A payment form failing to process correctly — charging incorrectly, failing silently, or not passing data correctly to your payment gateway — combines the usual form-plugin failure points with the specific requirements of your payment processor, and we fix the connection and configuration on your site’s side, though a genuine issue within the gateway’s own systems is outside what we can resolve.
Reproduce with a genuine test transaction, using the gateway’s test mode if available
Most payment gateways offer a test or sandbox mode specifically for this. Reproducing the failure there, rather than risking a real charge, tells us exactly where the process breaks without any financial consequence, and most gateways log test transactions just as thoroughly as real ones.
Payment form integration errors
A payment form failing or miscounting — fixed on your side, flagged plainly if it's the gateway's.
- Full backup taken before we start
- If we can’t fix it, you get your money back
- We never ask for your own password
This or something else?
| A payment form is failing to process, charge incorrectly, or pass data correctly to your gateway | This fix covers it |
| You want the payment gateway’s dashboard settings and webhooks configured, not a form-level integration fixed | Stripe dashboard settings & webhook configuration, or PayPal business account & IPN configuration, in the Third-party SaaS Configuration category |
| The gateway itself is reporting a genuine outage or account-level issue | Outside what we can fix — that’s the gateway’s own service issue, resolved on their timeline |
| The form works but the confirmation email or receipt isn’t arriving | Worth checking Email & Deliverability category fixes, a different point of failure |
What you are seeing
- Payments failing to process despite correct card or payment details entered
- Charges succeeding on the gateway’s side but not reflecting correctly on your site (no confirmation, no order record)
- An error message during checkout referencing the payment gateway
- The issue possibly starting after a form plugin update, a gateway API change, or a credential expiry
Common causes
- An API key or credential for the payment gateway expiring or being revoked
- A mismatch between what the form sends and what the gateway’s current API expects
- A webhook not correctly configured to confirm successful payment back to your site
- A gateway-side setting (test mode left active, a currency mismatch) causing transactions to fail or behave unexpectedly
- A card verification redirect (3D Secure) not returning correctly to complete the order on your site after the customer confirms their bank
What we do
- Reproduce the failure using the gateway’s test mode where available
- Check both the form’s configuration and the gateway’s own transaction logs
- Identify whether the cause is a credential, a data mismatch, or a webhook configuration issue
- Correct the connection and configuration on your site’s side
- Test a complete transaction end to end to confirm correct processing and confirmation
- Flag clearly if the root cause is something only the gateway provider can resolve
What is included
- The specific cause of the payment form failure identified and corrected, where within our control
- A tested, confirmed working transaction flow end to end
- Verified correct webhook confirmation and order recording
- A clear flag if the cause is on the gateway’s own side, outside what we can fix
Not included
- Resolving an outage, bug, or account restriction on the payment gateway’s own platform
- Setting up the payment gateway’s dashboard and webhooks from scratch, a separate, related fix if that’s not already done
- PCI compliance or broader payment security auditing, a separate, specialised concern
- Ongoing monitoring for future changes on the gateway’s side
Questions about this fix
Will you need my payment gateway login to fix this?
Where the gateway supports it, a delegated or limited-access connection (an API key, a team member invitation) is preferable to your full account password — we'll ask for whatever's genuinely needed, not more.
What if a customer was actually charged but the order didn't record correctly on my site?
We check for exactly this discrepancy as part of diagnosis, since it's one of the more serious versions of this problem — a mismatch between a real charge and your site's own records needs resolving carefully and promptly.
Could this be the gateway's fault, not my site's configuration?
Yes, genuinely possible — if the gateway itself has a bug, an outage, or an account-level restriction, that's outside what a fix on your site can resolve, and we'll tell you plainly if that's what we find.
Is it safe to test this without risking a real charge?
Yes, using the gateway's test or sandbox mode, which is standard practice specifically to allow this kind of testing without financial consequence — we'd use that wherever available rather than risking a live transaction.
Will this affect transactions that already processed successfully?
No, this addresses the failure going forward — successfully processed past transactions and their records remain unaffected.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.