SD Payments from Turkey

[John Ennals]

Hi,

Can anybody shed light on this please?

It appears that my customers in Turkey are no longer able to pay via SellerDeck Payments. It sounds as though their browsers are hanging instead of transferring to the SD Payments site.

I believe PayPal is no longer available in Turkey due to recent government restrictions, and I am wondering if the same thing is affecting SD Payments? It would be useful to know if anyone else has experienced a similar problem.

I've raised a ticket with SD but short of visiting Turkey I'm not sure they'll be able to replicate the problem (although the annual support charge I pay would more than cover flights and accommodation...)

Thanks,
John

[Air-Tech]

We have been experiencing this for around 6 months or so & it's getting worse...

I don't know exactly what goes on in the background, but as far as I'm aware it ssome form of fiscal control that originates in Turkey - doesn't matter if funds are available, how clean the card is or which bank issued it - same result.... When there is an obvious issue & a batch of PSP pending orders from the same customer we will typically email the customer, explain the situation & offer bank transfer as a payment option.

The same thing is also happening with purchases originating from Greece, not quite as bad as Turkey, but not far away. We have even recently had envelopes containing GBP (by unregistered Airmail....) arrive unannounced with covering letters explaining what the customer would like to order!

Edit to add - we also contacted support regards this, response was that the PSP side of things was working without error & no further info provided..

[John Ennals]

As I understand it the Turkish government has been blocking access to sites that store personal details on servers that are located in other countries.

Support are contacting Creditcall to see if they can confirm whether their servers - and therefore SD Payments - are being blocked in this way, so if they get an answer I'll post it here.

I also read somewhere that bank transfers are very expensive in Turkey, not sure whether this is true. I guess Western Union might be an alternative to suggest to customers.

John

[John Ennals]

FWIW, Creditcall have replied that they are not aware of their service being blocked in Turkey.

[Air-Tech]

That's along the lines of the response I got as well, a "no problem here" type of answer - you would think that even if the problem wasn't the PSP's that they would at least have an idea of what the issue is?

I'm not so sure about ofshore servers storing personal data being correct though as all the customer data from unconfirmed orders is there / recorded.

I've asked a few known customers (known before this issue) what's happening at their end when this occurs & the consensus seems to be that the PSP page loads fine, card details are entered without any issue, but when then the pay / submit / go is clicked the browser just goes to a blank hung page. It's like card details going to an ofshore PSP are detected & then blocked, but I'm struggling to understand how this can happen from the Turkish end over SSL.

My only though is that responses to specific url's (PSP's) are prevented, but I dont really have a clue... Anyone got a better understanding of SSL / connections that may be able to explain?

[chris ashdown]

Norman may be the best person to be able to answer this as I think he spend half the year in Turkey

[Air-Tech]

A couple of bit of further info on this should anyone be interested;

Card transactions & hence PayPal transactions that are funded directly by card can both fail due to this problem, however if the customer's PayPal account is funded by card prior to the transaction, there doesn't seem to be an issue.

It seems that offshore (to Turkey & Greece at least) online sellers are categorised somewhere & it's the categorisation that causes the problem / payment blocking. We are currently categorised as an "art store" & this is what causes fiscal control to be applied & payment blocked - I would get that if we were selling multi-million pound pieces of art, but we aren't......... Now I'll try & figure out exactly where it is that that fiscal control find the categorisation from & try & get it changed to something more appropriate.

If anyone has any idea where the categorisation may be being drawn from it would be handy?

[John Ennals]

Just to keep this on the boil, I've not had a single order from Turkey since I started this thread. I've lost a couple of good regular customers, and I see today a new customer in Ankara has made a couple of attempts at placing an order using SD Payments and has given up. So the problem is still there even though Creditcall don't seem interested in looking into it.

[Air-Tech]

Since last posting here I spoke at some length to a previously regular customer from Greece who can no longer purhcase from our site - he had discussed the matter with his bank & the reasoning for the blocking given to him was that sales are blocked to vendors from overseas with my Merchant Category Code (5970, art & craft supplies).

I then went through the process of getting my MCC changed to 5399 (general merchandise), this involved the closure of the merchant account associated with 5970 & opening a new account on 5399 - it was a bit of a hassle & ultimatley made no difference whatsoever...... Every day I'm clearing out pending orders from Greece & Turkey & often replying to frustrated customer who want to know why I can't accept their orders - it's pretty frustrating (understatement) & just sales down the drain!

If I'm to take some of the feedback I get on this issue as being true, it appears that some other similar vendors are not afflicted by this issue - different ecommerce platform, different processors - who knows.

Between Sellerdeck Payments, Creditcall & Worldpay nobody seems to be able to provide a plausible reason for the issue, which to be honest seems pretty hard to accept, the fact that I'm a paying customer to them all, doubly so.

[John Ennals]

My wild guess is that the server that runs the SD-branded version of Creditcall is on a Turkish block list. Whatever the cause, we're paying Sellerdeck to provide the service, so they should at least acknowledge that there is a problem and issue advice even if they can't get Creditcall to fix it.

[John Ennals]

Hmm, been having a think...

I'd been under the impression that payments were failing at any early stage, i.e. the checkout wasn't able to connect to the SD Payments site at all.

If this isn't the case, and the payment is actually failing when it is submitted for authorisation, a problem with the MCC being blocked would make sense (mine is 5945, Hobbies Toys and Games). I'm guessing that MCCs are blocked by the card issuer in combination with the merchant's country, so a card issued in Turkey won't allow online purchases from a wide range of MCCs unless the merchant/website is located in Turkey - this seems to fit with their government's policy. I'm not seeing any declined transactions in the SD Payments reports though, which I would have expected.

I wonder if there's any other payment option for Turkish customers? PayPal is no longer available in Turkey. Money transfer via Western Union maybe? I'd like to be pro-active and publish some advice on my website rather than have customers get to the end of checkout only to be disappointed.

Many thanks for responses so far.

John

[Air-Tech]

I've just discussed this issue with yet another customer from Greece who purchases on a regular basis from the UK from merchants that undoubtedly have the same MCC as myself & shockaroonie - he has no issues with any of them, ever, at all..... It's not the first time I've been told this, but I've heard it enough times now to know that the issue is specific to SD payments.

I've been through this with support before, but I guess I'll be raising it again - it looks very much like one of the situations where multiple providers are passing the issue along the chain without resolution.

[John Ennals]

That's interesting. I found the following on the Electronic Arts website:

"The Banking Regulations and Supervision Agency (BRSA) in Turkey introduced a new rule to protect cardholders from unauthorised online purchases. This rule went into effect on August 17, 2017, and means that cardholders have to opt in through their bank to be able to use their card(s) for buying goods or services online." https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/accou...-credit-cards/

There's similar information here: https://support.google.com/paymentsc.../7501626?hl=en

I imagine this may be part of the problem in Turkey, and possibly in Greece too as both governments have imposed capital controls and restrictions via their banks.

However, as you say, it does appear that customers are able to purchase from other UK merchants so it does look as though there is also a problem specific to SD Payments/CreditCall. I will raise a ticket with Sellerdeck as well, and perhaps they can get a less dismissive response from CreditCall this time.