Why doesn't the payment status of an order match up to my payment gateway?

When a customer places an order on your online shop the usual process is...

1. Customer clicks the checkout button and fills in the checkout fields on the ekmPowershop servers

2. The customer selects their preferred payment method (such as PayPal) and is moved off the ekmPowershop servers and onto the payment gateways servers to take the payment

3. The customer is returned back to your online shop on the ekmPowershop servers and a message is passed from the payment gateway to your online shop telling it if the transaction was successful or not.

... in most cases this works perfectly fine and the order status displayed to you in the Customers section of ekmPowershop is accurate. However sometimes there can be problems where by the payment gateway doesn't pass a message back because of a technical error, delay in taking payment, banking error, etc.

Therefore it is imperative that you always check with your payment gateway that money has been taken, as even if the transaction did go through that customer could in theory change their mind and cancel the transaction with their bank.

Also we have had it in the past where customers have had their payment gateway set in "test mode" which for the majority of payment gateways means no real money is taken. If the customer doesn't check this then they can accidently sent out products when no real money has been taken.

Therefore always make sure you check with your payment gateway that money has been taken.

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