There are times when a user tries to enter their credit card and receives a message saying that we are not able to add or accept their credit card. Agents can take a look at the reason as to why the card won’t be accepted and help the CL based on the recommended solution. Some cases the CL may just need to enter an entirely different billing method or contact their bank.
To see the reason for the CC not being accepted: OBO > Account Entity > Click ‘deleted’ > the last charge attempted and response code/reason will be listed 
Click ‘More’ to see additional details and scroll to the bottom of the page
If a CC Verification issue: see the Problems with Credit Card Verification drop-down.
Some possible reasons Upwork can’t accept a CC
Credit card type not accepted in Upwork:
- Upwork accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diner’s cards, Discover Cards, and prepaid cards.
- Debit cards from international customers may be accepted as long as the customer’s card issuing bank has not placed restrictions, such as disallowing recurring charges (i.e. membership fees or auto pay of invoices).
Credit card information entered by the client is not accurate:
- The user may have entered the wrong card number, billing address, expiration date or CVV when the card was added that caused the card issuing bank to reject our verification or test charge. Client may be advised to attempt adding the card again.
Credit card attached to multiple user accounts:
- Upwork, not the card issuing bank, limits how many accounts a credit card can be added to. If the cardholder has already inputted this card into 3 different user accounts, then we will not allow it to be entered on the 4th.
- If receiving error message "Our records indicate that you have multiple accounts associated with this payment method...", see **"Multiple Accounts" Error with Adding UPM KB.
Important note: We cannot override the decline message by the bank to force a payment, or add a credit card to the user’s account. If the user cannot successfully add or use this specific card, then instruct the user to add an alternate billing method or contact their card issuing bank to determine if the bank has placed usage restrictions. The card issuing bank can look up the authorization requests from Upwork and provide their cardholder specific details.
The customer is getting an error message when trying to add a card as payment method as the system is not able to verify it. Since the 2 small charges-verification option is no longer available, the system verifies the card by placing a $0.00 temporary hold to ensure that the card is active and valid.
Error message:
- We are unable to authorize your card. Please add another billing method or contact your issuing bank.
Sample of decline codes provided by customer's card issuing bank:
- 59 : Suspected fraud
- 05: Do not honor
- 12 : Invalid transaction
For cases like this, since we can't override a decline from their bank in order for the transaction to go through, we advise customers to contact their bank so that they can receive direct assistance as to why the transaction was declined and how to get it sorted out.
In addition, we can also advise the customer to confirm with their bank the following:
- if they allow recurring transactions on their cards as Upwork payments are classified as "recurring"
- if they allow zero authentications on their card
There could also be a restriction on the customer's card in which they can only process a payment if they provide their card issuing bank Upwork's MCC code. If that is the case, we advise the customer to ask their bank to add all of our MCC codes: 7399, 7361 and 5968.
This information can be found on the **Declined Cards KB under the Recurring Transactions on Debit Cards and Client’s Credit Card Requires an MCC code drop-down:
If the issue persists even after confirming the above with their bank, then we can advise the customer to use or add an alternative card as payment method.