Adding a valid, verified, and current credit card (payment card) to your Respondent Researcher profile is required to post projects on the platform. This credit card must match your name or your organizations name, you must be authorized to use and process payments to the card, and the information provided must match the records on file with the bank and issuer of the card. In some instances, the Respondent platform may throw an "error" when attempting to add a card, may decline transactions, or may "flag" a card for future transactions. You will find some common troubleshooting steps below!
Security Provisions and Matching Information:
Credit card and payment information including the card number, name on the card, billing address (including ZIP or postal code), CVV code, expiration date etc., must all match exactly as it appears on the card and billing statement. The difference between "123 Main Street" and "123 Main St" can cause a security error. Pay close attention to punctuation as well as the difference between the name "John P. Smith" and "John P Smith" could also result in an error.
Credit Card CVV (also known as Security Codes" must match exactly as they appear on the card. VISA, MasterCard and Discover cards, these will be the three digits on the rear of the card located near the traditional signature box. For American Express (AMEX) cards, this code will be the four digits on the front of the card, usually in the top right hand area of the card surface. For American Express (AMEX) cards specifically, please do not use the three digits that appear on the rear of the card.
Double check your cards expiration date and ensure it is entered into the platform correct and in the correct date format.
Respondent uses state-of-the-art anti-fraud and digital security measures through our credit card processor, including advanced CVV, AVS, and "risk threshold" provisions designed to reduce credit card misuse and unauthorized transactions. These protections are enabled be default and cannot be disabled for any reason.
Proactive Declines from your Card Issuer or Bank:
In the overwhelming majority of instances, your credit card/payment card is being declined due to a proactive security "protection" put in place by your financial institution and/or card issuer. This is common, and often times can be resolved by contacting your card issuer (the easiest way to do this is by calling the number displayed on the back of your card).
Once you make contact with your bank and/or card issuer, please review the declined charges with them and specifically ask them to allow both "Respondent" and "Respondent_instant" transactions to post to your account.
Transactions that were declined due to proactive preventative measures may need to be processed again for them to complete successfully.
Multiple Cards & Multiple Transaction Attempts:
For security purposes, all new researchers are limited to one credit or payment card uploaded to their account at any one time. If you already have a credit card on file, it will need to be removed before you can add another one. You can edit, add, and remove credit cards by clicking on "View Full Balance" on the left hand side of your screen, and then clicking on "Credit Cards."
Generally speaking, after a new researcher has paid and closed their first dozen or so projects on the platform, we will enable additional credit card functionality. At this point, multiple cards will be able to be stored on the platform at the same time.
Established and trusted researchers on the platform can add multiple cards, but may still be impacted by card declines and errors tied to other situations outlined in this article.
If you receive a transaction error, a credit card decline, or a similar alert, it is best to not continuously attempt to process the transaction. Instead, please take a moment, pause what you are doing, and contact our Support Team.
Multiple transaction attempts, multiple transactions in a short period, repeat transaction for the same or similar amount, and multiple cards added within a short period of time will result in your credit or payment card being "blocked" both on our payment processor backend, and directly with your bank or card issuer.
Additional Workarounds:
In some instances, we can manually attempt to charge a credit card on file if you would like to pre-purchase recruiting credits and incentive balance before running a research study.
For some Researchers, if you are on an annual reoccurring plan, we can work with our Billing & Invoicing Team to get you setup with payments via bank transfer, Statement of Work (SOW), Purchase Order (PO), Invoicing, and the like. Please note that Pay As You Go (PAYG) accounts are ONLY eligible for payment via credit or payment card. We do not support bank transfer, SOW, PO, or invoicing payments for customers on PAYG.
The Respondent platform does not accept digital payment or credit card numbers, pre-paid credit card numbers, bank/ATM cards, temporary debit or credit cards, virtual or "eGift" cards, or similar.
Please double check that your card payment status, minimum payment amount, payment due date and available balance are all up to date. The most common issues we see are tied to card balances being too close to their credit limit, unknown/unintentional missed payments, or minimum payments that have unintentionally been missed. Contact your bank and/or card issuer for more information.
Please Note: Credit Card and Payment Card errors and declines can be complex, and what one payment processor or merchant checks for may not be the same as another. For this reason, it is not uncommon for a card to work perfectly fine at one retailer, establishment, or online platform, but not at another (and vice versa). Card issuers and payment processors use real time data from across the globe to update and adjust their settings, so despite a credit or payment card working "everywhere else," there are a whole host of reasons we may be seeing an error at the current moment. Our Support Team would be happy to help look into this for you!