Charging credit cards
Last updated: November 23, 2023
You can charge credit cards when making a new booking in your Dashboard or adding payment to an existing booking. To charge a credit card, select the “card” payment method and enter all required information.
All card information collected in FareHarbor is securely encrypted and cannot be duplicated in any way. Our payment processor is certified under the most stringent level or certification available in the payments industry.
Credit card payments are deposited into your bank account on a daily basis once you’ve completed the Payment Setup Checklist.
Click here to view which credit cards are accepted by FareHarbor.
Why are the CVC code and zip code required? When charging US credit cards, FareHarbor requires this information to reduce the risk of fraudulent credit card activity and disputed charges. This information is used as a one-time verification by our payment processor and is never stored in FareHarbor.
Reviewing payments
You can review all transactions on a completed booking using the payment summary located under the booking information. Click on this section to show a detailed transaction history.
To review all credit card transactions within a certain date range, you can run a Sales report and filter by payment type (you can also filter by credit card type).
To track payouts and refunds, use the Payouts & Refunds report.
Additional notes
FareHarbor’s payment processor uses pre-authorizations to reduce credit card fraud. A pre-authorization is a temporary hold on funds that may show up on a customer’s credit card or banking statement as a pending charge. This is a normal transaction commonly used by online retailers to make sure the card is valid before running the full charge, and will disappear after 1-5 business days. Learn more.
When creating a new booking for an existing contact, FareHarbor will remember any cards that were previously used for that customer, so you don’t have to collect their card information again.
The CVC code is required in the US and Canada, although it’s possible for a Canadian card to not have a CVC printed on it. In this case, we recommend having the customer reach out to their bank for this information. All Canadian cards should have a CVC, regardless of whether or not the code is printed on the card itself. In some cases, the customer’s bank may have issued an additional reference card with the CVC on it.
Internal-only content. Don't copy and paste to anyone.
Blocked charges
Credit card charges can be blocked either by the card’s issuing bank or by Stripe.
Bank block
Potential reasons for a charge being blocked by a bank include:
- the account having insufficient funds
- an incorrect credit card number
- the card issuer has flagged the charge as a fraudulent transaction.
- the amount being charged is over the maximum permissible charge of 100,000 in the processor currency
The cardholder must resolve this block directly with the issuing bank. In the case of reaching the maximum possible charge, it would be advisable to separate the charge amount into smaller payments.
Stripe block
Stripe may also block a charge.
Common reasons for these blocks include:
- an incorrect CVC
- Stripe Radar determined that their calculated “risk score” for the transaction is too high. When this occurs, the charge is immediately blocked. This can often be due to a customer making several bookings in a row from one IP address, thereby alerting Stripe of suspicious-looking activity.
To alleviate our clients’ direct bookings being blocked, Payment Operations has a procedure in place to whitelist the client’s account and allow charges for all direct bookings. The whitelist procedure tells Radar that direct bookings can be accepted from this account. This is not exclusive to the specific IP address used to create the transaction, but rather any user logged into a FareHarbor Dashboard will be able to complete a direct booking without being blocked.
It is important that our clients understand how this process works when requested, and that they have implemented a policy check to prevent fraudulent dispute claims. More information about preventing disputes can be found here.
More info about CVCs and zip codes
If a client wants to know why they are required to enter the CVC code or zip/postal code for a direct booking, you can tell them that collecting this information helps protect against fraud and decreases the likelihood of losing a credit card dispute. The idea is that someone using a stolen credit card is less likely to have these details so they will be unable to complete the transaction.
Additional notes:
- The CVC is used as a one-time verification by Stripe and is never stored in FareHarbor.
- If a client is still upset about collecting the zip code, they can always choose “Unknown or Unspecified” when charging a card. Watch a video example.
In November 2017, the old permission Skip cardholder name, country, and postal code became Skip cardholder name, and a new permission (Skip cardholder country and postal code) was added.
- This permission can only be enabled/disabled by FH Admins, and is disabled by default.
- This allows us to require company users to collect country and postal code when taking card information, but we can override it for a permission group if needed.
If you’re logged in as a FH Admin, the CVC code requirement on the credit card form can be disabled by using the shortcut
shift+alt+c. Non-FH Admins cannot disable the CVC requirement.
Card statement text
This is the text that appears on an end customer’s bank statement for their booking or purchase (usually it’s the name of the company). It can be found under Settings > Bank & Payments, and can only be edited by FH Admins.
More information about card statement text can be found on this client-facing help page.
How is the credit card country in the book form determined?
The default country for direct bookings is determined by the processor country associated with the Dashboard. For example, if the processor country is Canada, the default country for the credit card form on direct bookings will be Canada.
The default country for online bookings is usually determined by the language preference in the user’s browser. For example, if an end customer is checking out and their browser language is set to English (Canada), the default country on the credit card form will be Canada.
See the internal Localization Cheatsheet doc for more info.