wraps are bought from outside the UK and so we know how important it is for us to make it an easy and stress free process!!