Why is my credit card zip or postal code not matching?
When your payment fails due to an incorrect zip or postal code, this means your bank told us your security code matched, but not your zip or postal code. To protect both you and us, we (MSR) decline non-matching transactions to fight fraud.
How We Process Payments
- We send a charge request to your bank for approval
- Your bank may both approve the transaction and tell us something didn't match -- in this case, they specified that only the security code matched, but not the zip/postal code.
- To protect you against fraud, if either the zip/postal code or security code don't match, we reject the transaction
- For some banks, this can leave a temporary pending (but unsettled) charge on your account. It will fall off your card shortly, usually within 24-48 hours.
The most common cause of this problem is an old zip code assigned to the card itself. Even though you have updated your address with the bank, they may not sync your new address to the credit/debit card. Try the old/outdated postal code(s) on the payment, and it will likely go through.
To get to the bottom of this, you may need to find out why your bank is telling us that the information we are submitting with your payment does not match what they have on file for you. When you call your bank, they may initially tell you "we approved that charge". You have to be more specific with call center staff and ask "Why did the AVS not match? What zip code did you receive and what do you have on file for my account?"
