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Why was my payment not accepted?

FYI, the Place Order button might be entirely disabled ("greyed-out") if the "My billing and shipping address are the same" box is unchecked and a different billing address was entered, but the address Update button immediately below and to the right of the billing address block was not clicked. Otherwise...

If your card issuer or your bank declines to authorize payment, a  pink banner  containing an advisory will briefly appear near the top of the page. Sometimes further explanation is provided by your card issuer or your bank, but might be ambiguous to protect your privacy. A " Processor Declined", "Suspected Fraud", "Do Not Honor", "Restricted", "Cannot Authorize at this time (Policy)", "Not Allowed", or "Call Issuer" response from the card processor when attempting to place an order is usually for security or funding reasons. Do not retry with the same card; you must call the phone number on the back of your card to inquire further.

IMPORTANT: Your order has been accepted only when you Place Order and immediately see a "Thank You" page with your Order Number. Do NOT keep unsuccessfully attempting to Place Order until you have you have identified and corrected the cause of the payment not being accepted. Several rapidly repeated unsuccessful payment attempts will trigger a lockout, then even valid payments for the order will be gateway rejected as "Risk Threshold Exceeded". If that happens you will have to wait a few minutes before making another payment attempt.

Checkout with a different payment method will often work around these issues. When using a different payment method or after talking to your card issuer, please restart from the beginning by returning to Proceed to Checkout.


If your card is being rejected by our payment gateway, there are several possibilities:

  1. The card number, expiration date and the card verification value ( CVV aka security code ) entered must be the current and correct numbers on the card you are using. Verify the details and then restart checkout from the beginning with the correct card information.
  2. If you are using a stored card and for any reason the card was reissued after being stored, then you cannot checkout with a stored card that has been reissued. Instead restart checkout from the beginning and manually enter the new card information.
  3. The billing or ship-to address may contain a typographical error causing the information to be unrecognizable such as missing, misspelled or mismatched phone number, city, state or region, postcode, or country. Verify their details, then restart checkout from the beginning with the correct information.
  4. A third party SHIPPING ADDRESS for the order may be associated with a recent history of chargeback or fraudulent transactions such as an forwarding agent or mail drop, hotel or business, or multi-unit residential building. Restart checkout from the beginning using a different shipping address to work around these issues.
  5. The INTERNET ACCESS used to enter the order may be associated with a recent history of fraudulent transactions such as an enterprise network firewall, Airbnb, public Wi-Fi hotspot, public VPN, or in rare circumstances your device security may be compromised. Restart checkout from the beginning using a different internet access or payment method to work around these issues.

Other Causes of Checkout or Website Problems

The Dive Gear Express checkout flow, together with our next generation payment gateway to your card issuer or bank, support a wide variety of ecommerce industry best practices to help protect your privacy, your order and your payment credentials from theft or fraud. In rare cases, one or more of these protections may prevent you from successfully placing an order:

  • You may not see shipping and/or card payment options at all if you are visiting our site through an application firewall (such as those found in enterprise, government, and military grade networks) that is configured to block certain types of javascripts. NoScript is a popular browser extension also causing this issue. Such measures are unnecessary in this case because our website provides a Content Security Policy (CSP) that your browser will automatically use to block unauthorized scripts. Our checkout flow requires CSP trusted scripts loaded by your browser directly from the shipping quote and payment gateway servers. Contact your network administrator for advice.
  • Our website may be unusually slow or you may be unable to place an order if you are visiting our site though an open proxy which exposes your payment information. In particular, do not use public VPN provider services, network overlay services, or anonymous browsers that might intercept your information under the guise of enhancing security. We must be able to establish trusted end-to-end encrypted connections directly between your web browser and our servers.
  • You may be unable to place an order using payment options protected with ReCaptcha V3 security (validation error: score-threshold-not-met) if the checkout information was automatically entered by "cut-and-paste" or your browser "auto-fill", instead try manually typing the information. ReCaptcha scores can sometimes be improved by first signing-in to a browser personal profile, then returning to the shopping cart and Proceed to Checkout.

Checkout with a different browser or device connected via a different network will often work around these issues.


If you are still having problems, please Contact Us.

Ordering Guide
Pricing & Payment
Shipping & Delivery
Return & Refund

12 FAQ Payments

Entering a card to pay directly through our secure checkout is probably the easiest way to enter a shipping address different than a billing address. To start just click on "Checkout" in the shopping cart. Complete the shipping information page and click Next, then on the payment page select a payment method, uncheck "My billing and shipping address are the same" box, enter the billing address, and click the adjacent UPDATE button. Complete the payment information and click the "Place Order" button. If the order was accepted an order confirmation page with the order number will immediately appear.

If the payment was declined, an error message along with the reason will appear in a pink box at the top of the page. If the "Place Order" button is not active, verify that you clicked on the update billing address button and checked the box to agree to our Terms and Conditions.

When placing a new order, our fulfillment staff is not automatically alerted to the availability of merchandise discount. To apply your store merchandise discount please follow these instructions:

  1. Checkout with a debit or credit card as the payment method. DO NOT select any other method because they might charge your account in full before we have an opportunity to apply the merchandise discount amount.
  2. Use the same e-mail address as the one that was previously given a merchandise discount amount.
  3. IMPORTANT: Use the Order Comments dialog box during checkout to write a request we apply your store merchandise discount amount to this order and include the words "Store Credit" or "Store Discount" in your message.
  4. Complete the new order as normal. Your merchandise discount amount will be applied to the merchandise on your order. Your card will be used to collect the remaining balance along with sales tax and shipping charge, if any of those are applicable.

Merchandise discount amounts may only be applied to store merchandise and can not be used to pay for sales taxes or shipping charges. Merchandise discount is not a gift certificate, stored value card, or similar instrument. Merchandise discount amount is not transferable, has no value and cannot be redeemed for cash.

We want all our products to be a great value so we present our lowest price everyday to everyone and we are proud of our five-star quality customer service. As much as we would like to have additional discounts for divemasters, instructors, first responders, military personnel, and groups, our prices are already as low as possible.

You also never have to "call for best price." In a few cases, where dive equipment manufacturers prevent us from showing you our price in the U.S. below their specified fixed minimum amount (known as a Minimum Advertised Price or MAP), you may see a lower "in-store" price in our shopping cart if you first Register and/or Sign In to your DGX customer account on our website.

Once you Sign In to your free DGX customer account, our prices are the same good value whether you shop online, our physical location, or call us. You may order with confidence that you haven't missed any discounts, coupons or promo codes.

A decline is usually from your bank or card issuer for security or funding reasons. You will need to call your bank or card issuer (their phone number is on the back of your card) to inquire further. If you have more than one card, trying with a different card will often work around the problem. If your card is still being rejected, for further advice see Causes of Card Declines.

Yes, we do accept corporate and government p-cards from all major card issuers including American Express, MasterCard and Visa. In the rare case your card is declined, your company may have placed restrictions on the categories of businesses where the card may be accepted for payment. Contact your purchase card administrator to enable your card for use with our merchant category code (MCC) 5941 Sporting Goods/Clubs/Teams.
  1. Please first Create an Account or Sign In to our website; then shop as usual.
  2. Select "Proceed to Checkout" to begin Checkout process.
  3. Choose ACH via Zelle payment method, then Place Order as normal.
  4. Wait until you receive the order confirmation email before making payment.
  5. Using Zelle, pay the exact amount of Grand Total $ in your order confirmation email. In the memo field please write your Order Number.
  6. Make payment to:
    [email protected]
    Dive Gear Express LLC

Once our bank confirms receipt of funds (typically real-time within minutes of your payment), your order will be released.

  1. Please first Create an Account or Sign In to our website; then shop as usual.
  2. Select "Secure Checkout" to begin Checkout process.
  3. Choose Bank Wire Transfer payment method.
  4. Place Order as normal.

When we begin processing your order, we will send you an email with our banking information you will need to arrange an electronic payment from your bank to ours. Once our bank confirms receipt of funds, your order will be released.

Your card number and other card details are never actually recorded at anytime by our website. When entering your card information, only a special token is recorded by our payment gateway. However, the token itself never contains your complete card number or other card details. When you also ask our website to "save" your payment information, all that is being stored is the token, which can only be used for purchases at Dive Gear Express.

Of course, even though your Dive Gear Express account and saved payment method can only be used to purchase from us, you still must take precautions to protect the password for your Dive Gear Express account. Please choose a strong password that you use exclusively for our website and no other.

We do NOT collect domestic sales tax on orders we ship via licensed common carrier (USPS or UPS) to any address outside the State of Florida, USA. Otherwise, on tangible goods we must collect the sales tax appropriate for the delivery address.

If you wish to place an order to be delivered inside Florida for resale or use by a tax-exempt organization, please see our Florida Sales Tax Exemption instructions page.

Please read our SCUBA Diving Equipment Import Duties and Taxes page for detailed country by country guidelines to estimating duties and taxes.

All Dive Gear Express prices and financial transactions are in United States Dollars (USD or US $). The financial institution associated with the method you used to fund payment will perform any required currency exchange at the rate they choose to establish.

Dive Gear Express does use an online service to optionally display individual prices on our website in different currencies. This service is only a guide, because our prices in currencies other than US $ are approximations and your financial institution will set their own exchange rate. Prices in AUD also include a 10% GST. Prices in GBP and EUR also include a 20% estimate for VAT.

Although we issue refunds promptly, bank card refund transactions are normally much slower to appear on activity summaries than charge transactions. Refunds issued to a credit card transaction typically post to your account within 3-5 business days. Refunds issued to a pin-less debit card transaction can take 10 business days to reflect on the account balance. These refund time frames vary slightly from one financial institution to another, but can be as long as 30 days for cross border transactions involving currency exchanges. The refund time frame can also be a little longer when a 3rd party payment gateway was used to fund the original transaction.