This article covers possible error messages and common reasons for failed payments that students may see when trying to complete their payment at checkout.
In this article:
Reasons for Incomplete or Failed Payments
Reasons for Incomplete or Failed Payments
There are 3 possible scenarios where a payment will fail:
- Issues with the student's payment method
- This includes insufficient funds, or when the bank blocks the purchase for security reasons.
- Issues with the payment processor
- In this scenario, Stripe, Paypal or Thinkific Payments are having issues completing payments. You can check directly on their status pages below to see if they had any outages when your student reported an unsuccessful purchase:
Stripe Status Page
Paypal Status Page
Thinkific Payments - please reach out to our Support team.
- In this scenario, Stripe, Paypal or Thinkific Payments are having issues completing payments. You can check directly on their status pages below to see if they had any outages when your student reported an unsuccessful purchase:
- Issues with Thinkific completing the order
- If you suspect that this has happened, reach out to our Support team so that we can investigate the issue and complete the order for your student.
Possible Error Codes
The messages contained in the dropdowns below are possible error messages that students may see on the checkout page while trying to complete their purchase. These error messages will display inline as a banner message on the checkout form:
The transaction was declined. Please try again
Issue: There was an issue processing the transaction and no payment was taken.
Next step: The student should try purchasing again.
The transaction was declined. Please contact the site administrator
Issue: There is an issue with your connected payment processor account and no payment was taken.
Next step: The student should not try purchasing again. With Paypal, your students may experience the Paypal checkout modal opening and closing quickly. In this case, you want to check if there are any restrictions placed on your Paypal account. For Stripe, you can check your Stripe Dashboard for more information about why a transaction was declined. Click here to see more from Stripe about this.
For Thinkific Payments, reach out to our Support team.
As the site owner, you should also review your Stripe or Paypal account to see if there any restrictions placed on your account or contact our Support team for further troubleshooting.
The payment was declined. Please contact your bank and try again
Issue: There is an issue with the student's method of payment they are using and we are unable to process the payment.
Next step: The student should contact their bank before trying again, or use a different card.
As the site owner, you should also review your Stripe or Paypal account to see if there any restrictions placed on your account or contact our Support team for further troubleshooting.
The payment was received but your order was not completed. Please contact the site administrator
Issue: Payment was taken from the student, but the order was not completed in Thinkific.
Next step: Please contact our Support team with the following information:
- Email of the student
- Name of the product (course/bundle) they purchased
- Date of payment
- Total amount paid
- Method of payment (Stripe or Paypal)
Secure authentication couldn’t be completed. Please try again
Issue: The student provided the incorrect credentials to complete secure authentication for their payment method.
Next step: The student should try again and ensure they entered the correct credentials to complete secure authentication. For more information on secure authentication and when it's required, please see here.
This order has already been completed. Redirecting you to the thank you page
Issue: The student has inputted their credit card information on the checkout page and payment has been taken but were not redirected to the thank you page. If they try and click the 'purchase' button again on the checkout form, they will see this error and be redirected to the thank you page.
Next step: Since payment was already taken, our system will recognize this and redirect them to the thank you page where the order and enrollment will be processed on Thinkific. Your student will not be charged again and they will be able to access the products they purchased. No further action is required from you or your student.
Pre-Checkout Errors
The messages in the dropdown menu below are possible errors that students may see before loading the checkout page on Thinkific. These errors will show as a red, flash notification at the top of the landing page:
Checkout could not be loaded. Please try again
Issue: We were unable to load the checkout page for student to complete the purchase.
Next step: The student should try purchasing again.
Please contact us to enroll
Issue: The students' attempts to go to checkout are redirected back to the course landing page.
Next step: Your course is likely set to private - meaning that students are unable to enroll by purchasing the course from your site. You will need to remove the private setting from the course so that students can complete the checkout and enrollment process on their own.
You are already enrolled in {course/bundle name}
Issue: The student has attempted to checkout with a course or bundle they are already enrolled in
Next step: We prevent students from purchasing the same course or bundle if they still have an active enrollment. If a student has missed a payment on a subscription or payment plan, they should update their credit card from their account page to prompt the billing system to retry the payment.
Other Checkout Issues
Paypal popup disappears
Issue: Paypal popup appears briefly and disappears on checkout before inputting payment details.
Next step: Check out our troubleshooting steps here: PayPal Popup Disappears on Checkout
Other PayPal checkout error
Check out our article "Why am I getting an error message on my PayPal checkout?"
As always, if you have any questions or concerns about why a student was unable to purchase a product from your Thinkific site, just reach out to our Support team directly to help troubleshoot!