Failed charges over 2000 €

Hi jones,

we also have this issue from time to time.

However, it is often due to guests who, for example, increase the daily limit but not the weekly limit or the limit per booking. Then, for example, charging 2x 1000,- works.

But yes, sometimes, there are no explanation if we could trust the guests deklaration. We´ve got it just one time, that we couldn´t find a solution, so that the guest has to do a bank transfer.

But we have no information about limits due to stripe or mews rules.

Best regards

Yeah account limits of the guests was my first guess too. But it seems to happen a lot more since we’re with mews and suspiciously often around 2000 €.

Ok, I understand. I can't say that this has increased with us compared to before Mews. Maybe it help´s to open a ticket for this question?

Thought this is a ticket 😜

Maybe, maybe not… 

Yeah. The reason i ask here in the community is because it has proven to be the best and fastest way to get help/feedback 😉 … and i wouldn’t be wondering that this is a problem that may be more of a german thing, because payments here seems to be a bit just a bit more hustle than in other countries 🙂

Before opening a ticket i probably gather more specific information from our reception team about this topic.

Hello @Leif Penning 

Beware of withdrawing the same amount from the credit card 2 times in quick succession. If you want to divide an amount of 2000 it is better to do 1 time 999 € and then 1001 € . We have found that 2 times the same amount within 60 seconds is usually refused. Greetings Robin 

@barb00sa thats a neat hint. We gonna have a lookout for that as well because thats exactly how we handle those limits too 👍

Hi @barb00sa ,

we haven't had any problems with the 2x 1000 so far, but thanks for the tip.

Greetings

Leif

So after several weeks and some other problems with wrong tokenized german payment cards i think i have the answer for this and some other things.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert, some of this information is speculative and should therefore be viewed with a grain of salt.

Some background

Credit cards are not very common in germany but instead EC or Girocard is the most used system. EC / Meastro is not really supported anymore so Girocard is mostly used and that for quite a time already. Because these Girocards doesn’t work abroad they have some kind of a hybrid system where a international Debit card (Visa or Mastercard usually) is available additionally. Thats seems to be known as Co-Badging.

Usually Girocard is used with payments inside of Germany and outside the Debit card is used. Now it seems that Stripe doesn’t support Girocard at all and directly use the Co-Badged Debit cards in the first place (that is also the reason why there are tokenized cards that don’t share the number with the card that guests used … thats the number of the Co-Badged Debit card instead the number of the Girocard).

So what about the 2000 €

For German bank accounts and especially payment cards (Girocards) there can be some limits. As far as i know there are 3 typical limits:

1. General amount per week
2. International withdrawal per week
3. Online payments per week

Usually germans see only the “General amount per week” limit in action but because stripe doesn’t use Girocard but directly the Co-Badged Debit card that seems to be categorized under “International withdrawal per week” which is mostly set to 2000 € by default. So even as german paying in germany with mews the banks categorize that as ATM withdrawal and therefore a limit is used which isn’t really intuitive.

What now

We gonna check for this specific problem now but im pretty sure thats what it is. We could inform our guests to check the “international ATM withdrawal per week” limit with their bank but it seems bit weird. I hope that Mews/Stripe adjust that to deliver a more common payment solution.

I would also love some Feedback from Mews regarding this topic 😉. Maybe @MarketaOupi who is the best person for that.

Hi,

sounds logical and understandable.

If it proves to be true, then Stripe should very quickly adjust the type of direct debit. As a hotel in Germany with 95% German guests, we can't explain why they should increase the limits for foreign withdrawals. Many over 60y are also completely overwhelmed by this, especially because it only becomes apparent on the day of departure when paying the bill. 

I'm looking forward to the feedback from Mews. @MarketaOupi 

Best regards

Leif

Short feedback here: I’ve checked this theory with my own girocard in the meantime and i couldn’t confirm that. I couldn’t really disprove it neither.

I gonna have a look into that until i really know what is the problem here … right now i have a lot of inconsistent information about these situations so its all just theories. I gonna leave a feedback as soon as i know more.