Help me understand the customer credit card interface

[TDub]

I'm a bit puzzled by the way WHMCS associates a credit card with the billing address.

 

It has recently come to my attention that during a payment gateway change on our part a number of customers had to go in and update their credit card billing addresses because the newly enabled Address Verification Service found an address mismatch on a number of credit cards. Mind you, I have vetted all these customers so I knew they were all legit.

 

The customers (many businesses) were completely lost on how to keep their profile addresses the same, but use a different billing address for their card. So I had to explain the cumbersome way of updating a secondary contact with the proper billing address, then choosing that billing contact from the profile page.

 

Why do we make this so hard for customers? They just want to simply update their credit card info. So why can't the user just enter the credit card billing info on the same popup as the credit card number? Every other payment processing system I've ever seen puts the card number and billing address together. I believe that is what we all usually expect so when that is broken out onto separate screens, customers either give up and contact us for help, or we have to chase them down to get paid.

 

Maybe I'm just missing something?

[9DollarDomains]

+1

 

The Credit Card table in the database could have 'Credit Card Address' as part of it. While that's often/usually the same as the client address, it's not always the same and that causes problems with many AVSs.

[TDub]

I'd like to bring this issue back to the forefront. The way WHMCS handles credit card storage is very confusing to my customers. It breaks the normal process we are all used to of entering billing information generally on the same page as the credit card number (except checkout forms, for which there may be a logical sequence of steps allowing you to separate the information).

 

As a result, I spend a lot of time tracking down unsuccessful payments, only to find the customer didn't realize they needed to update their profile address to match the new credit card they put in. And it's frustrating for my customers because they think when they update their credit card all is well, then find out they are now past due because their card didn't go through. They call me complaining that their card is good, which it is, but the address is obviously wrong. How would they intuitively know this?

 

So why not put the billing address on the credit card number page? Then, it doesn't matter which contact is on file. What the customer sees on the credit card details page is what will entirely be used to process the card. If that's not an option, then at the very least move the Billing Contact dropdown from the My Details page over to the Credit Card information page. Then the customer will be able to clearly see from what contact the billing address is being pulled from for the card on file.