Card Payments: Troubleshooting
Updated over a week ago

It can be really frustrating when a payment fails. Here's a summary of some of the most common reasons why transactions go awry.

Did your card machine get disconnected?

The Go (and Bluetooth) card machines all connect to your phone/tablet via Bluetooth and need to stay connected when you're accepting a payment. If the connection is lost, it can cause the payment to fail.

Check out the steps to connecting your card machine here.

How stable is your internet connection?

For Yoco to process a payment, we need your phone/tablet to have a stable internet connection. If you're using WiFi, try changing to data.

Check out the guide to checking your internet here.

Did you or your customer abort the payment?

A payment gets canceled/aborted when any of the below happens. (Simply retry the payment):

  • The Cancel button is tapped on the screen.

  • The Red X button is pressed on the card machine.

  • The Yoco App is closed or minimised.

  • The customer takes too long to present their card.


It says that the payment got declined

If the payment got declined, this often means that there was something wrong with your customer's card and the solution is usually to ask the customer to try a different one.

A payment can get declined for any of these reasons:

  • There are insufficient funds on the card.

  • The card has been reported as lost or stolen.

  • The customer has reached their monthly account limit on the card.

  • Yoco does not support the type of card the customer is using.

  • The card is expired.

Find out more about which cards Yoco accepts here.

The payment failed but my customer still got a bank SMS

In some cases, a card transaction will fail but the customer will still receive an SMS notification saying that their bank account was debited. This does not mean the transaction was successful. This can happen because some banks send the SMS once they have received a request to deduct the funds, before the transaction has been finalised. The transaction can still fail in the final step, resulting in an error even though the customer has been sent an SMS.

The SMS notifications one receives when doing a transaction are determined by one's bank.

If you or your customer didn't get an SMS notification from the bank, it could be for any of these reasons:

  • That particular bank account doesn't qualify for SMS notifications.

  • That particular bank account only gets SMS notifications for payments above a certain amount.

  • The bank's SMS system may be temporarily down.

  • Some banks only send SMS notifications for transactions that exceed R100, for example, FNB. See FNB's inContact terms here.

If you're concerned about not receiving SMSs for your transactions, please contact the bank concerned.

Check your payment status is 'approved' in your sales history - here's how.

Need help understanding and handling the "Reserved for purchase" SMS from banks? Find out more here.

IMPORTANT: If your payments continue to fail or you are getting an error message that isn't explained in this article, please get in touch with Yoco Support.

Online Payment Error Messages

My customer is getting a message that says, “Something went wrong, please contact support.”

Sometimes this error message gets displayed when the transaction is smaller than the minimum transaction size amount of R2,00.

My customer is getting a message that says, ‘3D Secure authentication has failed. Please try again.’

First, make sure that the transaction wasn’t declined: most times, it’s a problem on the customer’s side (either banking or user error) but here are some of the most common reasons why payments get declined:

  1. The customer made a mistake when entering their card details.

  2. The customer had an interrupted internet connection while processing their payment (read more here).

  3. The customer’s card isn’t one of those accepted by Yoco: can accept all MasterCard and Visa debit and credit cards. This includes international and AMEX cards, swipe cards, chip and PIN, and SASSA cards. Issued from any bank.


    Unfortunately, we don't currently accept Fleet / RCS / Diners / Petrol cards.
    Note: We support Capitec cards but they do have more 3DS failures than other issuing banks. Get the full list here.

  4. The customer’s bank declined the transactions because:

    • Insufficient funds

    • Failure to do 3D Secure authentication

    • Bank does not do 3D Secure authentication

    • Bank does not allow the customer to do online payments

    • Challenges or downtime on the banking system side

  5. Our platform could be down (highly unlikely) in which case, you’ll have been notified via email as well as in-App or on-device pop-up messages.

Finally, make sure the transaction amount is at least R2,00!

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