Why did my PayPal payment fail? - Understanding PayPal error messages for Attendees

You were probably directed here after receiving an error message on the PayPal website while attempting to complete your registration for an event.

PayPal is a useful service, but its error notifications can be quite ambiguous and confusing at times.

To help customers understand the causes of transaction failures, we've compiled a list of the most common error messages they've received while attempting to make payments through PayPal.

We recommend that you review this list before attempting to make another PayPal payment.

Type	Message Type(s)	Possible reason(s)
1.	Error Code: 4001,3005 or 3608: Message: We are sorry, we are experiencing temporary difficulties. Please try again later. If this error occurred while making a payment, avoid duplicate payments by checking your Account Overview before resending a payment.	· For some browsers, this problem can be resolved by clearing or deleting cookies. · This error means your system's cookie directory has reached its limit (it's full). You can safely clear out your browser history and, more importantly, the cookies directory by using the Tools>>Internet Options menu and then retry with the registration process.
2.	Message 1: The card you entered cannot be used for this payment. Message 2: Please enter a different credit or debit card number Message 3: We can't process your payment right now, so please try again later. We're sorry for the inconvenience.	· If you do have an existing PayPal account and the credit card or email address is recognized, your client MUST log in to PayPal first for security reasons. · The Credit Card was previously linked to a Closed PayPal Account · Credit Card or the Email Address used raises red flag with PayPal. · When you do not have a Paypal account linked to your credit card, that card has a total lifetime transaction limit of approximately $4000. This value is the total of all payments ever made through the PayPal Guest Checkout Experience on that credit card. Even if the total is below $4000, they can only use that card 15 times as a guest. In this case, you will need to sign up for a PayPal account in order to continue using that credit card.
3.	Your payment can’t be completed. Please return to the participating website and try again	· This indicates that your event organizer potentially has an incorrect setting with their Payment receiving preferences in their PayPal account. In this case, you must contact your event organizer and ask them to either contact PayPal or reach out to us for further support.

Please note that all of the above listed limitations are imposed by PayPal for security reasons and entirely have to do with your credit card / PayPal account and in some cases to do with the event organizer’s PayPal account, and these have nothing to do with Eventzilla.

Recommended Workaround / Solution: The most successful solution / workaround to the above mentioned issues is to log on and pay using your PayPal account if you already have one. If not create a new PayPal account and link your Bank Account or Credit card to it and complete the transaction through that.

If the error message received by you is not covered by the scenarios listed in this article, please reach out to us at help@eventzilla.net for further assistance.