Subscription issues

Amazon or PayPal never give us the true reason they might refuse a payment, but there are some troubleshooting options we can go through with frequent hurdles and how (if possible) to overcome them, so I'll list the most common issues people may come across and possibly how to resolve them.


The most common block we get is when Amazon refuses the transaction due to their fraud systems being over sensitive, since Torn (and therefore our Amazon account) is based in the UK it is seen as an overseas transaction for digital goods by most financial institutions outside the UK, which block it as a result due to the UK's high prevalence of online fraud. (This is also why whenever you pay on Amazon it defaults to GBP, but rest assured it doesn't cost any extra)

In most cases there speaking with your bank to allow overseas payments to the UK is sufficient, particularly for those in the US who have this issue (Chase bank in particular I know block this by default). Alternatively, using PayPal also works since you can pay direct in USD or a chosen relevant currency.

It depends also what type of card you're using and what type of service you're requesting, when it comes to subscriptions both PayPal and Amazon are very particular about this (something sadly beyond our control), pre-paid cards/preloaded cards and virtual cards are almost always not accepted. There isn't a reliable way around this unfortunately, however PayPal will always default to using the PayPal balance before a card's balance, so if you have funds on your PayPal account and manage to set up a valid subscription then you can keep it topped up there and it won't fail.

Sometimes if you're on mobile simply having Amazon's app downloaded to verify it can also allow subs to go through, although again this is unfortunately not 100% reliable.

Prepaid cards do however work for donator packs, just not for subscribing in this case.

When it comes to virtual cards these are almost always declined by Amazon and PayPal for subscriptions AND donator packs, iCard is the only one that I've seen to work but again it's not 100% reliable, sorry.

Maestro cards seem to be fairly universally hated by PayPal and Amazon, the only option I can suggest for those with these is to try a different payment option if possible.

Also ensure you have 2FA enabled on your PayPal or Amazon account, due to regulations within the EEA online payments to Torn are (Currently...) required to have multi factor authentication on them see here for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_customer_authentication

In other cases, it could be a browser issue, sometimes PayPal might have updated their payments page and simply clearing cache or trying a second browser is sufficient and always worth a go just in case.


For more specific issues I always welcome people to email me at payments@torn.com and we can try and figure out a solution there, sometimes we are able to find something that works, sometimes sadly it's just not possible due to regulations where someone may live or simply limitations due to the available payment options a particular country may offer.


We are in the final stages of implementing Googleplay payments though and do hope to have that ready for players soon, keep an eye out for announcements when that's available.


I'll try and answer any other questions but hopefully to some this may prove useful, we greatly appreciate anyone who choses to and wants to support Torn!