Online payment processing is vital when it comes to e-commerce for both the business and the customer. When it comes to web hosting and domain names it becomes even more serious. Both the business and the customer should take care when it comes to payment methods.

The business should employ a reliable payment processing system. It may not be the most economical, it must be reliable. A customer should make sure his payment method is able to be billed when it is needed. If either websites could go offline and domains lost. This is especially true if the customer is busy and may not follow up email communication. This is no hypothetical situation. With GoDaddy this has happened at least once in the past.

When it comes to GoDaddy, in the last 12+ years I have noticed a variety of payment method related issues.

• PayPal Failure
• Card Validation Error - "Card is not supported"
• Card not supported - The actual case

And if you can't get it resolved, you should move away and I am happy to give you a hand.

PayPal

Although I could add cards directly to GoDaddy I choose to go through PayPal. One reason is that GoDaddy has a past with issues processing cards from some geographic areas. PayPal had a better track record in this regard and I know it to be reliable and safe. Although it will result a transaction fee, I happily setup PayPal with 2 cards from 2 banks. If one bank failed, I expected the other to go through. PayPal-GoDaddy combo did really well, for a very long time, right until today.

I had a SMS alert from a bank I didn't expect to receive an alert from. The message stated that GoDaddy billed me about $25. My first thought was that it was a security breach. When I logged in to GoDaddy I noticed it was my backup card.

It turns out that PayPal didn't go through. PayPal is fine because I use it often. I tried to find information about what happened. There was absolutely nothing helpful I can find in the dashboard. I looked at my emails with no luck. Then I checked PayPal and couldn't find any record of such failure.

This is really frustrating. I need to know the error but I can't find out what happened. When I log in to GoDaddy they show a payment failed and has an arrow to click. When I click it I expect to be taken to the actual error but instead it reload the page.

Card Validation Error - "Card is not supported"

GoDaddy has a history of bad card support but in the present day it is almost unheard of. Chances are you got your card number, cvv/security-code or expiry wrong. Double check it. Some times an 8 looks like a 3 or vice versa in different lighting conditions.

Usually, a sane website will highlight the proper field and give a meaningful error. But not GoDaddy credit/debit card form. It highlights the card number and gives one error "Card is not supported". Usually payment method gateways offer meaningful error codes that can differentiate so that we web developers can highlight proper error. For example if you have a bad expiry, to say so. But it doesn't seem to be the case with GoDaddy. A bad expiry is a "not supported" card.

Card not supported - The actual case

This is the case where a card is for one reason or the other is not supported. This has happened for both new cards and existing cards that have been billed for many years some times. The latter probably being the case of a card processing backend change.

I almost fell victim to this. In about 2010 I tried to host my blog at GoDaddy. When it came to the step of adding the payment method I was greeted by the error "Your card is not supported error". I didn't have the luxury of another card so I did some research and contacted support. In the support forum I noticed it was a widespread issue in certain geographical areas like Africa, Asia and South America. The matter was such that some couldn't make payments and got their websites taken down.

Can't Resolve - Move Away

In case you have exhausted your options, you may need to consider moving away from GoDaddy. You can renew a domain name from another provider. In my experience the transfer happens well within 48 hours. I personally use GoDaddy for domain purchases. I do my hosting in VPS I buy from DigitalOcean. I usually help others move to GoDaddy, but if you like I can help you move out of it.

Conclusion

In my opinion payment method failure is inevitable. Some times the service provider is at fault. Some times it is your end of the card that is the case. Time is needed to resolve such issues. This is why when you pay for critical infrastructure like web-hosting and domain registration I would recommend keeping a 12 month buffer for renewal. You should also keep backup payment methods preferably from different banks. This is especially true for business that rely on their websites for survival. It is better to be safe than sorry.