Is it all cards and all nationalities, or one particular card type or nationality?

I experienced once that many Norwegian guests with international cards, ie Amex, were being asked to verify every time it was not a terminal/in person payment because of updated fraud checks.

We are reaching out to address a recurring issue that has been affecting nearly all card transactions, including those from direct reservations as well as through Booking.com and Expedia. Over 90% of these cards are experiencing problems with pre-authorization.

Our initial feedback from the helpdesk suggested that the issue might be due to customers not having their 3D Secure settings properly configured. However, many customers have contacted their banks for assistance, and the banks have confirmed that everything is in order and should be functioning correctly.

We believe the root of the problem may lie with Stripe. When attempting to set a pre-authorization via Mews, if you navigate to the 'Methods' section and click on the three dots to choose pre-authorization and enter the amount, you should be able to specify when this should expire. Unfortunately, this process either doesn't work or results in error messages. If you select the option for an external pre-authorization, it does work, but you cannot set a custom expiration date until the guest's departure date; instead, you are automatically given the 7-day period set by Mews, with no option to input your own end date.

Best regards,

Robin

Hello ​@barb00sa 
 

My name is Addie and I am with Mews Support. Without having specific examples to investigate, it appears the first instance you are describing could be due to outages that occurred on May 13th. Customers had issues accessing the Guest Portal. This could have prevented customers from being able to verify their credit card on file.

As for the second instance, it appears it could be due to 3DS as you mentioned. Would you be open to creating a ticket with our Support team? We would like to investigate this to make sure the system is following expected behavior and we can find a solution for you. If you are able to provide specific examples, that would be super helpful.

Thank you!

​@barb00sa we are actually now experiencing (somewhat similar) issues with authorizations in multiple properties. also one guest who has been in contact with her issues (VISA) claims that the certification MEWS uses is OUTDATED and therefore authorizations are failing. 

​@adeline.baesler tickets 00452751, 00451413, 00453283

could be very much different problems as the incidents have various scenarios, but problems with payment are the last issue we all need..

Hello ​@mauritsbots 

this is the answer from the support:

Hello Robin,

Thank you for getting back to us. I have already consulted our Payment Experts as well as Stripe Support. We reviewed both the failed and successful pre-authorizations, and our expert team, along with Stripe, confirmed that the payments are failing due to 3DS authentication requirements from the bank. This issue is not related to any setup configurations within Mews or Stripe.

Additionally, I checked with our development team to provide more details on the issue. If you receive the error message "Action not possible. Please initiate a payment request to proceed," this indicates that the card does not support off-session pre-authorizations. "Off-session" refers to payments that are initiated automatically or by the merchant, rather than by the cardholder in real time.

Stripe also analyzed the transactions but could only confirm that the clients' banks rejected the payments. As mentioned earlier, this suggests that the banks do not support this type of operation.

Unfortunately, there is no action we can take from the Mews side, as this issue originates from the banks.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards and have a great rest of the day,

Helena 

Helllo ​@adeline.baesler 

this is our: Case Number 00449790 -

Hope it helps

Best regards,

Robin 

Thanks! lets wait and see what support finds on my tickets - one of our guests actually indicated to us that “bank indicates that we e=mews] are not using the latest certifications”

Hello ​@barb00sa 

I apologize I did not realize you had already opened a case with Helena regarding the failed pre-authorizations. I have connected with Helena and I can confirm I have the same findings as her.

I might’ve misunderstood the first instance you described regarding the Guest Portal. If customers had an issue with the Guest Portal on May 13th, I would be happy to open a case with you to investigate this. 

I apologize for the confusion!