What is actually surviving the billing step in 2026?

Something change in january and i want to know if is only me.

Card that work since 2024 on same account, now decline at billing step. Not decline on spend — the spend still go through on old accounts. Is only when i add the card to new account. Try four different card from three different place, all decline, all instantly, no 3ds, no sms, nothing. Just "this payment method cannot be used".

Same card work fine in a shop. So is not the card, is the platform reading something and saying no before it even ask the bank.

What are people putting on new accounts right now that actually get past this? And is this everywhere or one platform doing it.

Yes!! Same thing here since about mid January, I thought I'd been flagged personally

Which platform, and what geo is the account set to? "The platform" isn't one behaviour.

Two of the big ones, both same. Account geo is UK and DE, card issued in EU. Before was no problem with this combination.

Not just you, and it isn't "prepaid is dead" either, which is where this thread will go in about four posts.

What I've seen since January, across roughly thirty new account setups: 1) the instant no-3DS decline is a BIN-level block, and it's specific BINs rather than prepaid as a category — I have two prepaid cards from different issuers where one goes through every time and one has never worked since Christmas. 2) The ones that pass are consistently the ones where the cardholder name, the billing address country and the account country all agree. Mismatch any of the three and the pass rate falls off a cliff even on a card that works elsewhere.

I don't have a clean before/after on point 2. The BIN thing I'm confident about — a card that fails on a new account fails on every new account, forever, and one that works keeps working.

so the answer is find a working bin and don't tell anyone, because the reason yours died is that someone told everyone

Ran this properly because I had the same problem and 22 cards sitting around from various things.

All added to fresh accounts, same week, same browser profile discipline, three platforms. Outcome is pass at billing, not pass at first spend.

Card type	n	Passed
Debit, name-matched, EU bank	4	4
Business debit, company name	3	3
Prepaid, EU BIN, name on card	6	4
Prepaid, EU BIN, no name	5	1
Prepaid, US BIN, account set EU	4	0

The no-name row is the one I'd point at. Four of five failed instantly, and two of those were the same BIN as cards in the row above that passed — the difference was whether a cardholder name was set on the card at all.

So it isn't prepaid. It's a completeness check that a lot of prepaid issuance happens to fail. Confirms Marta's second point better than her own data does.

n of 4 and 5. useful but don't build a religion on it

Agreed, it's 22 cards and one operator. Post yours and it stops being one operator.

Worth separating three failures that all look identical from the outside, because people fix the wrong one and conclude the whole category is dead.

Instant decline, no bank round trip. The platform's own rules. BIN lists, missing cardholder name, country mismatch. Nothing about the card's funding will change this — it never reached the issuer. This is what's being described here.

Decline after a delay, sometimes with a 3DS prompt that fails. The issuer said no, usually because a foreign online recurring authorisation on a card with a €40 balance looks exactly like what it looks like. Fixable by funding the card properly before you add it. A $0 balance card at the billing step is a wasted attempt and half the people complaining are doing this.

Passes, spends for four days, then the account is reviewed. Nothing to do with billing at all, and adding a different card afterwards is treating a symptom.

I'd add one thing I can't demonstrate: I think the first category got much broader in January and I suspect it's a list refresh rather than a policy change, because it caught cards that had been fine for two years. If that's right the practical implication is that the working BINs today are the ones nobody has burned yet, and that's a depreciating asset rather than a discovery.

the $0 balance thing is me. I've been adding empty cards for two years

Put fifty on it and wait an hour before you add it. Costs nothing to test and it's the cheapest variable in the list.

trying this tonight

Ok i test the name thing. Two card same issuer, one i set cardholder name to match the account, one i leave default. Name one pass on first try. Other one decline same as before.

So is this. Two month i am chasing new card and the problem is a text field. Anyway thank you, this cost me maybe 200 euro in cards i not need.

Good. Now go and check the ones you wrote off in January — some of them will work now and you'll have thrown away balances.