Why doesn't my credit card work?

There are a number of common reasons why Otter Waiver may be unable to charge your credit card.

Insufficient funds

Your credit card may be declined because you are at your credit limit. Check with your bank or you credit card issuer to see if you have sufficient funds.

Debit card that cannot be used in "credit" mode

Otter's payment processor currently only has the ability to charge cards in "credit" mode. So, if your debit card doesn't work when you choose the "credit" option at a grocery store, it also can't be used as a credit card on our site. If your card can only be used in "debit" mode, you will need to use a different card.

Incorrect billing address

You may be entering the wrong billing address. Our payment processor uses an particularly strict address verification system for all charges and will deny 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 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.

If your mailing and billing address do not match, 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.

A "hold" has been placed on your card

Sometimes a bank will refuse a charge because the attempted purchase is not a normal or expected purchase for the customer. 

You may need to call your bank to make sure they have not put a "hold" on your card because it suspected that the charges you have been attempting were fraudulent.

If this is the problem, try calling your bank and telling them that the charge was declined.  Ask if there is a "hold" on the card or anything else that would prevent the card from being used.

Contact Support

Please contact Support and we will do our best to find out what might be going wrong. If you are worried that your waiver account will run out of funds while you are troubleshooting with your bank, please let us know so that we can monitor it.